Okay readers, we took a big leap and moved to OAHU. Yes, in Hawaii. That Hawaii.
The decision was definitely not an easy one and the adjustment has been well…difficult to say the least. So, here’s what happened.
My husband, Grant, had been going to school at Brigham Young University in Provo Utah and we had been living there for the last three years. Now don’t get me wrong, we are grateful for our time there and LOVE the people we met along the way, however… we lived there for THREE years and including the semester he did at BYU Hawaii as a freshman, he was still only able to make a years worth of progress toward any degree. Grant applied to three different programs, none of which he got into.
At this point you might be thinking well does he just suck at school? Absolutely not and the administrators knew it. He completed all of the prerequisites for all of the courses, got great grades, and got so close but never made the final cut. The Commercial Music Program Director even called Grant into his office and shared how close he came to getting in but there just wasn’t room. He then proceeded to ask him to be a Teaching Assistant for the program and later was asked to speak at the Commercial Music expo. Talk about qualified… lol
Anyways, I digress. (Can you tell how bad it gets to me?)
When Grant applied to the last program there, we decided to make a backup plan (as well as a backup plan for the backup plan). We joked around about going to Hawaii to just get through the rest of school but with Maggie in tow and my health we didn’t give it any serious consideration.
As time went on we began to ask ourselves, but why not? What was holding us back? It’s something we both wanted and felt like it would be a great environment for Maggie to grow. So we began to pray, crunch the numbers, and make our pros and cons lists (we’re both very into lists).
The day came for Grant to get his answer about the program. If it was a yes, we stayed in Provo. If it was a no, we would sort through and sell everything we owned and leave for Oahu in 6 weeks. It was a nerve-wracking day.
You all know what happened after that. When we would tell people in those following weeks that we were moving to Hawaii they would reply, “Oh bummer. Such a hard life.” For the record, to a mom with POTS, depression and severe anxiety… It was a pretty stressful change. To me, it was an island out in the middle of nowhere with not the greatest resources and no outside help for when I’m desperate with Maggie. We would have to learn to be completely on our own and that would be new.
Upon arrival here, it wasn’t all bliss and butterflies either. Right off the bat one of our bags got lost. Considering everything we own got packed into three bags, missing one was definitely not ideal. We also had to arrange for a ground floor apartment, meaning we moved within days of arriving and unpacking in our first place. Also, THE HEAT. We aren’t allowed to have a/c in our apartment and it has affected everything; my POTS, my anxiety, etc. Last but not least, Maggie has been taking this transition in climate and the time difference really really hard.
Thanks for staying with me through all that, hopefully, I didn’t sound too whiny, because through all of the difficulty and the changes I know without a doubt, we have been blessed. We are blessed. We were able to earn enough from selling our things back home to set up our new home here. When it gets too hot, we have the ocean down the street. There’s free counseling available on campus which I have been taking full advantage of, and most importantly the people in our community are AMAZING! We’ve made new friends and I’m confident we’ll be making more 🙂
I’m excited to share with you all the adventures we have!! If you haven’t already, follow us on our recently updated Instagram @theclaireprojects! We have a new mission that we’re super stoked about 🙂 Check it out!