Brooke & Keith's We Heart Waco Farewell Tour

We are beginning to count our final days as Waco residents. There are now a mere 18 days left before Keith loads our entire lives into a rented moving truck and begins a cross-country trek that will include three days, thousands of miles, numerous bathroom stops, and four wailing cats. Meanwhile, I'll get to stay behind for about 10 extra days, wrapping up work stuff before I drive up to join him. Every day left, every hour that passes, feels precious. These are all moments that count.

We are living by lists these day. What to move, what to sell, what's been packed, what's left to pack, questions to ask, errands to run, tasks to accomplish. And today, we started on the most important list of all. It's a list of goodbyes, essentially. Restaurants that have been regular favorites. Shops full of items you'd never find anywhere else. Places that mark the occurrence of special moments, our best and most-loved haunts, worn in like an old pair of shoes until they fit us perfectly. And of course, and especially, it's a list of people. People who have made our lives so rich. People who have laughed and cried and shared their lives with us. People who have shaped who we are and who have given us courage and strength. Who have loved us and who have been dearly loved.

It's not that we'll never see these places and faces again. We will. We will return to Waco on a pretty regular basis and we'll revisit these haunts. We'll taste the tastes and smell the smells and feel those arms around our shoulders again and again. But we won't be here, we won't live here. This will no longer be our day to day. And we want to say farewell properly. To honor the importance of this time in our lives. These places. These people. We want to mark it, to acknowledge it. We want to carefully, lovingly, intentionally bring things to a close here before we pack it all away and take it with us to make a new place our own. It's a ritual. A sacred thing.

It's becoming a long list. And a really good one. I'm calling it Brooke and Keith's We Heart Waco Farewell Tour, and I'll be blogging through it as we mark the days, one by one, before we go.