The Evergreen State

The Beach's are moving.
Again.
This will be the 4th state we've moved to now. One of these days we're going to settle down, I promise. Josh's job is very specific and sort of requires a lot of moving around until you have enough experience where you can have good location + good pay all at the same time. Until then it's really one or the other.

As someone who hates change and wants to live in the exact same place with the same stuff and the same people and eat the same food every day for the rest of my life, these last few years have been interesting for me. My mom even said that when I was little I'd get super upset when she would buy me new sheets because I just wanted everything to stay the same. And I pretty much still do.

But apparently we don't write down exactly what paths we want our lives to take and mail it into heaven. In fact in each of the places my life has taken me thus far, I can now look back and see where the Lord's hand has guided our family to where we needed to be. We can't see the reasons and the path ahead while we're in the moment for a specific purpose, so we can have the opportunity to practice and build our faith. So far the Lord's plan for my life has been far greater than my own so I put my trust in Him once more and hope there is a reason and a purpose for us to go to Aberdeen, Washington.

This was a TOUGH decision. Literally the toughest life decision I've made so far. For some reason now that I have Cooper, every decision whether it's where to live or what to cook for dinner seems a hundred times more important and terrifying to get wrong. I love Utah, I love living around my family, I love the mountains, I love Cafe Rio. We want to end up settling here when the time is right and we can make it work but unfortunately that time is not right now. And once again, I guess we can't fill out a request form and check off exactly how we want our lives to play out. Sometimes being an adult is pretty much the worst.

We took the weekend to make our decision and fortunately it happened to be conference weekend. Cooper made focusing on conference a little more challenging than it usually is :) but I did manage to hear a little nugget in the Saturday afternoon session that said something like... we focus so much sometimes on where we're going to raise our families but it doesn't matter what neighborhood we raise our kids in, it matters how we raise them within the walls of our own home. That comforted my worried heart about this tough decision, and I am confident those words were spoken directly for me.

Anyway, sorry this post is so emotional, I am kind of a hot mess right now. I don't know too terribly much about Aberdeen yet but here are a few nice things (more to calm myself down a little than anything else but oh well, humor me...)

• Joshua served his mission in Aberdeen
• Aberdeen is Kurt Cobain's home town. Woot woot.
• Ever since I watched 10 Things I Hate About You I have been determined to live in Tacoma- this will be pretty close. Technically I wanted to live in a lighthouse in Tacoma, but I've since come to realize that it would be really hard to arrange furniture in a circular house. 
• With the increased pay, the lower cost of living, and NO state income tax, we should actually be able to pay off our student loans. Something I never thought I'd say. Love you student loans.
• As someone who avidly hates sunshine, Cooper will probably seriously enjoy the pacific northwest.
• We may end up living in a town called Ocean Shores which is smack on the coast and Cooper and I could go for walks on the beach and pick up seashells and look for crabs.
• I fully intend to hike Mt. Rainier (Josh just laughs at me but just you wait, I will do it!)
• I think coastal Washington is beautiful. I love mountains and pine trees and especially fog. I hope there is a lot of fog. It makes me feel like there is a man with a chainsaw ready to jump out and murder me. Why is that exciting? I don't know, I guess it just makes me feel... mysterious?
• I see some fun weekend trips ahead of us, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver... We're also by Forks I suppose but I really hated Twilight so that's not super thrilling for me. We could go to Forks and laugh at all the Twilight tourists... That might be fun.
• This one is solely Josh's addition- "It doesn't snow so they don't salt the roads so people drive their classic cars around! Which is fun for me..." Happy for you babe...

That's about all I can dream up right now. Mostly I'm just nervous and stressed out and worried and anxious and want to cry and eat a pound of chocolate... So if anyone has any special sky mile acquisition tips like special credit cards or however else one acquires these mysterious flight miles (I have no idea) feel free to let me know. I have a feeling I'm going to be visiting a lot.