After 15+ years in Southern California (15 for me, and 10 for Dave), we are officially moving. I came to LA as a young pharmacy resident, and leave full of knowledge and experience, and most importantly with my husband and two children.

We have cherished our first home (the "Acacia house") for nearly 9 years. When I first moved in, I was a single girl, but since then, the house has grown to be full of love. The room that used to house the turtles, Skip and Steve, was taken over after the birth of our girls, and with that came laughter, love, and a new sense of amazement.

We hosted many backyard BBQs, filling our home with friends and family, welcomed visitors from out of state, and some even from other countries. The girls have had their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd birthdays in our backyard, and last year we had my 40th birthday party here as well. It feels strange to leave a home where we made so many memories, but we have a lot of new memories to make and a whole new world to discover in Northern California.

We've been reading the "Berenstain Bears' Moving Day" (Dave has read it nearly 30 times over the past month), and the girls have a very deep understanding of what this entails, as evidenced by their curious questions. "How we get bed through door?" asked Mattea. "Can I bring green (her blanket)?" asked Arianna.

They watched with curious eyes as our "moving bears" packed up nearly everything in our house. The last night in our home, we all slept together in the family room "camping" in our sleeping bags, as the beds had all been taken away. Even though the house was empty and I didn't have a pillow because the movers accidentally took it already, I still felt a sense of comfort.

Today we leave Southern California and embark on a new journey -- a new town, a new place to live, new friends, a new school for the girls, and new jobs for Dave and myself. We leave with hearts full of wonderful memories we will cherish forever.