Well, we are in Austin Texas right now! For some reason getting settled in to this home was a little more tricky – I think because we’ll be here for over 2 months! It’s hard to imagine being in a place for so long after we’ve had so many one month stays. We went to Ikea and Target and got a few things to make the place a little more cozy for us. We also put in a big photo order so that we can have some pictures in a photo album, and a few in some frames to take with us from place to place.
Before we got to Austin we were in Oklahoma City for a week! We celebrated our 6th wedding aniniversary over the first weekend. We went to the Hot Air Baloon festival in New Mexico – it was AMAZING!
Fiesta!
And then we headed to OKC! We stayed with Matt’s Uncles, Stephen and Drew for the week, and spent time with everyone on each of the different nights. We had so much fun! The Uncles are our age and we laughed so much every night and had so much fun, I didn’t want to leave! They are such an awesome and fun couple, and I wish we lived closer more often so we could hang out more. We got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Prophater, and Rachel and Brent (Matt’s Aunt and Uncle – also our age) they just had a baby! He was just 2 weeks old when we got to see him and of course I took a few photos
And then over the weekend was the family reunion part. 25 people were there! Matt’s Aunt Vickie and Uncle Scott hosted it in their AMAZING and beautiful house. The place has an awesome home theater with big huge comfy chairs. We had so much fun with everyone. Saturday afternoon Matt, me and our wonderful Aunt Leisel made lunch for everyone. We put on dancing music and danced the entire time – so much fun! Saturday night we plaed “Prophater Idol” (just like American Idol, but BETTER) we left around 12AM but we hear the party went on till after 3AM! Grandma and Grandpa even got into it singing along. How awesome and cool is that?
Sunday was the last day of the reunion and we had to pack and get going to Austin. We had so much fun the entire time we were there. We love our family so much and we can’t wait to go back to OKC for Thanksgiving. It’s awesome traveling full time – it means we get to see people a lot more than we used to.
Here is the big group photo!
group photo
from here
In a way it feels like we’ve been married forever, and I mean that in a good way. Six years ago today we got married, but sometimes it feels as though we have known each other for a lifetime. So much has happened in six years, it’s hard to even trace it all back. Now, we travel full time, we spend our afternoons exploring gorgeous areas of the country, we have this life that I’m not sure either of us could have imagined 6 years ago, and I’m not sure that we even thought to imagine it. Honestly, a little less than six years ago, I think we both thought if we made it through all that we were going through, being that I lived through it all that would become being very ill from diabetes, that would be a victory. Six years later, we travel, we hike in places like the Grand Canyon, and I am beating the disease that nearly took my life, a few times.
Some people ask us how we have such a great marriage – I’m not going to brag or anything, but married life has been pretty blissful, and there is a secret – get a life threatening disease a few days after you have your honeymoon! Ok, that’s not really the BEST way, but for being 2 weeks married, and being in an ER room with a doctor saying things like “We’re really not sure what we’re looking at here, but we need you both to remain calm” let’s just say, you really don’t care much about who takes out the trash.
The first few weeks of marriage were definitely the hardest weeks of our lives. Thank goodness for my Mom during that time – she came over and put our house together, wrote thank you cards to people for wedding gifts and did what any Italian Mom does – cooked.
Fear was a common feeling in that first part of being married. There were days when I had to call Matt at work, my blood sugar would sky rocket and he would have to wait with me on the phone, until I unlocked the front door, in case he had to call an ambulance, they would be able to get in the door faster. Every thing about you changes when something like a disease happens. We had to survive a very out of control diabetes before we could even think about other things. Up until last year I really did not think that I was going to win the battle, and it kind of felt like life was just going to keep throwing these curve balls. Just about when all hope was going out the window for me, when a doctor mentioned the words “partial amputation” we got a glimmer of hope in the ways of a different way of eating, skeptical I tried it anyway and with in a few weeks the disease that once held us both in its grips was finally starting to lose the war on my body and on our lives.
A lot happens when you get freedom. For Matt and I, freedom came over 5 years into marriage when I finally was able to go off of all of my medications, and my life no longer revolved around doctor visits several times a month, and scary words like amputation or arthritis or nerve damage.
And just around that time is when we up and left every thing to travel full time. We would not have been able to have this life if I was still as sick as I was, we were able to take all of that energy that was put into fighting this war on my body into things like figuring out how to spend a few months living on the pacific ocean. The decision to leave was an easy one, so much time had been spend surviving that we wanted to spend time living, really living. When the first month of marriage is spent hoping that you live to see the next month, making it to six years feels really big.
If you know Matt at all, you know that he’s beyond brave, and beyond strong. If you know what he’s gone through in the past few years, and how much he had to take on, well most people would not have been able to do what he’s done. But instead, from the beginning he was just strong, and he remained himself, he’d make jokes in ER rooms, he’d work just to make sure I was okay, he’d stay up all hours of the night because we had to wait to see if my blood sugar came down enough so that I could go to sleep, or wait to see if it was another ER visit. He never once complained, never once became angry, never once has he said anything negative about any of it, he just loves and then loves some more, because thats just the kind of person he is. He wasn’t given any instructions on how to handle this sort of thing, and while we had people in our lives, it was almost impossible for anyone to really understand.
When the chance to move away came up, we both knew that it was something we both needed to do. We needed to live our lives, to really be free. Our lives had been so planned out up till that point, so calculated, that moving away and being free from our old life was like this magic door that we were able to run through. We barely thought about the decision, we just knew that we needed it, like a long vacation after a very hard event, except the event was over 5 years.
Now, we live each day to it’s fullest. There is adventure in each day, and we don’t take that for granted at all. We both know how fragile things can be, and so we have decided to live life to its fullest every day that we can. We love each other more and more every day. I never thought it was possible to just have love that grows every moment, but that is what has happened. Every day is a new day to love one another, and for that there are no more words.
US!
It’s our last night in Sedona… These months go by so quickly, and each time we’re sad to leave the place we’ve just lived. This time seems harder, Seonda has been amazing in a million ways. But I thought we should just list out some of our favorite things about living here…
Our house! This place was really awesome and really big! The back deck is huge and has a perfect view of the red rocks.
The red rocks… and all of the trails.
Living in a city where there are light polution laws – you can see so many stars at night, it’s beautiful.
West Fork Trail – hiking through a canyon.
The Grand Canyon! Getting to see it a sunset was amazing.
A random stop on the way to the Grand Canyon – a national park with volcanos and tons of volcanic ash that had hardened over the years and lava! The same place had old native american ruins from 1100.
Jerome AZ – our favorite place! It’s a small town – 500 people and they get about 500,000 visitors a year – it was a ghost town, an old miners town – and then artists moved in – and started to give life to the ghost town. It is such a cool place – and it’s America’s most vertical city – it’s a workout just going a block!
D’lish – vegan cafe right near our house.
The Chocolate Tree – do I really need to explain? CHOCOLATE!
Downtown Sedona
The gym we joined while living here and the big salt water pool.
Hummingbirds
Watching monsoons come through – and the rainbows after.
The dramatic skies.
Talking to artists in Jerome.
Watching the red rocks change every imaginable color.
Playing kallah while eating dinner.
Taking naps in the big papasan chair.
Being able to visit with our Aunt Leisel, Uncle Greg and cousins Susie and Annie.
The nice big flat screen TV in the living room.
Prescott AZ – and the paths along the water that reflect the mounains.
Driving HWY 89A – through pine trees!
Not having to use our GPS (it’s pretty much 2 highways)
The first time driving upper red rock loop at sunset – it is breathtaking.
Having our new camera and new tripod while being here.
Watching the giant ravens fly over us – and listening to the sound of their wings flapping.
The sound of Oak Creek rushing through the canyon.
Waterfalls off of Oak Creek.
Having a griddle for pancakes (it’s the small things that make us happy) 
Dancing in the big living room.
Seeing the sunrise over the mountains in the mornings.
Crossing a river! With out severely hurting ourselves.
Sleeping in until the sun wakes up.
Going on drives to nowhere.
Oh it’s going to be hard to leave this month! We’re off to a weekend of celebrating our SIXTH year wedding anniversary! It will start at the New Mexico Hot Air Balloon Festival!
Be sure to check out our photo galleries: http://constantinearts.smugmug.com/travel
When we left DC back in January we had no idea what exactly was going to happen. We knew that we were not the types of people who settle into a place for a long time. Matt grew up overseas, and moving around a lot, he didn’t have the typical American childhood of growing up in the same house he was born.. and I moved all over when I was growing up. The concept of settling down has never really been something either of us was taught. And we’re really happy about that.
We love the life we’ve set up for ourselves. We love the simplicity of it, just having what we need and being able to travel to beautiful places to experience places at their best.
It seems that with each month we grow more and more in love with our lives, and we look ahead to the future and just see doing the same thing for the years to come.
Right now we have our living plans set through March 2010, and we’re currently figuring where we’ll be after that. Right now it looks like we might live in Montana and Colorado next summer and fall.
Every time we think of a new place we’d like to live, we come up with another place to live after that. We’re looking back in the Pacific Northwest, the San Francisco area, Wyoming, Moab, UT, Asheville NC, New York City, just to name a few. And of course, all of this travel around the US has lead us to think outside the box even more… we found out that it’s possible to live in the Bahamas for great monthly costs!
For some, it might seem crazy, but for us it seems completely normal. It’s us – it’s something that started when we were both really young.. ideas we started to form so long ago… Matt playing on trees in Nigeria or maybe it was driving across the country when his family moved back to the states after many years in South East Asia.. and for me, maybe it was moving town to town, dreaming of what things were like outside of the area of the country I lived. Maybe it was getting letters from my Grandmother who lived in Brazil, wishing one day I could be so brave as to go on amazing adventures.
Whatever it was, whenever it started, it seems that for us, it is just normal, just part of our life, a way to live that just seems to fit who we are, and maybe who we’ve been for a really long time.
So, we keep looking ahead and we are more and more excited about the adventures that await us in all of the places that we live.
A bird on a hike in the red rocks.
On our hike today in Prescott AZ
We’ve been in Sedona, AZ for a week now! It is such a gorgeous city! I really can’t believe it. It’s like living in the middle of a national park. We have a really nice and big house and from our back deck we see these mountains in the picture!
The town is small and nice, lots of little shops, and a lot of history.
Today we drove to Prescott and Jerome – more pictures to follow
Just wanted to give an update on our last week, we’re loving Sedona! This is a gorgeous area of the country!
We safely made it to Sedona! We got in last night. The house is really beautiful and BIG! We never know exactly what we’ll get when we have a new house, and we’re always really happy when we get a place that is really extra nice. But the best part? The floor to ceiling windows that go out to a big back deck with a perfect view of the red rocks! I think this might be in close competition to our ocean front view in San Diego!
We left Mission Beach on Sat morning and headed to Phoenix to visit with family. One of the best things about moving out west is that we have been able to visit with and get to know Matt’s Aunt Leisel, Uncle Greg and cousin, Susie. We absolute love them and just knowing that they are never that far away is really wonderful. We talked and laughed all weekend. And I got to cook a few big vegan meals for them! This time Annie was also visiting so it was a full house and just perfect. Every time we leave we are sad and can’t wait to get back the next time. We are the luckiest people to have them in our lives.
the crew
I’m taking this class right now about going after things that you’ve set for yourself – goals, dreams – whatever the case might be. The funny thing is, I had to stop and think if there was anything that I could imagine more for myself. Both Matt and I every day feel like we’re living in this perfect dream life. Last night we laid down on the sand for a few hours on a moonlit beach and watched the stars. I’m not sure if it gets any better. Our health is getting better and better every day, we both have projects that we are working on that are going beyond well.
San Diego has been wonderful, and I’m really sad to go this week! We’ve spent hours on the beach every day, hours in the water, and just lots of relaxing. We’ve also been working hard, but it all is worth it to keep up traveling full time.
In a week we’ll be in Sedona! I am really looking forward to it!!
We LOVE San Diego. Mostly, we love Mission Beach (and Pacific Beach). We’ve been here 18 days, and this time we haven’t really gone anywhere except the bay and the ocean which are both a few steps from our house.
Matt’s been body boarding a few hours a day – well until he had a slight injury (nothing to worry over). He’s also been kayaking in the bay. I’ve been enjoying beach work outs and lots of running – mostly at night in low tide. We love being active here.
We leave for Sedona, AZ in a couple of weeks, we’re really looking forward to it! We also get to stop in for the weekend to visit with Greg, Lesiel and Susie, which we ALWAYS enjoy so much!
Oh! And we just ordered a new camera! Ours had been acting up for about a month, and we decided that after 7 years, it was time to get a new one. We researched and tried a lot, and got an awesome one! I can’t wait! There will be new pictures soon.
We’re all waiting on Isabella to be born. Melissa, the 2 kids and Marcel are all doing okay. Marcel is still deployed, and won’t be home in time for the birth. It should be any day now.
