How did we get here? An overview

Hi everyone,
I imagine that this blog will go back and forth from current time to the past for a while as I catch it up on the reinvention process. Perhaps that is what our memories/thoughts are most of the time anyway - some in current time, but much in the past or the future. This tendency is perhaps aggravated throughout a reinvention process.

Four years ago I attended a yoga conference in Italy. Leaving that conference, meeting Margie, seeing great art, being frustrated by not being able to speak, all of these set me up for Ireland. The language - the welcome - the lovely feel that the earth has here resonated in my soul and I felt at home. Within days I was saying to Margie, "I wonder if we could live here? Would they let us? Would you be interested?" Thank heavens she said yes, the government of Ireland said yes and my imagination soared. We came back in six months to see what it was like in the middle of winter,and during that trip found Kinsale, saw Dolphins in the bay, and found an unfinished house with great "bones."

Four years ago I had a different level of education, worked at a different job, lived half way around the world, was 40 lbs. heavier and could only imagine the life I live today in my sweetest daydreams. Today it is all true. Many steps went between then and now:

1. We found this house and started remodeling
2. I got my doctorate in Education.
3. We sold our big house in Denver and moved into a basement apartment that was the size of our previous bedroom. This allowed us to live on one salary and stash the other to pay off bills and prepare for the move.
4. We visited Kinsale 3 times a year, got to know our neighbors and build plans for our future.
5. We packed every weekend, off and on for two years, sorting and resorting until we had "just the right stuff."
6. We got the dogs and cat ready to move, their records allowed them to travel here without quaranteen.
7. I changed jobs, allowing me to work primarily online.
8. We said goodbye.
9. We moved.
   

I will catch up our first impressions of living here - and the ins and outs of moving by copying letters home I wrote during our first few months.

All the best,
Alana