Two adults. Two kids. Ten years of stuff. Six suitcases.

Just over a year ago, our little family of four disassembled our entire American suburban life, piece by piece, for our move to Portugal.

We had the yard sales. The Facebook Marketplace blitz. We went to our local Buy Nothing group. All balancing the deadline of when we had to be out of the house we were selling, against what we still needed right up until that last time our key would ever turn in that lock.

The camper trailer went to a wonderful local couple who were so excited about it.

All of our other camping equipment went to a group of friends who needed it that weekend.

The grills. The dishes. The decor. Chairs. Tables. Yard hammock. All found new homes.

One of the most difficult things was the pets. Leaving our comfortable yard for a city apartment meant really looking at what was best for them, even if we didn’t want to give them up.

The Maine Coon went to a ranch, where he now lives out his life-long dream of being a wild barn cat in his own domain.

The “ditch cat” rescue, who was such a mess when she came to us, went to a mom, where that cat is the only fur-princess and is spoiled beyond belief (a nice break from running from toddlers!)

The terrier was driven to Memphis, two hours away, for a hand-off to a family friend. She’s an only pet now, and could not be better taken care of (seriously).

…but we didn’t tell the kids when she was going. I drove there and back while they were in school. We didn’t want that to affect their school day, or for them to have to be there for the actual hand-off. At the time it felt like that would have been too much. To this day we wonder if doing it that way was the right choice.

The border collie went to our best friends. Who lived with us when she first came to our home, who she knew well. She gets more walks now than she knows what to do with (and that’s saying something!)

The last cat came with us. Our little gray shadow.

There’s no sugar-coating that part, saying good-bye to so much of what we knew and loved was a huge leap.

We downsized. Unbought. Our hobbies, books, furniture, decor. The homey touches that we’d built up over years to make our home our home. One piece at a time, one hand-off at a time, our entire world shrank down from a comfortable home of ten years (complete with storage shed and a packed attic) and wound way down to what would fit on a plane.

Weighed down to the ounce. One checked bag each. 50 pounds (or, 23 kilograms), obsessively weighed again and again to make sure we were at the exact limit for a checked bag. In one case, it came down to individual socks (I now have one set of three socks).

We quickly realized it wouldn’t all fit. The redwood chess table my dad made, of course, but more than we thought just wouldn’t make the cut.

A small hoard of stuff became what I called our “emotional support box.” That stash of things too precious to get rid of, but not practical enough to make the first trip. A shell collection. An extra pair of boots.

It didn’t come with us on the first trip, but it was comforting just knowing it was still there where we would see it again. I’ve been amazed many times since how often and how much that extra just being there could mean.

Six suitcases, two carry-ons, and a cat carrier (top left, she’s sneaky).

There was a massive emotional process that mirrored the physical. Getting rid of so many things was - in a way - an extended and difficult good-bye.

We were giving away memories, bits of our history, and some fairly big parts of what we considered who we were up to then.

That feeling came in waves, too.

For example, we staged the house for photos to sell it. Seeing our space so emptied out was harder than I expected. Then later, when we first stepped in to our new apartment, even as excited as we were, going from one empty house to another one was jarring all over again, in a powerful and deeper way.

No comfort to fall in to after a long day, and no comfort to escape back to where you came from.

We were stuck in free-fall, in this awkward space between two lives.

All of that to say, this part was hard. It took time, it took planning, it was a lot of moving parts, and all of it was giving up things that were important to us, for an uncertain future.

How did we get here?

One day our oldest, our daughter, came home. From Kindergarten.

She said they had had a drill, I think she even called it an Active Shooter drill.

Her teacher had told her class they “All would have died,” because “they wouldn’t be quiet.”

Would have died. Been shot. In Kindergarten.

It didn’t even have to actually happen, her life was already overshadowed by a threat that would probably never go away.

Drill after drill. Metal detectors. Armed guards. And still, worse every year.

That’s my baby, and that’s not the world she’s going to grow up in. Not her, not my son. We won’t have to obsessively watch the local news, jump at every siren, listen to every leaf rustling, every time our kids are in school.

That was one reason, a big one. And at the end of the day, that was the thing that made us break down and decide that we couldn’t keep going like this.

So we abandoned our old life. We took apart this thing we’d spent so long building. Reluctantly stepped away from the family that was our support network. Our friends. Our beloved animals. All in the hopes that there was better out there.

We looked all over the world for where might be the place. A thorough spreadsheet of childhood outcomes, cost of living, general safety, language barrier, if we could actually move there - and a LOT more metrics. Days of sunshine, medical policies, work prospects. At first we were looking at cities in the United States, with a lively debate between Minneapolis and Traverse City.

Then… we went ahead and added in some cities in other countries, just to see it, and the decision quickly made itself. If we wanted to raise our kids as safe and successfully as we wanted to, the international cities we looked at just blew past the US ones on almost every metric.

Crucially, and sadly, because they weren’t in the US. Where the problems we most wanted to escape are endemic.

So, we looked at where we could actually move to try to get a shorter list.

Italy didn’t want us to move there. Denmark was challenging, but maybe, if we could handle the winters. Tokyo, Sydney were so far away.

And then there was Portugal.

My first vote all along, as we’d fallen in love with Portugal during a visit in 2022. We were surprised then how extraordinary the country was. That was before we even ran it through the giant spreadsheet.

The garden planted by the sea.

We did a driving tour of the country in 2022. The Algarve, the Spanish border (Tavira, what a gem!) up river to Marvão. Douro valley. Porto. Nazaré. We hadn’t planned to visit Lisbon at all, but caught COVID on our way out and weren’t allowed to re-enter the United States until we’d quarantined.

So… we had an extra week just being in Lisbon. Keeping to ourselves, and learning to live here. How to shop for groceries, go to the doctor, do your laundry. The little day-to-day things you don’t really do on vacation.

It was so much easier, so much more beautiful than we’d been prepared for. That experience stuck with us for years after.

It turned out Portugal had a Visa program we could get in to, where we could apply for long-term residency, and then potentially become citizens. Our kids could grow up with options here.

And this is where travel preparations took a turn. After settling on Portugal, we finally had something to go to, just just away from. Something to be excited about. Part adventure, part dream life, part promising future. A place where we could just be a family and raise our kids.

So we went for it. Both feet, all-in.

Miles of paperwork.

Visa application.

Consulate appointment (!)

More paperwork.

Waiting. So much waiting.

And then, suddenly, we had to be in Portugal within a certain window for our Visas to apply. What was an endless wait flipped in to a rush. It was time to go (!) to what we hoped would become our new home.

As much sadness as we carried walking away, how incredibly heavy the lack of something like a house full of junk could feel, the lingering emptiness of our beloved pets being far from us - there was still this brightness, this all-consuming excitement, that after all the stress, we weren’t just leaving something behind. We were going to Portugal.

It’s been a year now, a little more than, and every day this place barely feels real.

Coming from the United States, it’s exotic and different.

Coming as parents…

What a place to raise these kids!

They’re so loved here. They’re thriving in every way. They have great friends, daily adventures. They’re learning to bike in a kind of innocence I’d thought for so long they would never really have.

We can rest so much easier that they actually will grow up, and they’ll grow up in this place they can actually explore. Surrounded by a place, and people, who will protect them.

That’s the very short version of a very complicated story.

Next time we’ll cover what it was like when we first arrived!

Written by Noah Hallett & Jensyn Hallett

You can follow more of our adventures here on Instagram

Learn some Portuguese here on TikTok