A little back story…

Here’s a little back story for any of our friends or family who are now thinking “WTF, they’re in Sicily?” Sean and I got married about 6 months ago in October 2013. We had just bought our first house about four months prior, put a ton of work into it, and were finally settled in our “permanent” home. We were looking forward to a little down-time and a low key year after a pretty big year of planning a wedding and buying a house. However, as we all know, sometimes life throws a curve ball at you. Sean worked as a Mechanical Engineer and I as a Financial Analyst at the same company. Sean had done a bit of work overseas before and had been approached about other positions, but the thought of leaving his lovely girlfriend/fiance/wife always made the answer no. However, in January, he was approached about a position here in Sicily. He casually mentioned it to me, thinking the answer would be a “no”, but, this time it was different. Since we were now married, I was able to go with him, which was much more appealing for the both of us! We only had a couple weeks to decide, and would be leaving in about two months. We talked a lot about it and probably over-thought the whole situation, but not knowing what the future held with either decision, it just seemed like the only answer we could give was “yes”. I had always wanted to live abroad, something I thought I would never have the opportunity to do after college, and knowing this would only be temporary made it a lot less scary. Sometimes you have to just take a leap of faith and go for it. And, here we are.

Good bye house!

After hearing that Sean got the job we only had about six weeks to get ready. That meant ending our current jobs, saying good bye to family and friends, throwing a housewarming/going away party, getting our house ready to rent (which included re-texturing and re-painting almost the entire thing), finding renters, drinking all of our wine collection, figuring out how to get the cat into Italy, and all those little odds and ends that need to be taken care of – bank accounts, cell phone plans, car storage, oh, and packing. We moved entirely out of our new house with the help of some masterful movers. It required a lot of prep work on our part sorting our life possessions into the Storage, Garbage, Leave in House, Ocean Italy Shipment, Air Italy Shipment, and Carry On categories. Not knowing what our home in Italy would be like made it a bit tough to know what to bring, but we made some decisions and hoped for the best.

All of our belongings on one truck. Hopefully the “storage” and “shipment” crates don’t get mixed up

Some how we pulled it off while both working full time, both making a trip up to Oregon, Sean going on trips to Palmdale and Colorado, and me sticking as close as I could to my strict 10pm bedtime. Well, we think we did anyway, our shipment hasn’t arrived yet so we aren’t entirely sure what we forgot:-) The movers came the first week of April, our last day at work was Friday, and Monday afternoon we were on a plane to Sicily, cat in tow. We’re getting settled in, figuring out “ciao” and how to say “ten slices of prosciutto” , and trying not to get in any car accidents. Well not any major ones anyway, we were rear-ended in the gas station parking lot the other day (not in our car). The driver of the car we were in wasn’t when there it happened. When we told him the guy behind us had hit his car he shrugged and laughed, “In Sicily the cars get a little closer than they do in America.” That’s for sure.

The luckiest cat in the world – once a stray, now Italian

So, we made it. It’s amazing how much life can change in just a couple months. We both can’t wait to see what Sicily has in store for us.