Goodbye, South Riding

4:55 am.

I'm never awake this early (at least not since Brian was an infant). In the ultimate irony, our last night in the place we've called home for the last 5 years and 29 days is unlike any other in recent memory.

Change. Lots of it. That's what our life has been consumed by for the past several months.

Resign job. Get new job. Sell house. Buy house. Rent house. Rent apartment. Move all worldly possessions. Leave friends. Move "back home".

I guess it's all finally caught up to me. I had been moving through these changes with an engineer's approach. They're really just tasks after all. Projects if you will.

Resign job. There's a checklist for that. Not that I haven't had a rush of career memories over the past several months. I have, and that's been great. But when it comes down to it, the "project" boils down to doing each step on the list and then the project is complete. That happened on Tuesday.

We're now in the midst of the "move all worldly possessions" project. Several total strangers showed up at our house this morning and began putting all of our stuff into boxes. They worked all day, even running out of boxes and calling in extra manpower. They rolled outta here around sunset, leaving us with barren walls and cardboard towers.

So now here I sit...surrounded by our world in a much different format. (Where is our camera anyway? That's tomorrow's mini-project.)

Perhaps that's why I'm the only one in the house who is awake at 5:16 am. Usually Cindy and Colin are "bonding" around this time, or perhaps have just completed an hour or two together. Neither has happened tonight...our final evening on Crossfield Drive.

What does this all mean? I don't really know. But what I do know is that although I'm excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, I am really going to miss South Riding and the good friends we made here. And I will always cherish the memories made in our first house together.

Goodbye South Riding. It's been a great 5 years.