I’m 31 years old, and I’ve had my share of adventures.  Marriage.  Travel.  Most recently, motherhood.  Sometimes it seems like life is a long parade of adventure after adventure, and that’s pretty cool.  And now I have a new adventure to report.

On Saturday, hubby and Peanut and I will be packing all of our earthly possessions up, pulling up stakes, and moving to Buffalo, New York.

Gulp.  Yep.  We’re going.  I’ve gotten a lot of questions about this from family and friends, so for the record:

Hold the phone.  WHAT?!?!?

We’re moving to Buffalo.

Why?

This is something that has been in the works for awhile.  Hubby and I have always had a potential move in the backs of our minds, but the timing was never right.  However, hubby got a fantastic job offer, the kind of job offer that he’d be crazy to turn down, and after discussing it thoroughly, we decided as a family that he should take the opportunity.  He’s incredibly excited, and I’m so happy for him and so proud of him for going after something that he wants and making his own dream come true.

What will YOU do?

I’m job-hunting now, and I feel pretty confident that I’ll land on my feet.  In the meantime, I get to spend a little extra time with Peanut until I find the perfect opportunity, which is AWESOME.

What about your house?

We sold it.  I’ll admit that I’m struggling with saying goodbye.  We have so many wonderful memories there, made in only three years, and to cut short our time in the house that I considered my “forever home” is sad.  But it was a relief that it didn’t languish on the market, and I’m glad to know that another family will make memories there.  I hope they love it as much as we have.

So where will you live now?

We’re renting a really cool, historic house in a funky area of the city.  It’s a gorgeous house in a great location and we are excited to live there and be a small part of its long story.  We’re going to use that year to check out neighborhoods and explore options for either building our dream home or buying another historic house (and maybe renovating it – stay tuned).  Or we may buy another builder house and hopefully, this time, actually complete the process of personalizing it.  We’ll see – it’s pretty exciting to have so many possibilities.

How do you feel about all of this, really?

Honestly, it’s always hard to pull up roots, and I’ve put some very deep roots into my community in DC.  When I moved here, I didn’t know a soul.  The city itself was my first friend.  I wore out my Reefs hiking from Foggy Bottom to Tenleytown and back, and after only a few weeks I felt more at home here than I ever have, anywhere else.  In 2005 I got married and moved out to Virginia, and I’ve lived in Arlington, East Falls Church, and most recently Alexandria, and loved every minute I’ve spent in my adopted state, where my heart truly feels at home.  In my ten years here I’ve done so much: made many friends, gotten married, graduated from law school, held two jobs, bought two homes, and had a baby.  So yes, I’ll be sad to leave.  But, in another way, it feels like the right time to go.  We still have friends here, but more and more of our friends are striking out for other cities, and our circle is closing a bit in this city.  I’m ready for a new adventure and I know it means so much to hubby that we’re embarking on this journey as a family.  And it will be fun to be in the same city with our beloved Sabres (although they’d better step up their game next season), with so many new places to explore.  I’ve always thought that Buffalo would be a great place to raise a family, and I’m thrilled that Peanut will grow up so close to her grandparents.  She’ll be much closer to both hubby’s folks and my parents, and that’s something that is much more important than I realized it would be, before she was in the picture.  Change is never easy, but Buffalo is the right place for our family to be right now.  And at the end of the day, my home is wherever these two goofballs are:

I’ll have more details about the move, pictures of the new place, and some posts about our last few weeks in DC coming soon.  Please bear with me if I’m slower to respond to comments than usual for the next few weeks.  There won’t be a break in blogging, though, because I’ve written and banked some bookish posts for you, and I’ll be in and out with updates.  In the meantime, back to the bookish posts!