It's Time For a Great New Beginning

 As I sit here in the warm, dim lighting of my parents office, I can't help but hear over and over again;

“According to the will of God and my desire, I give myself to you. To be your wife, and your friend, and to stand by you always as we share our life together. Leaving my Father and Mother, I now commit myself to you….”

 I heard, and said these very words on my wedding day almost exactly a week ago. I remember when we rehearsed the wedding ceremony the night before, hearing our pastor say those words, I thought, nooooo, do I really have to leave my mom and dad? I mean I realize that this is the natural order of things, when you get married, you're married. You can't go "crawling" back to mommy and daddy anymore. You become accountable to your new husband, and he to you. You play a different role in life than you did before, when you were living under your parents' roof.

As excited, in love, and so very happy to be Rileys wife now, and to start our new lives together, this is still a very large pill for me to swallow.

Tonight while my parents and I were intricately packing my car for me to head back out on the road, it felt as if I was just going away for the weekend, or on another road trip like the first time but as the night grew, we all realized that this is not just a trip.

This is me leaving. Leaving my father and mother to go and commit myself to my new husband. To start our new life together.

This is where it really begins.

I remember something I said on my very first post back in May of 2011, when I left for my first cross country road trip. You know, the one where I had no plan, no idea where I was going or where I was gonna end up.

"Life is an amazing adventure. Its like one of those "choose your own adventure" books we used to have when we were little."

...And now I look at my life, and what I did end up doing, who I learned I was, and who I decided to share my heart with...And I'm MARRIED now!! I just can't believe it sometimes. In just a matter of about 2 years. Life is so amazingly strange sometimes. I love it :)

This past week without Riley has actually been harder on us than we thought.

 He had to fly back home to North Carolina for work, and we both agreed that I would stay here another week or so to spend a little extra time with family and friends before going back to North Carolina then moving to Italy in November...

I've been finding myself literally getting mad and/or irritable simply because I miss him. It's weird. And him all the way over there, missing his little family has been rough. I'm ready to be home with him :) 

But - not before my THIRD cross country road trip!! I've been planning for weeks exactly how I would get back, by how I mean which route I would take, trying to decide which places/people were most important for me to see one last time before moving out of the country for at least 3 years. I just wanna see EVERYTHING, but, that takes time, time that I could be spending with my new husband. So, I've decided to only spend about a week and a half out on the road so I have to plan carefully. 

I have a pretty sure idea of which route I wanna take so we'll see how it all rolls out once I get out there!

I have been spending some amazing time with my really good friend Nicole...I have missed her so much, and her two little girls have sort of given me a little baby fever, so thanks for that, lol. And some church family, my family, my parents...Driving around the Rogue Valley...I am very much so going to miss it here in Oregon but it is time for me to go and live the life that has been strategically prepared for me. It's very...I wanna say bittersweet, but that doesn't really describe it very well...maybe ambivalent? I don't know, It'd hard, really hard for me to leave but I'm excited to, if that makes any sense. 

What I can say, is that I am going to make sure and utilize every single resource out there to keep my friendships cultivated here in Oregon. Whether it be Skype, postcards, Facebook, Email...anything, even smoke signals ;) I am going to miss everyone so much. 

Sometimes I wonder, where is my home? Is it Oregon, because I was born and raised here? Or would it be North Carolina now because I live there? Well, I've come to realize that, as much as I LOVE Oregon and all it's beauty, home is where I'm with people I love. With my husband, my parents, Navi'...for example. And come November, Italy will be our home, for a time. Then after that? Who knows, but I know who I hold in my heart and that they will always be there. And if we can't be together in person to celebrate something or to just spend time together well, we'll be together in spirit, and maybe even over Skype ;) 

 The car is packed (thanks to years of Tetris), the kitty is ready and I've said my goodbye-for-nows...Next step, bright blue sky, my camera, some music and the beginning of seeing more of our beautiful country!