One year after the idea was planted
A year ago today we touched down in Spain and began a vacation-slash-investigation of what we thought might possibly, maybe if wild dreams could come true, be a place we could move to and try a different kind of big family adventure. 9 January 2016.
10 days in España. A whirlwind of music, art, food (holy crap, THE FOOD!), language, culture, new friends, and each other.
By the 5th night, our second day in Valencia, we began to believe that we could make it happen - We could move the whole family to Spain and not die. In fact, we were already beginning to think we could have a good life here.
But dang! It's one thing to dream and plot and scheme whilst eating tapas and sipping sangria...it's a totally different discussion once you've come home and the reality of the life you've built puts a very solid ceiling, with a fantastic open floor plan that you just love, on those paella induced day dreams.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe a dream gets in your head, and the next thing you know you're coming home from the grocery store with exotic cheeses and cured meats. And you find yourself estimating how long it would take to sell everything you own. Then you call your old real estate buddy and crunch some sales numbers. And your excitement is so infectious that the kids stop worrying that you may be trying to ruin their lives, and start asking when we might move. Then suddenly your home is sold and you are squatting at your parents house, scrambling to get all your affairs in order and gnashing your teeth over airfare rates. And oh, yeah, we didn't have time to learn Spanish.
But no, it's not sudden. It’s the longest year of your life. It's sleepless nights of hopes and plans falling through, and the kids thinking you're ruining their lives. It's worrying that you ARE ruining your kids lives. It's an eternity of doubt and questions and anxiety that maybe you're just running away from things you aren't happy with. Its a suffocating mountain of documents and applications and passports and fees. It's the slow agony of a thousand tears shed in your now empty living room, as you move out of the house where your two youngest kids were born, and your eldest became young men...where you've snuggled on the floor together to laugh and cry through a every Pixar film.
No...it's not sudden at all. It's interminable! But wasn't it only yesterday that we landed back in Austin with suitcases filled with Spanish souvenirs?
It's a journey of hope, doubt, faith, excitement, fear, courage, laughter, pain, sadness, expectation, joy, awe, hunger, embarrassment, pride, frustration, togetherness, adventure, and love.
A trip with my soulmate, who is the perfect counterweight to my insecurities and worry, but who doesn't hesitate to lean my direction when it's time to tip the scales.
A leap, with 7 gifted, brilliant, and hilarious children who love and trust us (and each other) enough to turn everything upside down and start over in a place that is utterly foreign to them.
An adventure of a life time for two lovestruck kids from Lockhart, Texas.
One year. A year since this leg of the journey began. But we've been hanging on from the minute we launched this thang on March 2, 1996.
