Tomorrow- Emotions are High

Tomorrow is the day. We’ve spent the last few nights in a local hotel and then on Tuesday we start the journey to Aotearoa. There are so many emotions. Excited to be there and see family and start this little chapter of our lives. Sad to move away from my family and friends. I’m grateful for all the technology that allows for our chats, videos, and messaging. I mean, we didn’t have that as kids. Cheryl, my friend from middle school, and I wrote letters for years decorated with gel pens and stickers, after I moved away in 8th grade. We graduated to email eventually and at the same time, those notes became less frequent. Our lives got busier. We started college, our careers, families, and somewhere along the way, we did less. We aren’t less friends, it’s just different. At least on my end. Now we email on birthdays and send cards around the holidays but I’m confident if we got the chance to hang out in person again we’d pick up where we left off. Now, my local friends and I have planned out a few virtual drink meetings while we are in quarantine. We have online gaming sessions planned for the kids and their friends. I set up an Amazon Echo for my parents and we tested it out. So far so good.

I know they’re going to miss the kids tremendously. They are silly and fun and just great kids. I think they bring extra joy and not having it in-person is tough. They’ve gotten really close to the kids and no amount of FaceTime is going to be enough. But there will be visits, as often as we can.

My emotions are everywhere. I am genuinely excited about the whole move, on so many levels for so many reasons. I’m also grateful that my parents have never been the type to ask me not to move. I moved to Australia for a year after college. Fine. Hubs and I moved to Atlanta for 6 years shortly after we were married. Fine. There’s a whole list of things I’m sure they questioned but it was always, ‘ok, let us know how we can help.’ Even though I know they’d like us to stay, not once have they said, ‘please don’t.’

I’m going to miss them so much.

I’m tweeting about this semi-regularly, at least more than I’m blogging. You can follow along on Twitter at #BromleystoNZ