I'm so excited! I'm so scared!

You know, nothing is official until it is on Facebook.

So, it is Facebook official.  We're moving.

Seven years in Chicago (minus an 11 month stint in DC)....it still hasn't sunk in.

Our relationship was built here.  We had only been dating 11 months and embarked on a crazy adventure, an adventure that was supposed to be temporary.  An 18 month project and we would get to move back home.

Not so much. 

But it was ok...we grew up and grew together here.  We came here young, we started running. We partied like the post grads we were and we went to many happy hours.  Our jobs got more serious and so did we.  We got married, bought a condo, got pregnant and had a baby, all while calling Chicago "home".

Chicago has defined our relationship and while I am so excited to get back to our family and friends, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a tiny bit nervous that this move, this new town, this new lifestyle didn't scare me a little.

Our life isn't about just the two of us now though.  It is about the three of us, the smallest iteration of "us" being the most important. 

So, we trade our condo with the luxury finishes for a 3 bedroom "old lady" house.

We trade our bustling downtown and eclectic neighborhood for quaint suburbia.

We trade late night fights and sirens on Clark Street for a quiet street that - oh my! - is dark at night!

I trade a high paying corporate job for the all together different lifestyle of a stay-at-home mom.

But, we also trade the island of separation for a new closeness (literally - proximity) to family. 

We know this is the right decision.  We know we will be happy.  We know that leaving Chicago doesn't change us.

Chicago is still a home because it created "us" - all of us.  And while I never could call it "home" while we lived here, I'm happy (and sad...) to call it home now because I never realized, until the past few weeks, how one city could be so important to all the things that mean everything to me.

Now I'm coming home again...
         ...maybe we can start again.