The Journey Begins

Well, we did it. Made the biggest, life-altering, most harrowing decision of our lives.

Picking a blog name.

Ha, just kidding, we packed up our life, left my job, sold our house, put half of our stuff on a ship and half in a storage unit…and moved to a brand new country with our kids. BUT ALSO, picked a blog name.

Tosa, because, that’s where our heart and home landed after we moved from Iowa as newlyweds 13 years ago. In that time, we made the most wonderful friends who became family, in the best and hardest of times.

Tarporley, because that’s the area we live in the U.K. Tarporley is a larger village nearby, but we’re more out in the country, near some smaller villages. So it’s just close enough to match our post code, but to avoid stalkers, as my friend Sarah recommended.

The past few months in Wisconsin were crazy. It was a chaotic whirlwind of wanting to do all of the fun things with our friends and family, but also trying to prepare for this move. We made a checklist with the boys and did pretty good at accomplishing it – nights at the pool and Landing, the Wisconsin State Fair, concerts, Fourth of July parade and fireworks, baseball games (Brewers and Bennett’s), kayaking, catching fireflies on late summer evenings and S’mores by the fire pit, one final Packers game and several farewell parties spanning two states. 🙂 And soaking up the laughter and love by everyone we hold dear in our community.

But there was also the stress and nervousness of our move looming over us. (Could have just been me?!) Leaving friends and coworkers at a career I built over the past 12 years. Getting our house ready to go on the market and then sold. Setting up new accounts and cancelling old ones, getting fingerprinted and loads of paperwork ready for our Visas, and packing up our things to ship on Aug. 2, only to find out that they haven’t left Wisconsin nearly a month later, which is neat. And sadness at each goodbye.

If you know us, then you also know that a big part of our story is losing our son, Grant Timothy, at birth on September 27, 2017. Trying to process this massive change in our lives while very much still grieving for him has been mental overload at some points. We miss him so incredibly much, and would give anything and everything to have him here, playing with his big brothers and snuggling with mommy and daddy.

But we also believe that we owe it to him to go for big things in our lives, because we don’t move to a different country to forget him or start new – we carry him with us in each new step we take here, with love and hope.

Thank you to our family and friends for a wonderful Wisconsin summer. Those memories are forever etched into our minds, hearts, and souls. They will carry us through the hard times and the lonely times, and remind us that there are a lot of good memories to come.