New Beginnings

Hey you guys! I have some exciting news! 

So you may or may not know that my husband is in the army. He hasn’t been in the service for so long only about 9 months. He joined September 2018 and shipped out to basic training. I talk more about that here. He graduated in December, and was able to come home for 10 days during the holidays. However, Julian was offered an airborne contract prior to graduating and he took it. That meant he had to go back for another training. So, he went back to Georgia January 2nd and graduated airborne training by February 1st. I was able to go down to Georgia and see him for 1 1/2 days. That was the first time I was away from the girls for more than a day, but everything worked out and then I went back home. 

The Big News!

Usually after graduating the soldiers go to their first duty station and their families join them soon after. However my husbands first duty station was different. It was much further, it was exciting, a little scary, but mostly dreamy, and did I mention EXCITING!!! My husband was going to be stationed overseas! In a little boot shaped country named Italy!!! Yes he has a contract to live in Italy for 3 years. You know what that means? That I am going to live in Italy for 3 years!!! With our girls (and dog) of course!

How do I feel? 

I mostly just feel grateful. This is a dream come true opportunity. It’s mostly a dream I never really dreamed of. Or maybe I did subconsciously. It’s just shocking. I never imagined life in that beautiful country for that amount of time! My heart feels so full. We have the opportunity to travel Europe at a great price. We can learn a new culture, language, food, people. It’s amazing. So freaking amazing! 

I homeschool our daughters so I remember in the past thinking how amazing it would be to world school. World school is homeschooling while traveling and teaching your children history, art, literature, etc in other countries and parts of the world. I get to do that now. Dreams do come true.

Moving Forward 

I've known that we were going to be living in Italy for the past 6 months. However, the process has been slow. Like I mentioned above if my husband would've been stationed somewhere in the U.S. then we would've been together a long time ago. Being stationed over seas requires so much more making the process a lot longer. BUT! We are almost there. We now have plane tickets for mid June. My family will be reunited again very soon!

Jane and Juliet are so excited to see their Dad again and they're so excited about the new home we will be living in, which is such a cute spacious home off base! With a cute little backyard for our dog to run around. My husband says theres a river close by and our neighbors down the street own horses. I've also heard there are beautiful sunflower fields in the area.

Bitter Sweet

I am obviously very excited but I am also sad that this will be the first time in my life that I will live away from family and friends. Julians family and my family are in Los Angeles where we were both born and raised. So we've always been so close to them. I'm looking forward to reuniting with my husband after living apart for 9 months!! But I also have a heavy heart knowing I will be living apart from my family who I've always lived around. It's so many mixed emotions. I want to cry imagining the reality of it, and it's coming so soon.

On the positive side our family and friends are excited to come visit us in Italy and explore the country at the same time. And...... that's the only positive I can think of (related to living apart from family long term)*crying*.

I am still extremely thankful for the opportunities and I know my loved ones are extremely happy for us. I will continue using this blog to inform you guys of stuff I think is cool and important, but I also would like to keep my loved ones in the loop and update them and you all with snippets of my life.

If you care to know more about our new beginnings leave a comment below! Have you every made a big move? Have you dealt with moving far away from close family and friends? I'd love to read about it in the comments section.

Thanks so much for reading,

Melissa