6-6-2026: The Last Walk

There are some moments that feel significant while they're happening, and others that only reveal their importance when you stop long enough to notice them.

This week was a blur.

School ended. Henry graduated from eighth grade. Work was crazy. Matt was traveling. We celebrated my brother’s engagement. We packed our lives into storage and twelve bags that will become everything we own for the next year aboard a sailboat. We made hundreds of tiny decisions. On the night of Henry's graduation, I was still packing after midnight.

But tucked into all that chaos were moments I'll remember forever.

Henry's graduation was one of them. That evening, while the graduates enjoyed their last middle school dance, friends gathered by our pool. There was no elaborate plan. We sat outside, laughed, talked about serious and ridiculous things, and covered furniture for storage.

As I looked around, I kept thinking about how lucky we have been.

Fourteen years ago, moving to North Carolina meant leaving our happy place in California. I remember how hard that goodbye felt. At the time, it was impossible to imagine feeling at home anywhere else.

And yet somehow, here we are.

The people we've met here have shaped us. They've helped raise our children. They've celebrated our successes, supported us through challenges, and made us better versions of ourselves. Leaving them is hard, but there is comfort in knowing that great communities can be found and built more than once in a lifetime and that we will return to our NC family.

As move-out morning arrived, the kids and I ran around crazy packing from sunrise until 5 minutes before the cleaner was scheduled to arrive. Instead of rushing out of the driveway, we took Cocoa for one last walk down our trail.

It's hard to explain why that little path means so much.

It's where the kids built forts. Where they caught mud puppies. Where they spent long days during the pandemic roaming the woods like wild animals. It was part of our daily walk to school. It's where countless conversations happened and where we escaped when we needed a little space.

For years, it has been one of our family's small, magical places.

So we walked slowly.

We took in the trees, the sounds, the familiar turns in the path. We let ourselves be present for a few minutes before everything changed.

I'm grateful for the life we're stepping away from.

And I'm incredibly excited for the one ahead. For now, it's time to see what lies beyond the horizon.