Moving, and taking Livie with us

Recently, Kurt and I have decided to make a huge change. We are moving. In with his parents. No, it's not as bad as it sounds, haha. It's actually a very good thing for us, and believe it or not, I'm looking forward to it. There are quite a few reasons for this move, but the main one is this:

The poor man needs a break!

I think that anyone who knows Kurt will say that he's an extremely hard worker, and it'sone of my favorite things about him. You don't get to be a Sergeant in the Marine Corps without that. But, Kurt went back to work the day after Olivia's funeral (A saturday), and back to school on that Monday. His class schedule this quarter, quite frankly, sucks. Because of this, he has been going to work or school (or both) SEVEN days a week for two and a half months now. Living with the Millers means that we both get to work part time (I already do, but have been contemplating finding a new job and/or adding more hours). It also means that since he's working less hours, he can take more classes... which means finishing college sooner, which he's VERY excited about. The GI Bill only pays for a certain amount of school (I think its 32 or 36 months),  but it will pay for however many classes you can squeeze into that time. He's pretty excited about taking advantage of that! Right now he's taking just the bare minumum number of classes that it takes to be a full time student at his college.

This also allows us to save tons of money... some of which we are going to put towards a trip to San Diego. Hopefully, we'll be going in May as soon as we're both done with school for the year.


And before you ask, no.. we aren't moving into his old childhood bedroom or anything like that. We are moving into the basement. It's basically an apartment, minus the kitchen. It's already finished nicely with a bedroom, living room, dining and office areas and a bathroom, but over the next couple weeks we're getting new carpet, new tile in the bathroom, a new shower AND we're painting the whole thing. We will no longer have to drive twenty freaking minutes to the grocery store (I know for a lot of people that's not long, but both of us were pretty used to living less than 5 minutes from one), or to pretty much anything. We will also be basically right down the street from my parents. I'm hoping that this means I'll be able to spend a little bit more time over there with them. I really miss just hanging out at their house.

Saving all of this money and having a huge fenced in backyard MAY also mean.... a puppy is in our future! It won't happen anytime soon... but sooner than we had originally planned since we thought we'd be living in a "no dogs allowed" apartment complex for the next few years. Yay! Buddy needs a brother. Or I guess it would be more like a nephew. Whatever.

I will be honest with you though, when we first started talking about this idea about a week ago, I was pretty upset. I knew right away that I wouldn't mind living with his parents. I knew we'd have all the privacy we wanted, and I get along great with his family so that wouldn't be a problem. I just didn't want to leave our apartment... it's the first time I've really had my own home. I've lived away from my parents before, but that was in the dorms and in a house I rented with some girl friends. This apartment has finally started to feel like home and I just assumed we'd live here until we graduated and could afford a house or townhome.  I've pretty much come to terms with that though. I think finding out that I'd be able to pick out paint and *really* decorate helped with that. I thought it would be a long time before I'd live in a place with walls that I'd actually get to paint.

Then... there's Olivia's room. When we move, she won't have one. This is the place where our little family lived together. Obviously I knew that at some point her things would need to be completely boxed up and put into storage until we have our next sweet little one. I really thought we'd just leave her room untouched though, until we move to another place. The idea of putting all of her things away and turning the room into something completely different always sounded morbid to me, and I thought it would make me feel like we were putting her memory away and forgetting about her. As I've posted about before, we had the idea to turn her room into a "quiet" room, with a couch or something to relax on where we could just rest and be with her and her things. Kurt's parents even gave us a gift card to Nebraska Furniture Mart for Christmas to be able to buy the couch. But, it's not like she ever was in that room (other than when she was inside of me while I worked on it)... I'm kind of surprised that it upset me as much as it did.

But now, I'm okay with it. I had a long talk with my parents about it one night, and they helped me to feel better.  This is one thing they never had to do though. My parents lost a baby girl, Katie, a year or so before I was born. My mom was 37 weeks pregnant with her, so the nursery was completed just like Olivia's. However, they were able to try again shortly after that. They got "lucky" and had another girl, so they were able to use all of Katie's things without putting anything away. After talking with them though, I realized that leaving Olivia's room set up for the next few years might just cause more depression than is necessary. The empty crib would just be a constant reminder of the absence of a baby in our family. I would have just been prolonging the grief of putting her things away. I also realized that all of her things, the things she actually used or had at the hospital with her have a special pink box that will be kept in our living room ALWAYS. Nothing that was actually hers will ever have to be packed into storage. Everything else that we have would've had to have been packed away at some point anyway... and doing it sooner rather than later will help me through this grieving process.

Once I realized all of these things, I had an overall good feeling about moving. I know that it's what God wants for us right now, and that Olivia will be coming with us. She wants us to be happy, and she will be with us wherever we go... just like she already is, every day.