Back in March I attended a really magical retreat with the AMAZING Tiffany Josephs. It was in Santa Barbara and we had an absolute blast. I got to run for hours along the beach every day and Tiffany crafted a really fun, refreshing, intuitive retreat for us complete with scavenger hunts, photo shoots, and cake by the ocean.....

On the final night of the retreat we did the coolest exercise. I don't want to share all of Tiffanies secrets but this cat needs out of the bag. We got in a circle (9 of us), got our journals, and opened to a blank page. Tiffany instructed us to make a scribble on our page. Like a 3 second scribble, whatever felt right. Then we passed our journals to the right. So now we each have the scribble from the person to our left. Our instructions were to add what was needed to the scribble. Whatever felt right. And we had very little time, maybe 30 seconds or so, before we had to pass it along. The journals traveled all around the circle, getting additions and being worked on from each lady, and 9 passes later you had your journal back, but you could barely recognize your scribble! It had turned into a masterpiece, an oracle of sorts.

Tiffany explained to us that on that page was something special, a message, from the universe. And we went around the circle and each shared what we saw in our drawing. I would never share this, after all you don't share journal pages, but this is all too good, and I have to.

So, mine was hilarious. My original scribble is in purple. I literally sat there and just laughed at it for a good long while. And then you are sorta trying to figure out what the heck it all is? I saw a fox in there, one who is stressed! But happy too, and smoking some pot which I have never done. That bird I thought had some male genitals, but I might have read into that and it's just his tail feather. Is that an aardvark in the corner, and then there is all this business with "what if" and Nemo, and Finding Dory in the bottom. I concluded at the time that the universe would like for me to lighten the heck up and have a little more fun.

Tiffany told us to pull this back out in a few weeks or months and have another look, that things in here would make more sense as time went on.

Fast forward to the next morning when I went for my 2 hour run. I was listening to Pandora the whole time and thought it was hilarious because the whole run every single advertisement it played to me was for the movie Finding Dory. I thought it was so strange because that was on my page from the night before. I was totally having one of those crazy universe moments thinking "No way...crazy"

As I traveled home from the retreat on Mothers Day all I could think about was how much California and the Central Coast is in my blood. I grew up in California. I lived the first 10 years of my life in a little town called Tehachapi that is in the valley. When I was 10 we moved to a little town outside of Morro Bay called Los Osos. Morro Bay sits at the front of the bay, and has a giant rock, and Los Osos sits at the back of the bay. When I was 15 my family moved to San Jose, CA during the week of my Easter break from my sophomore year of high school. I cried most of the trip. It was a very sad day to move from one of the most gorgeous places on the planet to the city of San Jose where my graduating class had more kids than the entire high school I came from. I made my way in San Jose until I graduated and went to college at UC San Diego (not the party school....but the nerdy school in La Jolla). After UCSD I moved to Colorado.

I called Troy while I was sitting in the airport coming home from Santa Barbara and asked if we could move. Well, I kinda begged him to move. And I cried too, the whole way home in fact. We discussed it and although he works from home, he wasn't sure if they would be okay with this sort of move. Also, he wasn't okay with it. Annie likes her school and we live in a sweet location, he's lived in Colorado all his life.

And I had to respect that.

Fast forward a couple months and I went to IM Texas to coach our 5 athletes who raced (phenomenally) and when I looked at the forecast for Colorado on my way home it was going to rain all week. So when I got to the airport I changed my flight to San Diego. My friend Ang was hanging there for a few days and I had a place to stay. On the way home from San Diego I met the most amazing man who was my uber driver. We had an insane 15 minutes and he really opened up my mind to A LOT of things. The main thing I received from him was that there are different levels to this life. The physical level, the mental level. He straight up told me I have those two down pat. But I'm stuck on the heart level. And he was right. We still keep in touch. He sent me this quote and I used a picture on San Diego for the background:

I came home from San Diego really alive and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ang on the ocean, watching sunsets every night and shopping at the farmers market together. I brought moving up again with Troy and he knew I was still pretty serious. We talked about it, but life was so crazy. So we couched the idea.

Last Sunday was Fathers day. Troy loves Chinese Food, it's like his absolute favorite. So I researched where we could find the best Dim Sum in Denver. By the way, that would be Star Kitchen, super authentic and super yummy. We went to Dim Sum that morning and were having a great day together as a family. After our bellies were full I asked what he wanted to do and Troy said that he wanted to go see Finding Dory. Now, a little about my wonderful husband. He loves movies in the theatre. Like LOVES. He pretty much watches everything when it comes out. He and Annie go a lot and it's hard to go to a movie with Troy because he's already seen it. Well, it was opening weekend for Finding Dory so none of us had been. Off we went (PS I  love that Troy will go see literally ANY movie with me, RomCom, Comedy, Drama, doesn't matter, he's game).

So we are sitting in the theatre and watching and all of the sudden Dory is trying to find her family, she's trying to go home. But get this, where is home?

MORRO BAY, CA

The town of 10,000 people that I grew up in. The town that I left my heart in when I left at age 15. The only town I come back to with that deep sigh when I visit. That town.

And all of the sudden my picture from the retreat is flooding back to me, and how it said "Why not?" and "Finding Dory"

https://youtu.be/hFVMa9ykcjY

I look at Troy with eyes like saucers and I'm mouthing to him "We have to move"

Then I'm texting, he's two seats away but I'm flipping out...and darn autocorrect....

The whole movie I pretty much flipped out. I felt deep in my heart that we had to move.

After we got out of the movie we had a long chat and I told Troy: It's time, I'm ready, I want to go. I'm ready to go, can we please go?

And he got it. At a deep level, one that makes me cry when I type this, my husband understood that we had to give it a shot. He's lived here his whole life and I respect and honor that, but I have been given so many signs to follow my heart and I know where my heart is, I just know.

He called work first thing Monday morning. They approved the move. It was a non issue. All this time, and it was a non issue.

We hired a real estate agent Monday night (one message off to my childhood bestie Lauren who lives there and she put us in touch with a phenomenal agent).

We put in an offer on a house on Tuesday morning. We found out we didn't get that house on Friday morning.

Thursday night I was searching craigslist and found a place that wasn't on our list of prospects (there are only 4 houses on the market in our price range in Los Osos and Morro Bay). I searched a little more and found out it was under contract. I emailed our agent and asked her to look into it. Friday she called us and said that it's under contract, the sellers agent said the contract was going to be cancelled and we could put in an offer. We wrote a cover letter explaining how much we love Los Osos, described our family, and bid 40K over asking. This house was much nicer than the first house we put an offer on. It has much more space, the location is better, and it has a tiny view of the water. They countered our offer with a technicality and no increase in price, and as of yesterday we are under contract on the perfect little house that we haven't even seen. But the way all of this is going, I know it will be fine. I just know.

Meanwhile we prepped our house for sale over the last few days, with the plans to put it on the market this Tuesday. Yesterday our neighbor said he would like to buy it and would have an offer to us on Monday.

It's been one week since we made the decision and pretty much all the big decisions and questions have been hammered out. It's truly been a downhill flow sort of situation.

Next weekend is the 4th of July and I cancelled my plans to race Vineman and instead we are headed to Los Osos to review the inspection and check out our new house....and it's tiny bay view, and it's big beautiful balcony that faces the ocean.

I can not explain fully how much my heart is exploding with YAY. I feel so lucky that Troy works from home and I built Rising Tide to be movable. I can't believe all the signs and how easy every thing came together. I feel a little sense of pride that I followed the signs, I followed my heart and because of that, things have flowed!

Oh and Annie, the best part. She's super excited. Happy to go, excited for the adventure. She's an amazing kiddo.

Move date looks to be the beginning of August. No final date just yet, but definitely before Annie starts 5th grade.