A New Adventure Begins

 One day in nursing school on my way home from class, I was walking along Bayard Ave. on a beautiful, sunny spring day. I don’t remember that much else about the class or what was going on in my life at the time, but I got an overwhelming sense of joy and a realization that I could do anything. I said out loud to myself, “The world is my canvas!” When I shared this story with Mike later that night, we were both laughing as we imagined walking past someone and suddenly seeing them smile and burst this out loud, but the phrase stuck ever since and we have found ourselves using it often over the years. As we have been getting ready, packing up our house and trying to tie loose ends here and there, we have seen God working in this process in amazing ways. There have been countless times that I loose faith, freak out and think ‘what the heck are we doing!?’ but as soon as times get stressful and a situation is completely out of my control, something is resolved and ends up even better than we could have imagined. It is then that I am reminded that we will be taken care of if we give our complete trust in God’s plan. He makes me feel so silly for even worrying in the first place.

            Ever since we began to make plans to travel, Mike and I have talked about starting a blog to keep our family and friends up to date with what is going on in our lives as we begin this new adventure. I wanted to start writing before we had any plans confirmed, but then I thought - Well, who really cares about all of this? Nothing interesting is happening yet.  It was a recent discussion with my friend Beth, an avid blog reader always ready to give advice or a recommendation from a favorite blog, which helped to encourage me to start writing.  I asked her what makes a blog worth reading and what captures the readers’ attention?  I’m by no means an amazing writer, and I’m afraid that what I write about won’t be funny enough or informative enough or even the least bit interesting.

 “But your life already is interesting…you’ve got all of these things you’re trying to figure out and you are going to be picking up and leaving and traveling around the country in two weeks!” Beth always has a way of making me feel like, a) I’m the most hilarious person she’s ever met, b) what I say really matters, and c) that my life is way more interesting then I find it to be. She’s one of the most encouraging and insightful people that I know. I guess those are all things that make her such an amazing friend!

            So after this reassurance from Beth to just write about us and people will simply want to know what we are up to, I realized that she’s right! This stuff is pretty interesting and Mike and I are both so excited to share with our friends more than just the basics of when, where, how long, and why? We hope that this blog can be a way for us to document our journey as we create new memories in different places, and that it can help to keep all of you posted on what is going on in the life of the Gallos! 

            So to answer those basics:

When: We will likely be leaving Pittsburgh on September 20^th and I will start my job on October 18^th.

Where: We will spend the weekend of the 17^th in Pittsburgh visiting with Mike’s parents and his family that live here in the burgh’. After this, we are planning to take a little road trip across the country to see my parents and our friends in Lancaster, head out to St. Louis to see Mike’s brother Steven and our sister-in-law April, then on to Colorado to see my sister Keri, our brother-in-law Angus, and to meet our soon to be born little nephew!! We are so excited for this time to see family and friends before moving on to SAN ANTONIO!!!

How long: My contract will be 5 months, so we will be done March 19^th. Then it’s on to our next mystery city!

Why: Because the world is our canvas!!