In my adult life, I’ve lived in fifteen homes: one in Key West, Florida; seven in California (six in Santa Cruz and one in Watsonville); two in Portland, Oregon; one on Orcas Island; and four in North Carolina (three in Asheville and one in Black Mountain). Yesterday, I landed at my sixteenth, this one in Sonoma, California.

While my body feels near collapse, well aware of what it just went through, my mind can’t really believe that we traveled for 8 days, crossing North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before reaching the Golden State.

The day we left, we awoke at 6 a.m. and spent the next five hours loading the remainder of our belongings into a PODS container, then making the house look like this:

That was a miserable, exhausting experience, followed by a 7-hour drive. Thankfully, the AirBNB that greeted us in Jackson, Tennessee featured several of these lamps, which was a pleasant consolation for the somewhat miserable day:

Just as he did before our last cross-country move, my husband JR got us walkie talkies for the journey. When I mentioned this to my mom, she said, “Will we have handles? I want to be Eager Beaver.” She chose this moniker in homage to a weekend trip we’d taken with two other families when I was a kid. There had been a CB radio in each family’s vehicle, and the kids in said vehicles had periodically taken turns singing The Beaver Song to each other. [For reference, here is a YouTube lady enthusiastically demonstrating The Beaver Song with wide-eyed glee.] After one particularly rousing version, there’d been a brief pause, and then a grizzled male voice had crackled over the airwaves and asked, in a thick Southern drawl: “What in the HELL was that?” All us kids had laughed about that for the duration of the weekend, and then over the next ten years.

I told Mom that yes, of course we’d have handles, and that JR and I were Joe Rodeo and Chickenhead, respectively. About an hour after we embarked on our journey, Mom heard her walkie talkie crackle and thought one of us was trying to reach her. She picked it up and said, “Eager Beaver, come in!” Unfortunately for her, neither of us had been trying to reach her, nor were we within range, and it was some random man who replied, “Eager Beaver? Hey, y’all, we got ourselves an eager beaver over here. Eager Beaver, I got some wood that needs choppin’ – come on!”

😂

Mom let out a squeak and threw her walkie talkie to the floor. She didn’t change her handle, though. Eager Beaver for life!

Over the 8-day trip, we stayed in six AirBNBs. I learned that there seems to be a rule among AirBNB hosts that their home should feature at least one image of a cow.

Also, a framed version of 1 Corinthians 13:4 is very popular, because all travelers need to remember that love is patient, kind, etc.

Our journey was long, tiring, and really quite wonderful. We got to experience the big skies of Arkansas and Oklahoma:

We got to see family:

And beautiful places…

The dogs slept and snuggled through it all.

In my 2025 calendar, this is the image for November:

Before we embarked on our journey, I sent the photo to Mom and JR, suggesting that we, as a traveling trio, would likely be rotating through the emotional states of the pictured wolves, namely: frenzy, wariness, and irritation. In reality, though, we were more like this:

We stayed positive, kept ourselves and each other sane, and savored each leg of the journey.

And now, though it feels unbelievable and surreal, we have arrived in Sonoma, and we have so much learning and exploring to do, it’s a bit overwhelming. However, I’ll strive to face the task just like our 8-day journey:

Stay in the moment.

Breathe.

Observe.

Appreciate.

Take my time.

And enjoy.