I recently downloaded an app that shows me photos from exactly a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago and so on.

My phone is full of photos. Absolutely stuffed to the brim. They aren’t particularly good photos and oftentimes I forget to delete the minutia of daily life. I’ll come across a photo of where I parked my car at the airport or a picture of a receipt. Dumb stuff like that.

Lately I’ve been reliving one of the harder decisions we’ve had to make: Leaving our life in Colorado and moving in with my in-laws in Southern California.

The thing about having a kid, is that it can make hard decisions easy.

We’ve spent a year settling into our house behind my In-Laws. And now that I’ve installed this app, I’m looking back at all the pictures I took during that frantic two months where we went from making the decision to move, dealing with my Grandfather’s passing, packing up our apartment and then driving out with a baby in the backseat.

It seems so long ago now. My kid is 15 months old, we have our own little house, and even though I am beyond stressed out about money, and working, and just life in general, I can’t complain all that much.

My in-laws are lovely and they’ve been gracious with letting me plant flowers and vegetables all over their property.

Early this spring, I dug up the weeds bordering the vegetable garden and dumped a pack of native California seeds on the ground. I hoped to get a few California poppies out of it and part of me was hoping to feel a little more Californian in the process.

Leaving Colorado was hard. I’m from there and even though I’ve spent the majority of my life away from my home state, it’s still home in a way that other places aren’t.

So here we are, living in California, bumbling around trying to do our best. I gotta say though, I’m pretty thrilled with how the flowers turned out.

I’ve not been using my DSLR very much since having the baby. I really need to play with it more often!