Five years from now

I promise, this will be the last Tucson post! But there's one more piece to the week.

Ed had visited Tucson a few years before we met and thought it was a god-forsaken place. All that cactus and everything so dry looking. Then after we got together, we would go visit my dad and even bought a little garden condo for him to live in. Ed started seeing the beauty of the desert and liking it more. We even enjoyed a few thunderstorms.

Last year we took a trip out there in July with my kids and their families. Had a great time and Ed really got into the whole desert and "old west" thing, enjoyed our trip down memory lane, and had the incredible Arizona thunderstorm experience.

After our most recent trip, he's ready to move there! We stayed in the same resort we had stayed in in 2007. Took walks in the morning in the desert. Had dinner outside almost every night. We have family there, friends there, and the whole feeling is more relaxed than California. And it's the home of Couch Rock. That is totally not the name of the rock below, but when I was 10 and we first moved there, I thought it looked like a couch so that's what I named it in my head. It's my icon of Tucson. You can only see it on the West side of town, and seeing it always calms my soul.

This is a plan for five years down the road - after Ed is done working and ready to collect his Social Security. But it's a fun plan and one we're both excited about. We won't be moving there full time, the plan is to buy a condo and split our time between Tucson and California. We can't just leave the kids and grandkids behind!

So our road trip to Tucson - which was primarily for the purpose of seeing my aunt and getting my mom's hope chest for my daughter - turned out to be a life-changing vacation. We had no definitive plans for our retirement - now we do. And I, for one, am excited about it!