Celebrating One Year: The Shortest and Longest 365 Days in the History of…Home

I went to bed last night knowing that I was waking up to the most wonderful of Facebook memories in the morning.

One year ago today we closed on our lovely little home in…Home. One year ago today the “See ya real soon!” sign at the exit to Magic Kingdom became true, instead of something that made my heart ache at the end of each vacation.

Living here is a peculiar animal at times. When people hear about our move, the first thing that they ask is often, “But won’t you get tired of it eventually?” My usual response is, “No. Are you tired of your local mall?” That’s not my being snarky. (Well maybe a little. But still….) It’s more just my trying to point out that if you move to any typical town in this country, people don’t wonder if you’ll eventually get tired of the local things-to-do. When we moved to Howard County, Maryland years ago, no one asked if we were eventually going to get tired of the local park or grocery store or mall. They just assumed we’d live normal lives and go to the mall when we wanted to. When you live 1.2 miles from Cinderella Castle, that’s also how you approach the Magic Kingdom.

But it’s the Magic Kingdom. Sooooooooo………it’s a little better. 😉

Life here is full of…LIFE. It’s tight community and playing outdoors (and inside in the A/C!!) and memory making. It’s living. Full, bright, as-busy-as-you-wanna-be living. These last 365 days have been both the longest and shortest of my life. They went by in a blink, but I also feel like we’ve always been here – surrounded by the things we love and the most wonderful community in the world. I filled out the kids’ school forms earlier this week and realized that I had no less than a half dozen people that were natural to include on the emergency contact list. People that would not bat an eyelash at stepping up if we ever needed them. For a family that left everything to up and move here from 1000 miles away one year ago, that means more than you can know.

The hardest thing about it is, of course, being geographically far from most of our family and old friends. But we’re also now lucky enough to have long visits from them where we can focus on them completely. My mom was just down for 10 full days and, while the kids cried when she left, they also said, “You know, we almost get to see Mimi more now that we live in Florida!”

And as for everyone else, I’m only half joking when I say that, if you ever want to see your friends and family more, move to Disney World. It’s a rare week that we don’t have people from somewhere in town.

So today we’re going to celebrate living a life without regrets – and be proud that we “jumped in the pool” without looking back when that life called.

And also just how much we’ve managed to make this place home since we walked into its bare space a single year ago.

 

Where is life calling you, today? And how will you answer?

Because you can.

You can always answer.