Back to the Boonies

So, I guess I should break the news that we are moving. I am not happy about this at all. I normally would be happy about moving into a bigger, nicer home, but I will be moving away from my friends, my kids friends, our church, and the city that I have grown to love.

I grew up in a extremely small town in southern California called Blythe. Growing up our source of fun was riding quads in the desert, going to the river, raising animals for 4-H (I always had fun), and just having fun with friends. In my small town we had a K-Mart, a couple of grocery stores, a movie theater, (which was in business when I was younger then went out and them came back in when I was out of high school), one high school, one middle school, three elementary schools, one hospital (that totally sucked), a variety of churches and hands down the best Mexican food around. The graduating class at the HS was a couple hundred students. The closest mall was 135 miles from our town and the nearest airport was 150 miles away. This town was primarily an agriculture town and it still is but there are two state prisons out in the desert so a lot of correctional officers live there. The hottest summer I remember the temperature got to 137. This temperature was unofficial because it was our personal thermometer at home. Even if it wasn't accurate (which I am pretty sure it was) it was still stinking hot. This town is small and I enjoyed growing up there, but would not like to live there. My parents and grand parents still live there and I will always hold Blythe near and dear to my heart because it is always home for me.

When I went away to college, I thought I moved up in the world because I had a mall down the road and two Walmarts and all sorts of extra curricular activities that I was not used to. I was very home sick for the small town feel of home and Mexican food which is so different here in Texas. But I grew to love the bigger city. Sure I didn't know how to drive in much traffic and got lost quite often, but loved it because of how different it was from where I grew up.

My college town was just a stepping stone to the big metroplex I am in today. So, after college I move to the big city because that is where the jobs were. Yeah, the jobs were here and I got one, but that is a going off somewhere I don't want to blog about right now. So, we stayed here in the metroplex and started our family. The big city took a while to get used to and not having my family close by was super hard. But then I made friends and found my niche in my community and church. The driving part of the big city, well, still takes a GPS for me to get around. But I definitely know how to drive and handle a lot of cars on the road. Who would have thought a small town girl would find her way around this huge city and love it. But I do.

I love all the places that I can take my kids for cheap or free entertainment. There are so many opportunities here for my family. Good schools, good church, good entertainment, and good friends. It took me a while to make friends and get in the groove of being out here, but I did and now we are moving. Just when I like it and am used to it and have found little secret cool places to take the kids and how cool our recreation center is that my kids are finally old enough to go to and that the zoo is half price on Wednesdays, we have to move. I am not ready, I don't want to go.

Sure, I have played with the idea of moving out in the country and get back to the small town feel of what my life used to be. I am all up for moving a little further out but not from civilization all together. My husband applied for a job in a small town two hours southwest of the metroplex. This town is home of the Indians and a Peach and Melon festival. It has one grocery store and the nearest Walmart is 30 miles away. The population of this town is just under 5000 people. There is no fast food, no parks (there was one but it was poorly taken care of and I wouldn't want to take my kids there), no public pools, just not much of anything that I am accustom to. The housing is not what I am used to so, I hope that we can build a home. This town is smaller and more remote than what I grew up in. I feel like I am back tracking in life and am starting all over. I just don't want to do this. I am comfortable where I am.

This has all kind of hit me at once, so I will have to expand on this subject later when stuff has soaked in and my life has some sort of direction.