Goodbye and Hello

11 July 2020

Friday was a tough day. A lot of goodbyes were said. Aviana’s teachers and school, my work colleagues, my car, our medium sized house we rented for 3 months, our city-Chesapeake, VA, plus a whole lot of personal items that we ended up donating or throwing away. It was a busy day full of all sorts of emotions.

Meanwhile, Chris was completing his cross country five day road trip from Chesapeake, Virginia to Estes Park, Colorado. Thankfully Chris arrived safely, the tiny house all in one piece.

Aviana’s sitter, Vanessa, housed Aviana and I up for our last night in Virginia at her condo in Virginia Beach. This was not far from where we used to live when we first moved to the US 7.5 years ago. It was a bit surreal to be finishing up in the same place we started.

I shared a bed with Aviana who has been ridiculously excited for months about the tiny house adventure. Of course she woke up at 4AM!!! I also discovered she is also a crazy sleeper-flailing, kicking, sleep talking, duvet stealing (I’m sure Chris would tell you she gets it from me!!) so I was running on poor sleep anyway.

We arrived at the airport early morning and I found myself pondering how many times I had been to that airport in the past 7.5 years. I estimated around 200. It was strange to think that might be the last time I could see it, and it was even more surreal that everyone was masked up. Well, almost everyone, a large number of people were wearing their masks below their nose. *sigh*

Naturally as I had a short connection in Washington Dulles something was going to be screwed up with the first flight. It’s called the law of short connections that should never be sold to you. (We didn’t choose these flights as our direct flight to Denver was cancelled due to COVID-19).

The plane and crew were already there to go. But this time the gate door wouldn’t open. It was rather amusing to see the number of people it took to figure it out. Not so amusing as time ticked away delaying us. Just as they figured out a plan to get us on the plane without going through the gate, the gate door magically opened. So in the end we arrived 25 mins late, leaving just 15 mins for me to get from one end of one terminal to the end of a completely different terminal. I made it by the skin of my teeth carrying Aviana on my back with FOUR bags on my front. (Not planned, my checked bag was overweight!) I will not miss running across airports, that’s for sure! I think I have done my fair share for life.

The flight into Denver was mostly uneventful (apart from weirdness from COVID-19). I did fail majorly and forgot to charge up the tablet for Aviana, so I had to get creative on our 4hr flight!

And so after all of those goodbyes, it was finally hello! Hello to Chris who was waiting for us at Denver airport, hello to big the Rocky Mountains, hello to our tiny house….and….hello to our new adventure!!!!