9 more days baby, 9 days!!

Yahoo, 9 short days left in Salt Lake City. The walls are washed, the holes in the walls are filled. Boxes and packing materials are littering our living room. The moving truck is booked and the carpet cleaning appointment has been made.

We pick up the moving truck next Tuesday, then we will be driving to Missoula on Friday. We will be unloading Friday evening and Saturday. I am going to drive Dylan to Spokane on Sunday so he can fly back to SLC to finish up school. He will be done with the class room part of school and will be coming back to Missoula the first week of August. He has one more year of clinical work then he will be done! After that, job hunting. We hope we can stay in Western Montana somewhere. I would love to stay in the same place for a longer period of time!

As excited as I am to be moving back I can't help but feel a little weird. We have only been gone 15 short months, but I can't help but ask, will Missoula be the same to us?

I have no doubt it will still feel like home. We are so excited to be near our families and friends again. We have three new babies to meet and spoil, Jack, Ella and Christian. I am looking forward to being closer to Spokane. Little Liam is due in November and I know we will want to make many trips to see Jackie and her boys.

My little siblings are not so little anymore. Both Jack and Jessica are at Meadow Hill now and Jaci has one more year at Chief Charlo. I am glad to be closer to them once again. Spencer will be off to college soon (possibly to Australia, lucky bloke!). Kendall's wedding is fast approaching. I am excited to be able to be involved in the planning. And Jake will be starting his last year in high school. How is that possible?

Sara left Missoula almost 8 years ago. She says it is weird to come home. She feels like she doesn't fit in anymore. I can understand that. Even visiting home over that past few months I get a sense of that. Being away from something for even a short time, it feels different at first. I know it will feel like normal soon enough, and it will be like we never left.

I have seen Sara more the past few months than I have in years. It will be hard to beat $78 round trip plane tickets to Colorado to see her. Ellie is 8 months old already. She is crawling and starting to walk between the furniture. It will be hard to only see them a few times a year, instead of once a month.

I am anxious to finish my class to become a Medical Transcriptionist. When I first began I set up a schedule to be finished with the class by the end of August, with the hope of being hired sometime in September. Well, life got in the way of that and I probably won't finish the class until September or October. Hopefully, our money will last long enough for me to finish so I don't have to get a part time job outside the house somewhere. The thought of having to re-enter the world of working....uuggghhh, makes me shutter! I am enjoying the class. I feel challenged (which isn't hard!!) and I love knowing the medical language a little bit now. It makes talking to Dylan more interesting and it makes the conversation a little more two sided, instead of me shaking my head in complete confusion!!

"9 more days, baby, 9 days!!"