Oh the Places You'll Go!!

The prompt for today was supposed to be about 5 passions I have. However, I feel like I've really addressed those in previous posts about my three wishes, my dream job, and others. I don't want to start sounding like a broken record.

So instead, I thought I would tell you about some of the places I've lived...there have been a lot!

I was born in Watsonville, California, which is an agricultural area on the central coast of California, not too far from where we live now. It is the Strawberry Capital of the World, and there have always been jokes about that having to do with my hair color. =)

For a little while, we lived in Santa Cruz while my mom and dad were married. They and their parents were all born around there. Then, my mom moved down south, and I have lived all over Southern California; from the high desert of Antelope Valley, east to Chino, with my dad for awhile in West Covina, Azusa, Glendora; down to Lakewood, Seal Beach, and Long Beach for my school years with my mom and step-dads.

So, I'd consider myself quite the citizen of Southern California.

In the middle of that time somewhere, I had a time that I spent in the mountains of Colorado with my Auntie Leslie and Uncle Chuck.

Long Beach was a really great place to grow up, and I still have great fondness for it, and for friends who still live there. It was close to the beach with amazing weather, and relatively safe, at least where we lived. I am still proud to say I grew in Long Beach if anyone ever asks.

Familiar Long Beach faces

Upon graduating from Millikan High School in Long Beach, I set off to Sydney, Australia for college. I went to school in Drummoyne, a suburb of Sydney, and lived in the suburbs of Leichhardt (Little Italy), Canada Bay, and also Drummoyne. Somehow, with a little help, I managed to live in one of the more expensive and beautiful cities in the world as a college student...and I didn't starve! I love and miss Australia, but as I graduated and tried to figure out how to stay in the country, it became apparent that short of marrying a citizen or remaining illegally, it was time to move on.

Don't cry for me, Australia...

I traveled back to the US to live with my dad (your Papa John). He lived in Lakewood, CO, which is a suburb of Denver. I lived with Papa John until the day I married your daddy. What a gorgeous place to live!

In Summer or winter!

Then the both of us moved out to San Jose to plant a church, and we have been here ever since. It's where you were born (well, technically in the hospital in Santa Clara), and it's where you will most likely grow up and go to school. Sometimes I am ungrateful and whine about how expensive it is to live here, but I know that God has brought us here and that He will sustain us.