PERSONAL

Born in my mothers' hometown in Germany. I grew up in the same home she was born in and called home her whole life, until one day she met my...

After posting a photo of the kid's room I had requested to post some more photos of our current home in Maui. We are completely in love with it. If you know me, you know my style is simple, lots of whites and natural elements so we feel right at home already. 

A few of my favorite things?

Our bed feels like we're sleeping on a cloud ☁️
We have a gas stove top AND a cast iron skillet 😍
No AC which means open windows all day long 💨
We listen to the birds sing all day 🕊
Kids have an awesome hideaway.
We are 5 miles from the beach 🌴
5 miles from a pretty waterfall 💦
Roosters wake us up in the morning
There's are apples, bananas, avocado, limes outside 🍎 🍌 🍋
There are mango trees everywhere we drive. 🍹

We officially boarded our third and last flight to get from Florida to Maui, and the excitement of traveling suddenly turned into worry as we’re standing line to board the plane. The feeling of ‘what ifs’ come flashing by. That feeling you get where you honestly don’t know, if this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, or if this is the beginning of something truly amazing. I tell my husband, who’s sitting by my side and he gives me some words of encouragement. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t the dumbest thing you’ve done so far”. And I know he’s probably right. But what if he’s wrong. What if for some crazy reason my husband and kids step off this plane, and look at me wondering what the hell I was thinking when I convinced everyone that this was a good idea. 

We got rid of all our belongings, everything we had (everything that didn’t fit in our suitcases), sold our beautiful farm home, left family and people we loved behind for this.

I know this feeling, it’s not something that happens often, but it’s a feeling you never forget. It’s the same feeling I got when I made a lifelong promise and married the love of my life. The one when I finally saw those two pink lines appear on that pregnancy test. The feelings that came rushing by moments before becoming a mother.

We officially sold our house today and are moving to Maui! I want to give a big shout out to Chris Hancock & Joe Brown over at Homerun Realty, LLC...

15 more days till we close on our house here.
25 more days till summer break starts.
26 more days till my birthday.
28 more days till we fly to MAUI!

I have a feeling the month of May is going to be one for the books. Things are FINALLY here, and I could not be more excited to get closer to flying over to Hawaii and start our adventure there. I'm so ready to say goodbye to this empty house we've been living in the last few weeks and say hello to our new life in Maui.

We officially booked our flights to MAUI and I could not be more excited. Booking those tickets makes it feel so real. What am I looking forward to most? Showing my husband and two kids how beautiful Hawaii is, adventuring with them more, seeing my husbands face when he get's off that plane and get's to see Hawaii for the first time. Seeing sea turtles, whales and monk seals. Getting lost together, and finding our favorite spots. Learning more about their culture and connecting with those who already call this place home. Location scouting and house hunting. Gosh, there's so much I can't wait to do and so lucky to do it with my adventurous husband and two wild kiddos. 46 more days to go! 

I remember when my sister decided to take her son out of public school and start homeschooling. I blaming the the school district they were in as the reason for making such a big change. This wasn't going to happen with me because we lived in a school district with terrific schools. I remember feeling excited about my daughter going to school every day in 1st and 2nd grade. Everything was fine then. I remember my sister saying; just wait until the test start. And I thought to myself, yea, she takes tests now and is going wonderfully!

This month is a testing time for all third graders in Florida. They are required to take something called a FSA (Florida Standardized Assessment). She already took the first one, 80-90 long exam in reading and comprehension. For those who know Bella know two things, she loves art, and she always has a book with her. Shes, the kid on the playground swinging on the swings while reading, the one who makes sure that on every car trip that she has her book, and she reads more than any kid I know. She reads because she loves to, not because she has to.

So much has happened since my last blog post. There have been a few road bumps along the way. Our plan was to close on the house and fly over during spring break. Well, that came and went and we had to start the process of finding a buyer for our house (twice). Everything was set in place, or so we had hoped, and then on the day of closing on our house, we find out that the buyers had to cancel the contract and back out due to a not being able to get the load. (they had been pre-approved and ended up finding something that caused the loan company to deny the process any further). The DAY of closing. This sucked. Our house had been empty, we gave everything away. Our suitcases were packed and I was sitting there waiting to book our flights. 

Well, all that fell apart when they had to cancel the contract. This meant we weren't going over spring break. We had to re-list the house and find new buyers. Which we did super quick. Bad luck struck again when they ended up not closing on their home, which they needed to do in order to buy our home and we had to start over. Again. 

She asked me if I was scared about leaving everything behind and moving to an island in the middle of the Pacific. I laughed and said I wasn't. But somehow that question has become a little louder the last few weeks and got me thinking.

I would formally like to change my answer to; Yes, it's scary.
We are selling our house, and giving away everything we have collected over the last ten years, we are moving to a tiny little island in the middle of the Pacific, a place only I have been to. Wait no, the island we decided to go to I actually have never stepped foot on. My husband and our two kids have NEVER been to any of the islands in Hawaii. We are completely winging it. We close on our house in under 20 days. We don't have our flight tickets yet. Don't have a rental or home lined up yet. We are going with only our suitcase, and that's it. We are leaving behind something we know so well to something new. We are diving into this blindly, and it's scary as hell.

So why are we doing this? What part about it makes it worth it and overpowers the scary side of it for me?

"i just made it a lot harder on myself"

Those thoughts have been passing by a lot lately. You see, uprooting your entire family, moving your business to a new place and starting over is exciting, but it's also hard. I know once we get there, I'll look back and think how much it was worth it, but right now I can't help but think that one quote. You know the one that says something about choosing the path less traveled? I feel like that the path I'm on right now, and as much as I want to pretend like I know what I'm doing on it, I'm really just putting one foot in front of the other and heading to a place I've never been to.

Picking an Island in Hawaii is hard. Each island has it's own unique beauty to it. Their all so incredibly different from each other. I'm excited to visit each of...

This little fluff ball is coming with us to Hawaii of course and it turns out that moving our dog to Hawaii entails getting some important things done.  Hawaii is...