Goodbye...

In May of 2005, I was at Pendleton Elementary School for my final day of student teaching.  T was at my Clemson University apartment, packing up the last of my things.  About an hour after the elementary school bell rang to signal the end of the day, we were en route to my new apartment in Winston Salem, NC.

I had packed up everything I owned and followed a boy, followed my heart to a different state, a new town where I knew only the boy I was following.

Things worked out with that boy, obviously.  Three years after my move we got married and bought this house, making it our first home...

A white picket fence on Friendship Circle:

This was the house that we came home to first as a newly married couple after our honeymoon.  Having waited over six years to live together, we were finally husband and wife in our home.  It was in this house that I learned how to be a wife to my very best friend.  It was in this house that I found out we were going to be parents.  It was in this house that we brought home our daughter, our sweet Cameron Kate.  It was in this house that we experienced so many firsts - both good and bad.  This house brought us the happiest and the hardest times of our lives.  But the good has definitely outweighed the bad, and it is with heavy hearts that we drive away from our first home.  A home we'll look back on fondly, remembering the days when we were so young, so new at this thing called life.

To our friends and family we leave behind - thank you for all you've done to make this chapter of our lives so memorable.  We are forever grateful for all of you who have, in some way, shape, or form, made us who we are... giving us the tools we need to build a new life in a brand new, unfamiliar place.

As we drive away from our house on Friendship Circle - from our lives in Winston Salem - we are not sad that it is over... we are so glad that it all happened.  We take with us memories to fill up our hearts during the scary time of starting over.  As we drive away from what we know, we are driving toward the promise of something new - something different - toward an adventure I can't wait to discover, toward a gift I can't wait to open.

This is what life is all about.

So we're all loaded up, my tiny little family and me, and we're headed down a road that's a little bit scary and a little bit exciting... a road that I want with all my heart to be paved with a renewed sense of hope for all that's waiting in our future.

Goodbye, Winston Salem - Goodbye, Friendship Circle...