THOUGHTS ON MOVING SLASH LIFE

^^ Scott Hiatt Photography everyone. He is becoming quite the little artist behind the camera. Please email scottishottphotography@gmail.com for bookings. Anyways....

Moving to Richmond has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. For awhile, I felt silly admitting that because hellloooo there are like 99 billion bigger problems going on in the world right now. I don't really have any right to think my life is hard.

But you know what? Life is hard. If it were easy there would never be growth. And that is the way it is for e v e r y single person. There were so many times in the past three months when I would see friends who had made recent moves post stuff on social media, yes I know social media is a lie let's stop beating a dead horse please, and it just looked like they had it all figured out and they had adjusted so easily. And I couldn't help but wonder why it was so hard for me. Why did I suck so much at change?

Change is a part of life. Whether that is change we are ready to deal with, change we think we can deal with, or change we don't want to deal with, it is change nonetheless. And it is going to happen. I realized I could sit on the couch, try to block out the real world, and think about all the ways my life could be better, or I could embrace my current situation and make the most of it.

I realized that every second I spent not adjusting to my new situation, was a second I would never get back. I realized I didn't want to live my life hiding from hard things. And I realized that even though I was coming to these realizations, there were still going to be hard days. Days I am reaaaally not going to want to change. But that is ok. I think that this is true for everyone. I know the feelings of doubt, confusion, not being good enough, wanting to hide in bed forever, are feelings everyone has experienced. I was not alone. I still am not alone. There is something hard going on in everyone's life, but it is not our place to judge whose problems are bigger. The only thing we can really do, is try to find happiness in our own situations and love those around us. And that is what I intend to do from this point on.

Yes one of my many challenges in life is being terrible at adjusting to change. But there is so much change ahead of me, I better learn how to get used to it. So three cheers for embracing the new, looking at the positives and being happy. I dare you to do it too.

ITALY VIDEO

HERE IT IS! HERE IT IS! HERE IT IS!

I think we will be playing this on repeat the next few days so we can feel like we are back there. 

Enjoy!

LAST NIGHT IN ITALY

^^My hair lasted down for a approximately 30 seconds after this picture.

I wouldn't have wanted to spend our last night in Italy any other way. We grabbed dinner, had one last gelato, and spent hours talking on the Spanish Steps. It was all so surreal. I could not believe we had made it to Italy, let alone our time there was ending. Everything was changing. We were going to be starting our real life, and I just wanted to hold onto that night forever. 

Here is to the most amazing, life changing trip. It was the perfect end to a chapter in our lives. I am so happy that we will have these memories to hold onto forever. Take it from two people who were going to save all of their money and start working right after college. Don't do it. Spend what you have and go see the world. Scott and I realized we have the rest of our lives to be responsible and plan and save. When would we have another opportunity to be completely free to travel with our best friends? You can't put a price tag on the experiences we had and the memories we were able to make.

Thanks for everyone who has been following along! It has been SO much fun to relive our trip through these pictures. This blog is usually a place where I share snippets of our lives so if you want to keep reading you should! I can't promise they will be as exciting as these Italy posts, and I definitely will not be posting as frequently, but sometimes we do fun things.

And if these posts haven't made you feel like you were on the trip with us... THE ITALY VIDEO SHOULD- which will be posted this week! 

LeHiataly2015 forever and ever. 

HI WE ARE IN ROME... AGAIN!

^^We also wanted to go see the new LDS Temple that was under construction. We attempted to navigate the bus system to get there, but we ended up at an Ikea across the highway. Close enough!

^^ a little construction won't stop me from living out my Lizzie McGuire fantasies

^^Snuck a picture of that amazing ceiling, I am breaking rules left and right here. 

Old Bridge Gelato- would recommend 100 times over again.

I could not believe that was the last full day of our trip! How was time passing so quickly?? We booked our flights in and out of Rome, so at the end of our trip, we got to return to the eternal city! We throughly enjoyed joking about the fact that we could use phrases like "I went to the Vatican my second time in Rome" or "Italy is my favorite. I have been to Rome twice." We got back into Rome late afternoon, so we spent the rest of that day just enjoying the city.