goodbye!

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." -A.A. Milne

Because Ben and I had no idea when our visas would be approved, we've been saying our "goodbyes" for over two months. But now it's the real deal - we're finally off to start our new life together in Melbourne! It's been a crazy journey to get here, and we haven't even landed in Australia yet.

This week was our final week in the States, and we spent it saying bittersweet farewells to many people. Ben and I were able to spend the previous weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan visiting my family. This week we were able to schedule a few final get-togethers with friends and coworkers, including a fantastic going-away party hosted by our good friends Tara and Nathanael. We had a wonderful dinner with Ben's family last night, and today they took us to the airport. Many tears were shed, but it was a beautiful send-off, and we will always treasure the memory.

We're excited to move, but we'll be missing out on some good stuff. Family time, of course - birthdays, celebrations, long weekends in the midwest, watching the children in our families grow up. We've made some really solid couple-friends and friend-groups in Seattle, and those can be pretty hard to come by. We'll even miss the places in the city that we've become familiar with - little traditions and fun events, places we love to frequent for a long run or some good fro-yo.

Saying goodbye has been very hard for both of us, but it's helped us realize just how blessed we've been, in every aspect of our lives. For everyone who is reading and following us on this journey, thank you - for your thoughts, prayers, encouragement and support... and even for your concern about all the poisonous critters we might be meeting down under. 

The next entry will be from... the southern hemisphere!

CK

it's about time!

After two months of limbo, and relying on the pure kindness and love of family and friends, we are so thrilled to announce our exciting news:

We're moving to Melbourne, Australia!

A few weeks before our wedding, Ben was given the amazing opportunity to transfer within his Australia-based company, continuing his work as an environmental geologist. He accepted, we got married, and for the past couple of months we've been patiently (mostly) waiting for our work visas to go through. We got the official email on Monday, booked our flights yesterday, and we're heading out in ten days!

Kind of like the first year of college, moving internationally is making us realize just how uninformed we are about the world. The things we've grown accustomed to in the USA are things that might not exist in AUS. We've had to do some research on things like credits cards and bank accounts (they actually DON'T have a Bank of America in Australia!), and if Ben's wiiU will be able to function in the great Down Under (apparently, it can..? yay..?). We have discovered that Netflix is not available, and are hoping that their libraries (do they even have those? haha) are stocked with DVDs of Smallville, because we're only at Season 7 and we really must know if the simple farmboy Clark Kent grows up to become Superman (please, no spoilers!). I've begun to wonder about terribly vain matters, like if there will be familiar makeup and soapy lathering products in Melbourne, or if I should stock up on my Neutrogena and Body Shop favorites... or if I should just use Australian beautifying elixirs because they're probably healthier for me anyway. Will we still be able to cook Kraft Spider-Man Mac and Cheese? Blow part of our retirement fund on Starbucks caramel "macchiatos?" And most importantly, do they have Dunkaroos in Australia?

All that aside, preparing for this move has been quite the experience. I've personally relocated within the continental U.S. several times, but doing so internationally is a first for both of us. Ben's work contract is a minimum of two years, so we'll be living down under until at least the 2015 holiday season. We are truly excited for the opportunity to establish ourselves as a married couple, away from any home we've known. It's hard to say goodbye to our wonderful families and awesome friends, but the world is a small place - and we'll definitely be keeping in touch with every technological device and app we can utilize. 

CK

holidays.

Still in limbo, still living out of suitcases. Now commuting to Seattle from Bothell. But the long bus ride is alright - as long as we can catch the double decker commuter bus (bonus points if we snag the front row of the top level! we behave like children when this happens). As our time in Washington keeps getting extended, we're faced with the possibility of still being around for...

THE HOLIDAYS.

It can be pretty tough to decide which family to spend holidays with. Many people can probably relate on some level. 24 hours and three meals is not enough to divide a holiday equally and/or in a way that satisfies everyone, and feelings can get hurt. Things get complicated when people have babies, become terminally ill, visit from faraway lands... or when they get married, and the number of households can multiply. We understand that it's a tremendous blessing to have so many different loving families to divide special occasions with, but it still can be a stressful time. For the past five years, I've had to spend the holidays away from my own family due to the joys of working at a tourist trap open year-round. This has eliminated us from having to choose between visiting Ben's families and mine - however, it's been such a bummer because it would be really nice to have Christmas morning with my mom, dad and brother again someday.

Part of the struggle of deciding where to spend holidays is because Ben and I would theoretically love to spend every holiday with every family of ours. If possible, we would temporarily clone ourselves in order to make this happen. But this is unfeasible. And it seems highly dangerous, because cloning usually leads to zombie warfare. So, we're faced with the dilemma of attempting to balance our own wants and needs, with the wants and needs of our various loved ones. 

Unless we move soon, in which case the only balancing we'll need to do will be at yoga class.

As I've addressed in our previous post, Ben and I are now a family together, and part of why we decided to move during our first year of marriage is because we would like to establish this. We want to begin making our own family holiday traditions, choosing which ones to celebrate and which ones to perhaps retire. For example, I have never been a huge fan of American Thanksgiving, for many reasons (too close to Christmas! travel is horrendous! I don't like turkey! and also the events of which the celebration is inspired by). So, we're thinking we won't make Thanksgiving a big deal in our new family. We've also discussed starting some new family traditions for Chinese holidays, such as the Lunar New Year and the Autumn Moon Festival. After all, our biological children will ethnically be half-Chinese, and it would be fun to raise them with a sense of "cultural awareness," before they become surly teenagers who want nothing to do with anything awesome.

Anyway. Maybe we'll be gone by the time the winter holidays roll around. 

Part of me hopes we will, so we can spend our first married holiday season starting our own traditions, and so we don't have to make tough choices regarding time spent with family.

Because really... it was stressful enough having to decide who we got to spend Halloween with.

CK

family.

"You'll see when you move out. It just sort of happens one day... and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't even exist... maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself... for your kids, for the family you start. It's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." 

-Andrew Largeman, "Garden State"

Family is an incredibly complicated thing, even in the most basic sense: the definition. Who is family, and what exactly makes them family? Blood, marriage, friendship, love - sometimes one, sometimes all of these things. To some, family is a basic nuclear unit, visiting extended relatives during special occasions. Some have more diverse family structures due to divorce, remarriage, differences in biological origins, etc. And some people aren't even technically related - but they're family just the same. We recently had a discussion with someone whose extended family includes descendants of her grandmother's best childhood friend. No blood relation, but they celebrate the main holidays together and call each other "cousins." Family can be a lot of wonderful things.

Very soon after our engagement, Ben and I realized that many people in our families had different and sometimes conflicting ideas of what "family" meant. Planning a wedding seemed to open up a large can of worms, resulting in many hard conversations about topics that had never been fully discussed before. And although the situations were - and still can be - rather frustrating to deal with, it was also fascinating to observe and examine the ways in which different people define, and act as, family. Personal experiences and expectations play a big part in these differences. And because our families come from a variety of cultures, races, religions and backgrounds, things will always be complicated. And that's okay. Our families are beautiful.

But in all reality, a wedding isn't just the joining of two (or more) families - it's the celebrated separation of two people that have chosen to create their own family. For Ben and I, our families are still family, but now things are different. We still belong to our respective families. We are also a part of each others' families. 

And now we're a completely new family altogether. 

CK

limbo.

iktsuarpok: "an Inuit word that describes the feeling of anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if anyone is coming."

So, it's been just over a month since our wedding day. A very short and very long month. Short because it feels like the big celebration was just a few days ago, and we'd spent over a year anticipating it (I hesitate to say "planned," because in all reality my mother did most of the planning - and by most, I mean all). And long because, well, we're in a limbo period of our lives at the moment. 

About a month prior to the wedding, Ben received a wonderful job opportunity, which would require us to relocate to a Very Awesome Place. It was divine and wonderful timing. We weren't entirely sure when we would be moving - we were told anywhere from a week to a month or more - but we had to be prepared to leave as soon as all the paperwork went through. We weren't going to be around long enough to sign a lease on an apartment, so we had to get rid of a lot of stuff, move some stuff into storage, and figure out a place to temporarily put the rest of our belongings while we were off getting hitched. 

The few weeks leading up to the wedding were pretty chaotic. 

The week of the wedding was pretty chaotic.

And now it is not chaotic at all.

We're still here in the Emerald City, waiting on some paperwork to go through before things get rolling again. It's kind of frustrating, because we're very ready to move. The weather has shifted from warm/beautiful/sunny, to windy/rainy/horrible just within the month of September, and it'll only go downhill from here. We've told our family, close friends and coworkers about the intended move, and it's no fun to keep explaining that we have no idea when we're leaving, but we are, soon... ish. And most of all, we've been waiting a long time to finally make our home together. 

On the bright side, we've been staying with the most wonderful and gracious friends, who have continued to open up their home to us despite our presence greatly exceeding our planned relocation timeline. We've been able to make the rounds and say goodbye to family and friends, and visit with people who were unable to attend our wedding. We still have our jobs in the city, so we've been able to continue earning paychecks and enjoying the city views from our high-rise offices. And my gym membership is still valid until mid-October, so I've been able to keep up my hard-earned elliptical skills.

It's not a terrible place to be, here in limbo. It's given us some time to catch our breath and relax before our crazy moving adventure. It's a much better place than, say, middle school. 

And at the very least, we have each other.

CK