sunglasses - H&M, ring & dress - forever 21, shoes - hasbeens

I moved around a lot as a kid, actually my brother and I had a joke that as soon as we hit the two year mark in any one place the bell would begin to toll for an impending move. So I've had the "privilege" (as my parents would explain it to our tear stained faces and "oh but I love this school" arguments) to live in a lot of places - Moscow, tiny villages in Russia, Oxford in England, and all over America. But what I missed for most of my childhood was living in a place where people knew you and you knew every back road, every abandoned barn and the names of all your neighbors. We had it in the tiny town in Russia where I spent my very early childhood but never again after that. Until now...

I love our ritual Saturday drives to the farmer's market where we patiently wait for our "two chicken halves" and when we show up to pick them up the old man selling them simply looks at our faces, says our name and hands us the chicken. They know us there. I love the family that sells homemade donuts out of a truck that saw me just a few days before I delivered (the BEST pregnant lady treat!) and the next time we saw them were anxiously awaiting to see our baby and now know here name and love her not-so toothless grin. I love the lady at Burger King that always says "here you go honey" as she hands me my bag of grease. I love our neighbor who will come and cover our packages with plastic if it rains while we're gone. I love all this familiarity, the closeness that we feel living here, the comfort and the rootedness. 

And some days when I look around and I'm really soaking up the moment - the "bbq chicken" sign above the truck flapping in the wind, the delicious smoke encircling us while we wait, the sound of the homemade lemonade pouring into plastic cups, the hum of people enjoying lazy Saturday morning conversations around us and the buzzing of insects in the trees above... I just think "I'm gonna miss this..." one day. 

The Trace Adkins song "You're gonna miss this" has always been one of my favorites and as I looked around our beloved town that morning I couldn't help but hear it in my head:

"You're gonna miss this

You're gonna want this back

You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast

These are some good times

So take a good look around

You may not know it now 

But you're gonna miss this"

I don't know when that moment will come when we will inevitably have to pack up and leave but I know when it does I'll have tears in my eyes and "I'm gonna miss this" SO MUCH.