Every season brings change- it happens at the end and even through the beginning of each and every season; in life and in the beautiful game of soccer. As wives, we experience the heart break, the excitement and the anxiety of each season of change. We watch families pack up and move to new cities and sometimes we are the family that packs up and moves to new cities. This season of change has been a big one for my family as we are the family that is packing up and moving. We are watching many of our friends do the same. The coaching staff is moving and many of the players are either retiring or moving to a new team. This is when you feel the heart ache. This is when you start over. This is when you say goodbye to friends who have become family and you prepare to start a new journey in a new city.
If you have children these moves become harder and harder. They are leaving their schools, their friends and their sports teams. You make memories with your kids in each city and home that you live in and sometimes it’s hard to pack up those memories. All families handle the move differently… some wives and children go right away in January when their husbands move. Some wait and move in February when preseason is over. I choose to stay until the school year is complete.
This means that right now my husband is living in Dallas while I’m still in Austin- the kids and I will be here until June. This move is easier because it’s a 3 hour drive. Last move was a 16 hour drive so we had to hop on a plane every couple of weeks.
Choosing this way means that I will be here alone during the winter months when Austin will likely have a freeze (we lose power in the freeze) and I will have to figure it out with 2 kids. It also means that I will be alone while putting the house on the market and packing up the house to move. It means that my husband will likely miss our 5th graders graduation ceremony. I will be a “single mom” trying to navigate my kids’ schedules. When both of them have soccer games at the same time, I will need to get it figured out. All of this while my husband also wants us to make as many home games as possible in Dallas.
With the hard, comes the exciting. Come June we get to move into a new home and make it our own. The kids get to decorate their new rooms. And we get reunited with hubby/papi. We will spend the summer exploring the city- we love finding new favorite restaurants and parks. We meet new friends and create new memories.
The reality is that we will likely do this many more times over. It’s beautiful, hard, stressful, exciting, heartbreaking and fun all at the same time.
Here’s to hoping that all of us saying goodbye to friends and/or our cities have a wonderful 2025 full of hope and adventure!