Goodbyes

We started saying our goodbyes. It started at the end of May when my parents drove down to take Emma with them to Colorado until Jess and I drive there at the end of this month. We had to witness Emma say farewell to her best friend from school, and then at a dinner get together she had to say goodbye to her second family. It was a difficult event for all of us, these people have all played an important role in Emma's life. She will never forget CT and Suz, and Uncle Jason and Aunt Kristi.

This week we had a little going away party for Jess and I to say goodbye to some of the people we have met since moving to Arizona two years ago. It actually meant more to me than I had originally thought that it would. I had led myself to believe that having not been here too long meant that I really had not made any real meaningful connections. I was wrong! The night was wonderful and I realized that I had indeed made some good friends from some great people.

The hardest goodbye of all happened day before yesterday. We had to say goodbye to our beloved Casper. He was, or rather is the GREATEST dog ever. We got him six years ago as a birthday gift for Emma and since the moment we picked him up he made all of our lives brighter. There have been gallons of tears shed this week, and they just keep coming. We will be on our way to Colorado in a little over a week, and we will redo the entire goodbye process at least two more times for all of our family and friends there.

Goodbyes are difficult especially with those who have impacted our lives so greatly. I will however take away great memories of those people (and dog) and look back on them whenever I need to brighten my day. If we live our lives afraid to say goodbye, then we will never grow to our full potential.

The home stretch

We are coming down the home stretch for our move to Sweden. All of the paperwork is completed and approved.This step was by far the most important to have completed. At times it had me questioning if it was simply not going to happen, however I  never gave up hope and frankly the harder it got the more I believed that moving to Sweden was the right thing to do. People always say that the harder things are, the more rewarding they are when you get them. I believe that is because you appreciate those things more that you work hardest for.

We have only a few belongings left to try and sell, and to be honest if we can't sell them it will not be the end of the world. Sure it would be nice have some extra money in the account to live off of but I am no longer going to lose sleep worrying about it. The biggest thing we have happening now is going through years of stuff to determine what goes in a box to be shipped, what goes in a suitcase to be taken as luggage, and what goes to the trash can. So far it seems that the majority of it needs to go in the trash.

While we are on the home stretch to actually get to Sweden, it is becoming abundantly clear to me that once we get there I will begin climbing another mountain that dwarfs the one I just conquered. I am studying my Swedish all the time between Rosetta Stone, multiple apps for my phone and ipad,  trying to read Aftonbladet (a Swedish newspaper) regularly, and a new game my wife and I play where we only text each other in Swedish. I am eagerly looking forward to enrolling in SFI (a language course offered for immigrants) because I feel the sooner I am fluent the sooner I will fully be able to embrace my new home. I think I might be on the same language level as a first grader, which will work out well because I will have my daughter to learn with. Hopefully she will share her school notes with me.

ACCEPTED!!!!

At 5:45 yesterday morning it finally came. The Email I have been anxiously awaiting for the last few months. Every morning for three months the first thing I do in the morning is check my Email, often times not even out of bed yet and more asleep than awake. This has been my morning ritual. We knew that we were going to receive something this morning, but were not sure exactly what it was going to be. Anyway, its early and I am trying to read through my Email list after a terrible night of failing to sleep, and there it was looking at me from the inbox. As I am opening the Email my lovely ( oh so patient first thing in the morning ) wife was asking me what it said.

"Hold on baby I am opening it right now." I said

"Well how long does it take?" She questioned.

As I begin reading I realize that this document is translated very poorly. I read it once, twice, three times and still do not understand it.

"What does it say? Did you get it?" She asks again a little irritated. 

"I don't know!" I respond.

"What do you mean you don't know?!? She snarls.

"I mean I don't know! I can't figure out what it is saying." I fire back.

"Here! You read it! Most of it is in Swedish anyway." I say defeated.

She grabs my phone and begins reading it. At this point I am still not awake, and feeling confused because as I re read it in my mind it still makes no sense. I hear a little squeal from my wife, and she says "you got it! You can go!"

The weight that lifted off of me at that moment was immense. I could see clearly now, it was like a heavy fog had been surrounding me for the last three months, and it was gone.

I woke up this morning and did not check my Email first thing.