the countdown has begun

No, this will not be a post predicting when the world will end.
Nor is this a post about me standing a crossroads which will change my life...even though I am...more on that later.

This, my friends, is a post on my parents.
Their house...my childhood home...which has been on the market since last August...has sold.
The home that I've repeatedly come back to, like a well-trained yo-yo (bible school-1 yr, home-2 yr, bible college-1 yr, home-1 yr, bible college-1 yr, home-1 yr, Germany-2 yr, home-1 yr, my apartment-4 yr).

Soon, much too soon, my parents will be moving south. To a magical land of sun and warmth. To a place where skin cannot stay pasty white year round. A place where sunglasses and air conditioning are used more than two weeks of the year.

They are moving to Arizona.

Part of me want to balk at them moving...how dare they! Don't they know that I'm the one who leaves (although I seem to always come back)! Home is Washington but mostly because my parents are there! Now home will be a state I've never visited (as of yet)?? Baffling!

But most of me is very excited for them. My dad gets to retire (again!) from Boeing. They get the warm weather they've missed all these 30+ years of living in rainy, cloudy Washington. And they get to see a dream fulfilled. Plus I will have a "vacation home" in a warm place to visit if I ever get too chilled or pale!

But it will be strange. To not see my parents every Sunday. To not swing by the house for whatever need. To know that someone else is living there. Ahh well...maybe this just means that its a good time for me to move too...more on that later. :)