We are leaving England next week.

In eight days. 

Eight.

We had our household goods packed up yesterday and we're camping out in the living room on an air mattress and some camping chairs. Our whole lives are now in a metal crate somewhere and now we get to live out of suitcases for three months which is kind of thrilling in a weird way. But mostly it's just something that makes me sigh a lot and hope for a new dresser in Seattle.

Tonight is our last night in our first house together and it's really sad. We have such wonderful memories here as newlyweds and as hosts to visiting family and with all of the friends we have made here. We've spent two Christmases here and three summers. We've had so much fun living here. 

My friend Rachel gave me a painting today of the best thatched houses in our neighborhood with this engraved on the back: Your first home together was in Hengrave; may you have many more happy homes together. May God bless you on your new adventure.

And I almost cried when she handed it to me because it was so perfect.

I will really miss living here! 

Everything took so long to happen and now it's all happening so fast I can't even remember what day it is. I can't believe we're actually leaving.

I always knew we were going to. I knew perfectly well going into this that we were here for two years and that was it. But then two years slowly stretched into two and a half and somehow it just seemed like it was all going to last forever and Forrest and I would be here in England, in this small fairyland, happy but not really content. 

We are ready to leave.

Now that all of our furniture and almost everything else we own is gone, it's finally starting to seem real. This move is something that I can almost reach out and touch. I'm not sure I'll be able to fully accept it until we're actually sitting on a runway.

I want to stay forever. 

But I wanted to leave six months ago. 

I can't quit the flip-flopping. I think I have some real problems.

This house has been good to us.

I learned how to cook in this house. And I learned how to knit. I learned so many valuable things right here in this little house!

Forrest and I learned how to be married here.

Even with all of the mold, and the too-thick walls so that we never have phone reception, and the weird shower, we have loved this adorable little ex-barn cottage.

We will never ever have another first home.

Goodbye, Grange Farm Croft. And goodbye, Hengrave. 

We're saying goodbye with pizza tonight for pizza has been a much loved meal in this house and will be forever and ever amen.

Now back I go to cleaning because our house inspection is in two days and I have cleaned exactly one room.