We Moved

It's been one week since I've started waking up in Hawaii.

And it feels good.

It feels right.

Moving to Hawaii was a long process. From last year when Christian applied for the job to waiting, negotiating with my job, packing, crossing off things in our endless to-do list, topped with flight drama. We prayed a lot during the whole process. I begged Heavenly father to help Christian get the job and then I begged him to help me keep my job. Even when those two things were set and I knew we were moving, emotionally it was still hard to let go.

Change is hard for me, it requires me to relinquish control, to live in a messy house full of boxes of things we own and use regularly and things we don't use regularly. It makes me feel very vulnerable. It makes me feel like a hoarder. It takes up a lot of my time and energy. It's way more comfortable to just stay put.

But as I watched my stuff being packed into the crate, our furniture being taken apart, our home that we earnestly put together and decorated and made it our own, being disassembled, I felt happy. It was not a feeling I was expecting at all. South San Francisco never felt like our community. It was a fine place for the eight months we lived there but it was never really where we were going to put down roots.

Leaving my office and saying bye to my co-workers was hard. I'm a social creature, I like working with people, and I like my co-workers a lot. Luckily I work an online job so I still feel connected to people at work. It's not the same of course, but it's a worthwhile trade. Now I work from 6:00am-2:00pm Hawaii time. Yesterday, for example, I picked up Enzo from school then took the kids to get some shave ice, and we still had time to go to the beach, have dinner, help them with homework, spend one-on-one time with them (I'm militant about this), read a chapter of Little House on the Prairie, and even squeeze in a short family home evening. This schedule is golden!

This last week has been fun. We've gone to the beach, hung out with cousins and friends, shared meals, made new friends, we even got to go on a date, a triple date with our friends.

More than anything though this last week has felt right. All along I knew that the move was right but there was still this feeling of not wanting to let go, of feeling scared, of doubting. But now the feeling is just peace. We are where we should be. School, preschool, babysitting, has all worked out. Christian is in his element, Enzo is thrilled, Maria walks by herself to the neighbor's house to play with kittens, Eliza likes interchanging between her swimsuit and birthdaysuit, and I'm feeling happy, safe, and excited for the future.