Goodbye 1607 Beverly Bay!

As I sit here watching the movers load our stuff into a giant moving semi, I am actually dreading them finishing, because that means I have to do the final step of moving….the CLEANING! I am prolonging this awful task as long as possible. How ironic it is that one could live in a house for such a short period of time and yet still have so much to clean! Dust (and dog hair) just accumulates in the cracks behind furniture that isn’t noticed until the movers take away all our belongings.

So, as I sit here staring at the cleaning products about to be used, I am contemplating what all we are actually leaving behind (besides dog hair). This is Nick and my 4^th move since we have gotten married. With each move, I feel like I leave a little piece of me at each place we have lived. A part of me will always love and cherish Norman, Oklahoma, because that is where my husband and I went to college, met and fell in love. Pensacola was where we had our first house together, shared our first year of marriage, where Nick learned to fly and got his wings, and where I learned the life of a military wife. Even though we were ready to leave by the time we finally left Pensacola, it will always be a place of good memories for us because we met so many amazing friends there, friends who will be our friends for our entire lives. You don’t just join the Navy, you live it, and the people you meet through the Navy become your actual family. Thank God for that too, because in Japan, Nick and I will be a LONG way from our biological families and therefore will need the Navy family to lean on!

The lids to the sewer that are seen all througout Jacksonville

My time here in Jacksonville, albeit short, was just as memorable. As my good friend Heather put it, “Nick and I learned a lot in these 9 short, yet hectic months.” With work and school for both Nick and I, it seemed there wasn’t much time for our social lives. However, we still had time to grow close with several military families, those same friends will be missed when we leave here on Saturday.

Nick in his helo...doing his thing! You can't tell, but he's the one landing!

Yes, I am excited to move to Japan. Yes, I am completely ecstatic to go home to Texas and see friends and family. Yes, I cannot wait to fly to California and see friends from Pensacola on our way out of the country. However, none of those things make it any easier to leave behind such great people here in a place, that for a short time, Nick and I have called home!

But as they say in the military, “it’s never goodbye, just see you later!”

…Now for the yucky cleaning L