How it all started....

I suppose it really all started when I fell in love with a Scottish man... well, he was a kid at the time, and so was I, but the point is the same. Long story short: we fell in love, we did the long-distance thing for a while, he finally moved to America, we got married, we had two kids ("L" & "M" for the sake of our blog), and we lived our lives here in the States. Life was beginning to look really good and easy for us. Our kids weren't babies anymore (and we were pretty much all sleeping through the night again), I was finishing my certification course in school counseling, and we were just allowing life to unfold in the way life does.

Then the hubby (we will call him "C") said, "Let's move to Scotland!" and I said, "Heck yeah!" and now we are living out the process of moving a family of four to another country. (Quotations above have been paraphrased for the sake of creative expression and to save my poor readers from really reading that whole very lengthy conversation!)

Some may ask why we are doing this. There are several reasons.

1. It has always been in the cards for us. Before we got married, C wanted to be sure we could travel back to his homeland and live there at some point for some length of time. Way back when, I agreed to this and I stuck by this promise.

2. We will be much closer to his family. C's parents are thrilled that we will be living so close to them in their hometown. It will be a wonderful opportunity to be near them as our children grow.

3. C was offered and accepted a new job that necessitates close proximity to Europe. (And Scotland is Europe!)

4. Last but not least, I must mention the serendipity of this situation. As we discussed our options, everything fell into place in such a way, that it seemed all the laws of nature were showing us this is our path.

Why a blog? As I discussed the details of my daily life in organizing our move to Scotland, more than a few people suggested I document the process of packing, purging, moving, and of course, living life in a new country. I thought that sounded kind of cool -- I'm not new to blogging or writing, so I knew I could do it -- but I didn't know what I would say. Living in the details of planning a move to a new continent did not seem incredibly interesting as I dusted off old boxes and spent time digging out long-forgotten items in the cobwebbed crawl space of our basement. I also wondered when I would write. I am blessed to not have an out-of-the-house career right now since my full-time job has become organizing our home and family for this move abroad. It seemed any time I would spend writing would take away from the monumental to-do-list tasks that monopolize my waking moments. But then, something started to happen as time went on, and I began to have big revelations about things (as in "stuff" and belongings), people, life, and priorities. And all of a sudden, I felt truly compelled to write about this experience. Now there just seems to be so much to say!

As I write this first entry, we are less than 3 weeks from our moving day. Our flight is 19 days away, to be exact. Some of what I will document in future entries will be real-time details, while other posts will be reflections of things that we've already done. In either case, I write these stories to provide an account of this unique experience for our friends and family, and of course, for ourselves. Feel free to follow us on our journey.