2022 In Review
It’s hard to believe that this is the 10th Year in Review post I’ve written, that we’re already in our 10th year of marriage and have just celebrated our 10th Christmas as a married couple. On one hand, it feels like that time flew by, or that we can’t possibly be old enough to be celebrating these milestones…but on the other, we’ve done so much during that time that it feels like there’s no possible way it has only been 10 years. Along with that milestone, we’re also experiencing lots of endings and beginnings now as we wrap up 2022 and prepare for 2023. It feels like the perfect time to sit down and reminisce on the first half of the year when things were “normal,” and reflect on all the changes that took place in the second half. Let’s begin!
We started off the year with a big snowstorm on our last day with family in Iowa. The following day, we made the drive back to our home in Nebraska and resumed our normal routine there. At the beginning of the year, we knew we likely wouldn’t be living in Nebraska by the end of 2022, and that made it easier to enjoy our time spent there, even in the winter. We continued section hiking the Wabash Trace Trail in Iowa, took lots of day trips to different lakes and parks around the city, and made a day trip to Lincoln.
At this time, we didn’t know if we would still be with the Navy by the end of the year. Curtis’ commitment was almost up, and it was time to make that decision. Honestly, he really wanted to stay in, but he wanted to transfer to an engineering division rather than continue on the submarine officer career path. Throughout the month of January, he worked on submitting the paperwork to be considered for the transfer. We thought that staying in the military was really the easiest choice because neither of us are great at making big decisions, and having someone else tell us what to do and where to live has worked out so far. We put it all in God’s hands and trusted that if He wanted us to continue in the military this would work out, and if not we prayed He would make the right path clear to us.
Then at the beginning of February, we received the answer: the detailers had denied Curtis the option to even be considered for a transfer because their submarine officer retention rates are so low. But while they could say no to his request, they couldn’t make him stay in, so instead he turned in his resignation. With that decision made for us, we began dreaming big about what we wanted for our future life as civilians!
Since Curtis wouldn’t officially be out of the Navy until the end of November, the first half of the year was pretty normal — we knew a big change was coming, but we still had plenty of time to enjoy where we were. In February, we did some hiking in the Loess Hills and on the Wabash Trace Trail. We ended the month with taking a big bucket list Spring Break trip to the South, where we hit 4 new state high points (for a total of 29 + DC), visited lots of National Park administered sites, hiked and kayaked in the Ozarks, and I entered into Alabama for the first time; my 50th state (and our 49th state together)!
We spent the rest of the month of March at home, going for walks and making the most of our Omaha Zoo pass to see the baby elephants. At the beginning of April, we attended our last Submarine birthday ball, then spent a weekend with family in Iowa to celebrate spring birthdays, one sister’s senior prom, and another sister’s baby shower. Later that month, we hosted my parents over Easter weekend, and we celebrated Curtis’ 29th birthday with a walk on the Wabash and at the Maker’s Space in Glenwood, two of our favorite ways to spend weekends at home.
At the beginning of May, we took a trip to the CO/UT/WY tri-state area, where we discovered many new favorite places such as Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, Red Fleet State Park, and Dinosaur National Monument. We’ve known for a long time that we’re “desert people,” but on this trip we learned that we even enjoy kayaking in the desert the most. On our drive back, we did some snowshoeing in the snowy Rockies for the first time, and finished our goal of visiting all 93 counties in Nebraska.
Immediately after that trip, we returned to Iowa to meet our new niece and celebrate Mother’s day with family. We took another weekend trip in mid-May to complete two more of our Nebraska goals: seeing our last 3 county courthouses and kayaking the Niobrara River. Later, we returned back to Iowa for two different weekends in May and June to celebrate my youngest sister’s graduation from high school and my mom’s retirement from homeschooling. We were also able to spend more time with our niece, grandparents, and Curtis’ family while there for my sister’s grad party. After we returned from Iowa, we took a break from traveling for a few months so we could focus on the changes that would soon be happening.
In July, we celebrated Charlotte’s 8th birthday and our 9th wedding anniversary, and finally hiked our last 2 sections of the Wabash Trace Trail. Curtis finished his big topographic map after over a year of working on it. He also finished his master’s program, graduating from Penn State University in August with a Masters in Systems Engineering. We did some more local adventures to finish our Nebraska bucket list — kayaking in DeSoto NWR, hiking some of the MoPac Trail, and visiting Freedom Park. And after a month of applying for jobs, interviews started happening and the changes started to feel more real.
Throughout the interview process, we enjoyed being able to picture ourselves living in so many different places, with Curtis working all types of different jobs (mostly in the Nuclear field) and we could see ourselves being content with most of these different lives we could be living. However, while we imagined that it would be fun to move to each of the different places initially, it was hard to think about living in one place for much longer than 3-5 years. Frequent moves have become our favorite part about being in the military, and we couldn’t shake the feeling that we just weren’t ready to truly settle down and commit to any one place.
Then, we heard about a position that sounded like it would be perfect for us in that mindset: A job that would give us the opportunity to travel frequently; to live a lot of different places for a short amount of time. At the beginning, we were really idealizing it, and we realized there was a good chance that it wouldn’t work out the way we were imagining — for instance, the whole reason I was on board was because I was hoping that Charlotte and I could join Curtis everywhere he went, and we were hoping that we could be allowed to drive everywhere to make that more feasible. Curtis asked lots of questions during each interview, and as things progressed there weren’t any red flags that came up. So after many discussions, prayers, and hypothetical plans made, we were ready to say yes when they made him an offer!
Once he had accepted the offer at the end of August, things started to move quickly. We put in our 30 day notice for our apartment and started packing. We made plans for a celebratory vacation to take place between leaving his position in Nebraska and starting his new job. We traveled to Iowa to visit my family over Labor Day weekend and shared the good news. While there, we also started looking at condos in our hometown, thinking that it made sense to have a ‘home base’ close to family since we would be on the road half the time. We started to realize that the idea of traveling all the time and also starting a new home was a bit more complicated than we had originally thought, but we pushed through the feelings of doubt and trusted that everything would eventually fall into place.
It really felt like we were on track with this move by the middle of September, so we had no qualms with taking one last week-long trip with the Navy up to Minot, North Dakota. As we were driving out of Omaha, I got a call from our mortgage broker saying we were pre-approved for a loan, and I started texting with our realtor about a place we had looked at the week prior. But then, once we were about an hour out of Omaha, Curtis got a call from none other than the Navy detailer who had denied his transfer last February. He told him that they were ready to give him exactly what he wanted, all he had to do was sign the paperwork and they could have us back in Upstate New York in a month! Curtis asked for a few days to think it over, and once he hung up our minds started racing with questions. Just a few months prior, we would have absolutely jumped on this deal and gladly continued on with the Navy. But now that Curtis had a new job offer, and had seen a lot of other opportunities should it not work out, we weren’t quite sure what to do. We spent the long weekend drive up to Minot debating our options and writing extensive pros and cons lists.
By the time we reached North Dakota, we had become certain with our decision to leave the Navy. There are far too many reasons to list here why we made that decision, but a major one was Curtis’ interest in nuclear power, and he was ready to jump in to that field with a much more hands-on position. He also saw this job as a great way to gain experience so that maybe someday, he could work for other companies in the nuclear field that are designing and building new reactors.
And so, he called the detailer and told him we wouldn’t be taking the offer. I contacted our realtor again to prepare our offer, and as soon as we made it to the hotel in Minot we signed the paperwork electronically and submitted the offer. Once that was taken care of, we walked across the street to grab dinner. While we were waiting, Curtis received an email from none other than one of those other nuclear companies he had specifically mentioned when listing his main reason for not staying with the Navy. All we could do was laugh at the timing — Curtis had tried to get in contact with them for months, and today HAD to be the day they finally reached out. He did end up interviewing with them and made a few connections, and while it isn’t the right fit for him now, it made us realize that we had no business putting offers on homes when we a) weren’t sure how long we’d be with his new job and b) wouldn’t even be around for over half the time. We decided that it was okay to not have everything figured out, and trust that God will make it abundantly clear when and where we’re supposed to put down roots!
We returned to Omaha after our time in Minot, a little less sure of what we were doing but also excited for all the opportunities that lay before us. Curtis worked his last couple weeks at STRATCOM, we revisited a lot of our favorite places around Omaha one last time, and then we packed most of our belongings in a Pod, not quite sure when or where we’d see them again.
On October 3rd, we said goodbye to our home in Nebraska and set off on our celebratory road trip to the Southwest to enjoy hiking and kayaking in the desert, and seeing the fall colors in the mountains. We saw a lot of places that had been on our bucket list for years, revisited a few favorite spots, and took Charlotte to the Grand Canyon and into Nevada, which was her 48th state.
After a few weeks on the road (and our longest record of nights spent camping in a row) we drove back to Iowa where we spent a few weeks with my family. We enjoyed spending time with our niece, going on Fall adventures with my parents, and I got to celebrate my 30th birthday with family. Also during this time, I was let go from the job I had worked at for over 8 years. It was unfortunate because I had been counting on continuing to work remotely when we started our nomadic lifestyle. Because of this, I also had to move this website to a new server, which has been and continues to be a time consuming task. But I trust that God has something else planned for me, and I am seeing this as a true “fresh start” for my 30’s since everything else in my life has been changing!
At the beginning of November, we went on our first trip for Curtis’ new job, traveling to North Carolina for two weeks of training. It was our first time being back in the Carolinas since we lived there in 2016, and we enjoyed being reminded of all the nice things about the South — such as warmer weather in November! We made it back to Iowa in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, then I spent some more time with them while Curtis returned to NC for a few more weeks of training in December. We celebrated Christmas with my family in Iowa, then finished out the year with traveling to Michigan to spend time with Curtis’ family.
Looking back, I don’t think things turned out at all how we expected them to at the beginning of the year. We expected to be settled down somewhere else, either at a new assignment with the Navy or having chosen a more “traditional” engineering job in the nuclear field. We didn’t even know that jobs like what Curtis ended up with existed — now here we are, excited to have the first 6 months of 2023 planned out for us, knowing we won’t be in any one place for more than a month! We’re so ready to get started and to see what God has planned for us in this stage of life, and to see how this job works out, where it takes us, and how long we can keep up a semi-nomadic lifestyle.
Happy New Year friends! We hope God blesses you richly in 2023, and that maybe our paths will cross…somewhere, wherever we are!
Travel Stats for 2022:
- 29 States visited (3 new)
- 1 Province visited (new)
- 385 Counties Visited (204 new)
- Completed NE counties & courthouses
- 4 State High Points
- 28 National Park Site Units visited
- 4 State Capitol Buildings seen
- 1 Whispering Giant statue
Check out our previous Year in Review posts:
2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015 / 2014 / 2013
