Packing Up and Heading West

instagr.am shot of Manhattan Beach

We have an exciting announcement: Mike, the unsung hero behind Silk Road Pearls, has accepted a position located just south of LAX. Even though I'm from the Midwest and grew up with snow days and lake effect weather, the long Boston winters have taken a toll. It probably doesn't help that neither one of us are big skiers.

Mike will be heading out there in September and I'll be joining him once I finish my fall classes, just in time for Christmas.

It's a little crazy and hasn't quite sunken in yet. It'll be hard to leave Boston, especially with all the Lehigh young alumni who have been so great to have around. Lehigh will still be a 6 hour trip - we'll just be taking a plane instead of a car to get there.

One of the piers off the strand

This decision wasn't just made to have the beach as a backyard (although that didn't hurt). We both have family and close friends near LA, and are looking forward to this new adventure. Neither one of us did birthday gifts this year in hopes that this would work out the way it did. Instead we'll each be getting bikes to ride on The Strand once we get settled out there (and Mr. Stalder will be helping Mike choose a surf board). I can't wait to have real Mexican food again!

There's something to be said for eating fresh produce that's been picked earlier that day. Having spent a lot of time on a farm growing up, the feeling was always fleeting after moving out to the East Coast. The only other time I felt like I was eating fruit and veggies at their peak was in Italy with Lehigh's Art & Architecture study abroad program. But that's the way Italians shop - they go to the market every day and get what they need for tonight's meal.

It'll be hard to be so far away from home, but we're lucky to live during a time when technology can help bring us closer (Skype is so key).

This graphic eloquently sums up my earlier statements about last winter in Boston:

Seriously, we got that much snow this year?