The Journey Begins

The job contract is signed, the house is sold, and the plane tickets are bought.  This really is happening.  The Adams family is taking off and moving from St. Paul, Minnesota to Wainui Beach, New Zealand.  The most common question I get when I tell people that we are moving is "Why???"  The best short answer I can give is "because we can" or "for the pure adventure of it" and this is the truth.  We are not being forced to do this and we are not running away from anything.   In fact, one of the hardest parts of this move is that we are happy - we have/had good jobs, a cute little house, and a very comfortable life.  Maybe too comfortable.  We knew it was time, time to live out a dream.
That brings me to the long answer to "why are doing this?' (you can stop here if the short answer did it for you)  It really all started around the time Brett and I met on that cold ice skating rink back in February of 1998.  He had recently returned from some Euro-travel and was applying to Medical and PA schools.  I was a self proclaimed travel junkie and was in my first year of Physician Assistant school at Augsburg.  From the start, we talked about how one day we both wanted to travel and live in another country "someday".   We were young, of course it would happen. And then, life really started happening.  Brett ended up in medical school (because, of course, he wasn't accepted into any PA programs).  I graduated from PA school and started working.  Brett proposed. Then residency, a house, the kids, and the real job for Brett.  Phew!  We still managed to do some traveling, but once those little kiddos started showing up our life really changed.  We always continued to talk about our dream of moving away for awhile and experiencing a different culture.  We started to realize that if we were going to do something, this would be the perfect time in our lives.  Our house was getting too small, our kids were getting easier.  It was either time to buy a bigger house and have another baby, or start living out a different goal.   Not any easy decision, and I struggled with it for awhile....guess you know which way we decided to go.
Stay tuned to hear how this life changing decision worked out for us.  I can't wait to find out myself.   And, I look forward to sharing the stories of our adventures.  Should be quite the ride!