So, I’ve kind of grown accustomed to being a college student’s wife. There are some serious perks, man. For starters, you get to be super poor. You get to live in a college town with approximately 10 billion other students, all of whom double as pedestrians and seem to have collaborated about looking at their feet, phones, or fiddly digits as they cross the road instead of at oncoming traffic. You get to anticipate date-nights that get postponed because of physics tests running longer than they were supposed to or unexpected homework assignments.
But on the real, the first four and a half years of our marriage were pretty bomb. I mean, when else are we going to have two-week long Christmas breaks and seven glorious weeks off in the summer? When else are we going to be in a mile radius of countless friends who are in our exact same situation and phase of life? Obviously, there are things about it that I really will miss. But in April I was ever so glad to see graduation day because it was oh. SO. time to move on.
And for the past four months we’ve been wingin’ life pretty hard. We were living with in-laws, I found work through a temp agency while Michael applied to 3-5 places a day…and it didn’t take long for a depression of sorts to settle it’s way into my family. It was a hard transition, going from running my own home to living with Michael’s parents. I missed spending that one on one time with my man after Ellie was in bed—cooking dinner and freely roaming around my house in my underwear. I’m super grateful that we didn’t have to be homeless for 3.5 months and the countless things they did for us, but really–there is nothing like your own, private space.
But finally, Michael got interviews at a couple of places around the same time. This led to two glorious job offers with vastly different pay scales, so we chose the one that offered more…in Texas! By family! We had about a week to get all of our boxed up crud from there to here. I flew Ellie out to DFW and searched for a place to live while Michael stayed in Denver and loaded up the U-haul, then I ditched Ellie with my folks, flew back to Denver and drove to Texas with Michael.
I found the perfect house (to rent), but it isn’t move-in ready until September 1st. It’s so Texasy and has a big ol’ front yard and backyard and is only 3 minutes from my brother Adam and his wife, Nat’s and only 18 minutes from Michael’s work! So for now we are crashing with my parents in their new fancy house that makes it about a 45 minute commute for Michael. He doesn’t love the drive, but he has a job you guys!
And it’s a good thing he does, because we need a couch (check) and a fridge (check) and a washer/dryer and all those other fun furniturey things that come with moving into a house. It will be weird writing a rent check for the first time in over THREE years. (I got paid in free rent when we managed an apartment complex in Rexburg) Plus, we are having another baby! And while I was hoping it would be a girl (yay!) so that I didn’t have to start from square one with clothes (and I mean, what would I do with all the bows?!), it’s gonna cost some dollars to bring another child into this world. But hey, I’m not complaining. I’d pay every dollar I have for that.
It’s kind of a weird feeling. Our whole marriage we’ve been kind of waiting to get into the next phase, the post-college, real career, multiple kids, phase. Now that it’s actually here I don’t even know what to do with myself. So I’ll probably get on my 5-mile app and look for a used washer/dryer combo. But not before I post a few pictures of a few of our Texas adventures so far, loving on Bower and hanging out with cousins.
I think we’re going to have a swell time here.