Beautiful social media videos have a way of leaving out the garbage cans and the rain, the traffic and the bad smells. I'm committed to showing you as much as I can about the real process (as we experience it) of moving to Portugal - the good and the bad.

When you pack up a life, you discover something unexpected — that the real inventory isn't the furniture or the boxes, it's the relationships. Moving to Portugal has made us honest about which ones we're carrying forward, and why.

There are moments in this process where the excitement of what's coming gets temporarily buried under the weight of everything that still has to happen first — and with twenty days left in this house, this is one of those moments. Not a crisis, not a reason to stop. Just — a lot.

We finally locked in our D7 visa appointment for April 15th in San Francisco — and then, before we could even finish celebrating, our realtor called with an offer on the house. This might actually be happening.
Update: But wait!… Disaster strikes.

Six months without retirement pay, enough paperwork to fill a small suitcase, unexpected costs, our home country fumbling with the chaos of war — and we're still going. Here's where we are on our journey to Portugal.

Traveling from Seattle to Rochester reminded us that social media still holds the power to reconnect lives and rekindle old friendships in meaningful ways. Yet using it well takes intention — choosing connection over noise while preparing for a life that will soon stretch across oceans.