In a way, you really can't go home again!

This post may be a bit sappy, if it is I am very sorry, but I feel the need to write it anyway.

You know the saying "You can't go home again"? I used to think it was a crock of crap, but I am beginning to think it is part of the way true.

Middlebury will always be my hometown, just as those areas around there will always be my old stomping ground. Nate and I have been married for four years now, and began our lives in a new town once we were married. North Manchester was home for three years, but it was still close enough to Middlebury that we went "home" often and saw things changing.

Last May we moved to Greenwood to start a new chapter of our lives. When we got here, I was scared and thought it was the city. The house we bought it great, and it has our "stuff" but it wasn't home. It wasn't until just a few months ago that I came to a realization. I was in the middle of the miscarriage when we went to Middlebury for a wedding. I told Nate, "I want to go home, now!" and it suddenly dawned on me that I meant Greenwood. At this point, I guess home is really where your heart is. My heart is with Nate, but Indy is our life now. There is no bed like your own bed in your own room with your own pillow. Because of some of the friendships and connections we have begun to establish in Indy, we have more of a community and surrogate family than we ever had in North Manchester. I know the roads and how to get where I need to be. I love having Meijer three minutes from me open 24 hours to grab things if and when I want them.

Perhaps even more hard for me to swallow, though, is the fact that Middlebury/Goshen/Dunlap/Elkhart/South Bend are all different than they were when I left four years ago...well I guess 5 if you count first year of college. Middlebury now has a new school, which stares at me every time I come and go from Grandma and Grandpa's house. There is a CVS. CR 17 in Goshen looks like an alien land. Dunlap doesn't even look like the same place, there is now a Petsmart and IHOP, as well as a Starbucks, all blocking Meijer and Target from the road. The spot that almost brought tears to my eyes was UP Mall, the promised land of my high-school. It looks so different and the Marshall Field's is now gone. The reason that there was an element of sadness was just due to all of my memories at that Marshall Field's!

I guess time marches on, life moves forward, and this is the way it needs to be! Nate and I are 23 now, we are not the 16 year-old lovebirds we once were. The funny thing is that we have both said that we don't feel any older, just the 16-22 year olds look like babies and the children we have known grow older and more adult like! It is important to realize that our pasts have shaped us, and to be grateful, but to embrace the future and the present.

Another really funny thing that I often times think of is that for four years Nate and I have been the odd-balls out being married. Now, more and more of our friends and family are joining us in this club. We are now the ones that people look at in awe as the "old married couple!" I can't say I mind, but it just drives home the fact that we are different, but in a good way.

Sometimes life doesn't go exactly as I may have planned or demanded.....but it goes on and things fall in to place as they need to. It is a great place to be and I am so glad to share it with Nate! This being said, I hadn't really put anything on the blog about our anniversary, but here it is!

Bug- I love you, I am sorry my sanity comes and goes depending on the hour of the day. I love our life and sharing it with you! You are my better half! And by the way, I still have a crush on you!