This post is definitely late but I guess it’s better late than never, so here it goes: I’m sorry in advance for this long post. My husband has told me that brevity in story telling is not one of my greatest skills. But as we embark on a new year with a new chapter for our business I wanted to share a little bit about myself and the changes happening with this third of the “Musers.”

In July of 2013 we moved to Boise, Idaho for what we knew would be the final two years of Kevin’s schooling. To say I was less than thrilled to move to Boise would be accurate. I mean, I would have to tell people that I lived in Idaho. However, it would be way cheaper than Seattle, and that was thrilling. We jumped into our next adventure and much to my surprise, we both fell in love with the area. As Kevin applied for Residency programs we decided to look into having him do his intern year in Boise. We loved the area, our rent was ridiculously cheap, and we wouldn’t have to move just yet. When we ended up getting a spot at the Internal Medicine Residency at the Boise VA I was thrilled. Then, I was almost immediately disappointed. Every time we had a huge life change up to this point we had moved. Somehow I just felt let down that this huge, exciting thing had happened and it felt like nothing changed. I quickly got over my disappointment when I realized that because we weren’t moving we would be able to take the time between the end of Medical School and the start of Residency and explore Europe for two weeks. After a glorious two weeks in Norway, Austria and Poland we came back to Boise and Kevin started his Intern year. It was a difficult year with a huge learning curve for Kevin and it meant that I went weeks were it seemed I hardly saw him but we both survived.

Kevin’s last day of work as an Intern was June 17^th, 2016. And the change that I was missing the year before came crashing down on us like a 20-foot wave. Since we knew that we would be in one place for at least three years and rent prices were higher than a mortgage payment, we decided to buy a house. It was not a decision we made lightly, and we changed our minds about 200 times before we actually signed the papers. Man, if that’s not a stressful experience I don’t know what is. From finding all the papers we needed in order to get the loan, making lists of places to view, finding time to get down to Utah to look at the houses on the list and then hounding our lender to make sure everything stayed on track, all I can say is it was nothing like they show on HGTV. 🙂 On top of that I needed to continue to come up with new patterns and sew quilts for the business, and I was in charge of packing up all of our belongings while trying to stay organized. I felt more than a little overwhelmed, to say the least. It was incredibly stressful and required me to balance about ten different spinning plates at once. If you know me at all, you know I’m not the most agile or athletically inclined individual. As you can imagine, I dropped more than one plate along the way.

The home buying process had plenty of bumps along the way and they continued all the way to the bitter end. I thought my head was going to explode. For months, things had not gone according to plan, and I was slowly and not very gracefully losing my mind. It seemed that every ten minutes something new was popping up, and although I would adjust my plan it was wearing me down. It got to the point that when we discovered we could get our keys the same day we signed the papers, instead of the following day, and the last vestiges of “the plan” flew out the window, my brain officially broke.

You would think that with a move a year from 2007-2013 change and I would be good friends. That is not the case. Kevin likes to say that I’m good at going with the flow as long as the flow is going exactly where I planned. If I’m being completely honest, that’s probably a pretty accurate description of me. Unfortunately, all the plans in the world, and all the resistance to the unexpected one person can muster won’t stop things from changing. As homeowners, we already had to deal with a leak in our house (and tearing up the ruined laminate), Kevin is starting a new job, I am helping to build our new website, and I’m sure there are at least 2 other things that I’m forgetting right now. Life as of late has been a non-stop roller coaster of changes.

Normally, I am a big fan of roller coasters. I love the feeling you get when you drop so fast that you float out of your seat a little bit and your stomach tries to escape your body. However, I’ve recently discovered that I have officially reached the age where I can’t spin around for more than a minute without getting completely dizzy. I still remember as a kid not being able to understand why my parents couldn’t spin me around without getting sick. I remember thinking they were soooo lame. I’m officially lame now. All the changes lately are feeling less like the fun excitement of a rollercoaster and more like the puke-inducing dizziness of spinning in circles.

One constant with all our many moves has always been the sense of excitement that comes with starting fresh. It took a little longer to kick in this time, but the excitement is finally starting to set in. We own this place, I can paint, I can change the flooring, I can put in new counter tops, and I can finally put all those Pins on Pinterest to good use. In fact the processes has already started. We already altered the master closet, tore up part of the floor thanks to a leak that flooded the laminate floor, and I’ve picked out some new paint colors. Unfortunately, this house didn’t come with a money tree in the backyard so all my grand plans will have to happen over time but maybe that’s for the best. It’ll give me a chance to really figure out what I want before I go making wild alterations.

Change isn’t easy but it opens new doors and allows you see the things you are grateful for. For me, it has never been more clear how lucky I am to have my husband, family and friends. I’m so glad I didn’t have to do all of this alone and that when I thought I was going to break, they were there to hold me together. I think the key to surviving change is to not get bogged down in the stressful and forbidding nature of the changes, but to find something to be excited about. As for me, I can’t wait to see what this latest move and the adventure of being a homeowner will bring! At the start of this new year with this new stage in our business and this new adventure in life I say bring on the changes, I’m ready to tackle them!