a philly pharewell

Amidst all the stress and excitement of graduating and moving, the full emotion of moving didn't hit me until about a week later.

For the past five years, Philadelphia has been our home. Our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and ward members became our family. 

We bought and remodeled our first house there. A home that was sometimes filled with sickness and heartache, but more often with laughter and gratitude. We brought our sweet baby Hazel home to Philadelphia. We shared so many trials and so many blessings with our Philly Family. We grew to love the youth and were lucky enough to be loved back. We opened our hearts and homes to these kids and they influenced us more than we did them.
We traveled up and down the East Coast, adding 8 new states, a territory, and a country to our 'been there' list. We played at the Jersey shore, prayed at the Sacred Grove, worshipped at two temples, oohed and awed over Times Square and a great Broadway Show (and walked out of a less-than-great one), and visited the Liberty Bell on many occasions.

But more importantly, we served and were blessed by countless acts of service on our behalf. We cried together, sang together, camped together, sewed together, partied together, laughed together, ate together, worshiped together. We survived- together.

Not to sugar-coat Philly living. Upon moving in, I told Isaac that the minute I heard a verifiable gun shot, we were outta there. Over the course of five years, I heard many things that I thought were probably gun shots, but nothing verifiable. And thus we stayed. A few weeks before moving, a robber was shot and killed at the gas station half a block from our house. I didn't hear the gun shot, though it was verifiable. I won't miss most of West Philly, or 69th Street, or the long drives to any type of shopping, or the horrific pot-hole filled roads, or the unverifiable-gun shots, or the litter, or the non-existent customer service, or the humidity...

But we will miss our home, our friends, our ward, our neighbors, our youth. We will miss shopping with the Amish, the beauty of the spring and autumn, the diversity, the restaurants, the street preaching, the sites at 52nd street, and living in the birthplace of our nation.

So thank you, dear friends, (some of whom have moved on, and some who are still holding down the fort) for putting up with us the past five years and changing our lives forever.