Hello old friends and happy new year! I hope that the past 10 months have treated you well! As I briefly mentioned in my previous posts, January of last year brought about a lot of changes in our household, as we relocated from Los Angeles, CA, to Lincoln, NE. A lot of you have asked what lead to this change, so I thought I would finally post an update recapping our crazy year.
First, why did we leave LA? It was something we toyed with for a while, but the timing or feeling never felt right. We sort of just daydreamed about leaving the city behind, buying a house, and enjoying a freer life with a lower cost of living. Then in November of last year, we found out we had 60 days to relocate out of our Pasadena rental. I don’t really want to get into the details all of that because it still makes my blood boil a bit (P.S. I totally wrote a draft of this post where I DID get into it and then deleted every word. It felt good to get it out!), but basically there was a major safety hazard in our apartment that we wanted fixed for Junie’s sake. The landlords had wanted to make some large improvements anyway, so they decided to roll everything together and started on the other stuff first. After three months, our initial request had still not been dealt with, so I followed up, trying to understand the plan and timeline. I mentioned being frustrated that the safety concern had not been addressed yet, and five minutes later we had an email giving us 60 days to leave.
I felt really guilty for a long time that me using the word “frustrated” in a text message was the cause of us having to leave. But the reality is that they wanted to finish all of their projects with no tenants and then charge more rent for another tenant once they were done. They could have cared less about throwing a family out of their home at Christmas time, so blaming me for my concerns over my child’s safety was the perfect excuse for them to get rid of us for their own benefit. As many people have sweetly reassured me since, if their plan was to get us out and charge more rent, it would have happened at some point if it didn’t happen that day so the situation was irrelevant. While I know they are right, I do still feel a twinge of guilt for all of that… followed of course by a rage of anger that I have been made to feel guilty for pushing for the safety of my kid… followed by fierce wave of motherly protective instinct. Ugh, it’s a whirlwind.
At the end of the day, I take away two things. One: I will forever fight for the my child’s safety, even if someone else’s fragile ego sees it as inconvenient or annoying. Two: they did finish their projects while tenantless and then charge $600 more a month (!) for rent, so they rule and we drool.
ANYWAY, now that I am done venting about all of that, this left us with a huge decision to make. Rents had gone up steeply since we had rented our house three years prior (and we were already at our max), so we had to decide whether to downsize (we were already stuffed into only 820 square feet!) or relocate. We had to do a lot of soul-searching in a very short period of time, and it was awful. We loved Pasadena and all of our friends that had become our family in LA. But all of the sacrifices we would have to make to keep existing there seemed like SO much, especially when the prospect of a fresh start for all of us was also on the table. The timing was so strained that we didn’t have much time to get excited about the idea of a new life. Instead we decided to take a leap of faith and create our next chapter in Lincoln, NE. We spent a few weeks saying many sad goodbye-for-nows and frantically packing up what we wanted to drag across the country.
We left LA on January 7 and drove for four days, crammed into our tiny Prius C! It was a nice yet very emotional and tiring drive. We arrived in Lincoln the day before a huge snowstorm that really started the winter. So we cozied up at Walker’s parent’s house for the winter, trying to wrap our heads around this huge transition.
We had 3 people, 1 dog, 4.5 boxes of records, 13 bottles of wine, all of our clothing, and 2 house plants packed into this thing. Priorities.
Those first few months were a barrel of emotions. On one hand, we absolutely loved spending time with my in-laws and seeing them soaking up their granddaughter. They were the kindest, most wonderful hosts that made our stay there the best we could have hoped for! But on the other hand, we were still itching to find our own place and start putting down our roots so that we felt like we belonged a little bit more. The job market was proving to be more challenging than we expected, but then I had a chance meeting with my business partner and we ended up opening our own interior design firm, Platte Interiors. I have also been working hard at my e-design at Decorist and was just promoted from a classic designer to an elite designer this week!
Since we have arrived, we had been keeping our eyes on the housing market, looking for our future home. In May, we found it. Even though things hadn’t really fallen into place for us yet, we decided to go for it and closed on our first house on June 14, our five year wedding anniversary! We celebrated with a picnic on the floor of our brand new (to us! It’s actually 110 years old!) empty house! It was such a crazy milestone for such a special day!
The day we made the offer!
Yay! Move-in day!
We haven’t shared many photos of the house because it still feels so unfinished. Our 820 square feet worth of belongings don’t fill up much of a 2,400 square foot house, so much of the space is still sparse when it comes to furnishings. However, our Christmas decorations really made the place feel cozy on a new level, so we decided that in this new year, we want to love, enjoy, and share our house more, even if it isn’t picture perfect or fully-furnished (since it won’t be for a while haha!).
I actually feel this way about the blog and social media in general. I have taken a several month break from Instagram, as it was just starting to cause anxiety rather than inspiration. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” and in all of this upheaval in our lives, I lost sight of that a bit. It was feeling like a chore and an unachievable to-do list of things that are only on the dream list at this point. So my goals for the new year are to take a breath, give grace (to myself and others), and enjoy the now. I miss documenting our lives via this blog and social media, especially because now more than ever, so many of our loved ones are so far away. I plan to stop waiting for perfection before sharing… because our lives are SO not perfect right now, nor will they ever be. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still meaningful or worth remembering and celebrating. We have been so loved and supported by the amazing and generous people in our lives this year, so I want to feel more connected to every single one of them in the new year!
The transition to our lives here has not at all been what we expected, for both the good and the bad. It’s just… different. And we are still adjusting. And still struggling to figure it all out, to find stability in a time when we have had none for so long, to be grateful for all of the amazing things this wild year has given us, to embrace the days as they seem to be flying with this beautiful little toddler. She is growing, thriving, and happy as can be, the most adaptable of us all! :)
I guess the point of this long, meandering brain dump is that I plan to head into 2020 with an open heart and a positive, mindful outlook. I want to choose sunshine instead of anxiety, grace instead of stress, gratefulness instead of perfection, and positivity instead of worry. 2019 was full of change, so here’s hoping that 2020 is full of joy! For all of us! Happy new year and thanks for sticking with me this long if you are still reading!
In case anyone was wondering where the bunny ended up! June loves that it is peeking out from between the crib and canopy tent! Not an accident, mind you. Math for the win.
