Why Have You Moved So Much?

I’ve been getting this question a lot lately, and I figured the easiest way to answer would be to write a post here on the blog.  The answer isn’t really a simple one.  Each of our moves has been for entirely different reasons.  Many of you have been around since the beginning of this blog, back when we lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and I started writing just to document the home improvement projects we were doing in our fifth house. Since then we’ve moved from the home that inspired the start of this blog, our fifth house, to our sixth house in Charleston, South Carolina.  And later this year when our seventh house is finished we’ll move again, though we’re staying in the Charleston area.

In almost 19 years of marriage we’ve moved 7 times and have called Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania and now South Carolina home.  I’m originally from Southern California, and my husband is from Lexington, Kentucky.  So, why have we moved so much?  

(Custom house portraits of all the houses we’ve called home over the years hang on the staircase wall.)

No, we’re not military.

We met in California and started dating just before my husband was scheduled to move back to Kentucky.  Neither of us had marriage on the brain when we met each other.  He moved back to his hometown, and I stayed in California.  We dated long distance, back before iPhones and FaceTime existed, in the stone ages when we had to use a dial-up modem to aol instant message each other.  After we got married I moved to Kentucky which seemed the most logical decision at the time.  I was fresh out of college, and he, being 7 years my senior, was already well into his career.

(our first house)

After a year and a half of newly married life in Kentucky, my husband was offered a promotion.

(our second house)

The only drawback was that it would require moving to Richmond, Virginia.  But we were young and childless, and I was already eons away from my home town, so moving to a new place didn’t feel too scary to me.  And Brad had already lived a few years in California and had experienced what it was like to live in a new place.  So we decided to look at this opportunity to move as a fun, new adventure, figuring we could always move again if we didn’t like the area.

(our third house)

But we fell in love with Richmond, Virginia!  We made a bunch of great new friends in our neighborhood there, and both of our kids were born in Virginia.  ‘Virginia is for lovers’ is the commonweatlh’s slogan, and considering we went from 2 to 4 while living there, I’d say that’s about right. 😉

While we absolutely loved Richmond, my husband’s love for his job, his company and his industry was fading.  He was ready to make a career switch, and I, with two kids under 2, was no longer working outside the home.  So when he landed what he considered to be his dream job, I felt compelled to be supportive even though taking this job would mean moving our family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

(our fourth house)

I’ll never forget that teary goodbye I shared with my neighbor who had become one of my very best friends.  That was the hardest move we’ve made because neither of us really wanted to move, but it was the sacrifice we chose to make in order for my husband to break into the industry he wanted to be in.  We moved with a 26 month old, a 10 week old and 2 dogs.  Just thinking back to that day gets me all emotional.

We made a deal when we moved to Pittsburgh ~ by the time our son was in Kindergarten we would be back in Lexington, Kentucky.  Living in a new-to-you area where you don’t have any family support is especially difficult when you have small children.  And we both agreed that our goal was to be moved and settled back in a place where we had family nearby by the time our son was school age.  Pittsburgh isn’t a bad place, it just didn’t suit us.  I wasn’t used to long, extremely cold winters and after having kids I longed to be in a more familiar place with friends and family.

After 3 and 1/2 years of living in Pittsburgh my husband was faced with a huge decision.  He was working his dream job, in his dream industry for his dream company, but that company had no openings in Kentucky.  But he still held up his end of our bargain.   He went to work for another company in order for us to move back to Kentucky in time for our son to start Kindergarten.  This was another tough move because while we were both so excited to be moving back to his hometown, he wasn’t totally thrilled about his new job situation.

(our fifth house)

Thankfully after about a year he found a job that he did love again, and not long after that is when I started this blog.  Our son completed elementary school while we were in Kentucky and our daughter completed grades K-3rd.  We loved living near family, and we both really like Lexington.  But it wasn’t our dream city.

From the very beginning of our marriage we’d talk about where we wanted to retire someday.  We actually honeymooned in Charleston because my husband’s parents had a place on Kiawah Island.  It was the very first time I had ever been to the area, and I fell head over heels in love.  We both agreed way back then that Charleston would be where we ended up someday.  It was a dream we tucked away in our hearts on our honeymoon ~ let’s retire in Charleston.

And then when our son was getting ready to finish elementary school, I had a bit of a health scare.  A mysterious enlarged lymph node started a battery of tests that would eventually lead to…..nothing serious, but no concrete answers.  And the experience made me ponder ~ what exactly are we waiting for?  The future is not promised.

At this point my husband’s job wasn’t really tied to a location.  He was working from home and traveling a good bit.  But it didn’t really matter where he lived.  And since I was also working from home, we decided to put our house on the market just to see what would happen.  We agreed that if it sold during the summer and we could move without interruption to the kids’ schooling we would move to Charleston.  And two weeks later, there was a sold sign in our yard.

So that’s how we landed in our dream city.

(our sixth house)

And we’re moving again later this year because we just happened to find a lot that we couldn’t pass up, and we’ve always wanted to do a custom build.  We hope deep down that this, our seventh house, will be our forever home.  But we’ve also learned to never say never.  What can we say, we’re adventurers like that!  😉

Some people look at our life and think we’re so unsettled, living like gypsies they say, but our life has been so full.  Our journey has definitely had its ups and downs.  In a way it has been its own kind of education, and it has also been an enriching experience for our marriage.  We’ve learned to navigate together and lean on each other through so many different, challenging seasons.  Moving around has brought us closer and made us stronger both as a couple and as individuals.  It’s scary, sure.  Change is hard, sure.  Uprooting.  Packing.  Moving.  Making new friends. Finding new doctors and someone who knows how to wax your eyebrows……these are all hard things.  😉 But fear is a four letter word that I don’t allow to have control over me.  And life was meant to be lived.  To steal a line from my favorite underrated Disney movie, Meet the Robinsons, “Keep moving forward”, that’s been my life’s motto since my teenage years and it’s never failed me yet.

So that’s our moving story in a nutshell…..you know, minus the twenty million boxes.