Most years, my family travels to Nebraska for the 4th of July, and we set up camp in my mother-in-law’s basement. We raid her fridge for summery snacks, and we light fireworks that annoy her grouchy neighbor.

This year, we’ll do those things more fiercely than ever before. We’ll party harder. We’ll pledge more allegiance. And that grouchy neighbor had better duck and cover.

Because this year, after the fireworks, we’re moving to Sweden.

No kidding. The actual, European Sweden. For six months, we’re going to live in a place called Umea, and my husband will work at the university there.

Maybe right now you’re lunging for your smartphone, so that you can find Umea on a map. That happens to me a lot. Like at dinner parties. I’ll say, “Sweden,” and some guy I don’t know will ask, “Where in Sweden?” And then out comes the smartphone, with a teeny electronic map of Europe.

The guy will announce to everyone, “Oh man. That is WAY north!”

And then he’ll pass his phone around the table, so everyone can see that, yes, I am moving to a place very near the Arctic Circle.

The trip has been a long time in the making, so for several years, we’ve said to the kids, “When we move to Sweden, we’ll see the Northern Lights.” And, “When we move to Sweden, we’ll learn to like herring.” I’ve always felt as though we were telling a story—a fictional, far-out story starring our family and the Swedish Chef (with background music by Abba). But now it’s time, and we’re really going.

Over the years, my husband and I have gone many new places together. I took him to the first cotton farm he’d ever seen, and to Graceland. He’s taken me to wine country, to the Colorado Rockies, to a tiny New Hampshire inn draped with Christmas lights. Because of him, I drank my first Manhattan in Manhattan, staring hypnotized at Times Square.

But the best place he’s ever taken me is Ann Arbor, to this shady plot where our house stands. When we arrived, I was so eager to put down roots that I instantly pictured myself as a lifer. In my imaginary future, I was the old lady on this street—always here, always having been here, pulled toward our home like a magnet.

So, as our Sweden trip grew closer, I started thinking of it in terms of what I would miss. Our backyard. My Project Grow garden. An entire season of college football. Dimo’s and The Earle and Allmendinger Park. And—preposterously enough—those warm Michigan winters.

Like a kid who doesn’t want to sleep, I worried I would miss out on something good. Like a kid who doesn’t want to move away, I worried that my friends would forget me. Like a kid who hates being cold, I worried that Umea would be really, super cold.

And so I walked around frowny, like a kid who needs a talking-to.

There were voices, real and remembered, urging me forward. (Chance of a lifetime! Travel Europe with the kids! Finally — the answers to all your Viking-related questions!) But those voices didn’t really register until the day I made our plane reservations.

That was when our Swedish sabbatical morphed from story to something real. We had a departure date. We had a return date. We had a collection of wildly interesting unknowns. And I began to feel the way I'd always felt about trips with my husband: Thrilled—lucky—to be going with him.

When I loosened my white-knuckled grip on our life in Ann Arbor, I relaxed into the idea of all that adventure.

And now I’m ready to go.

After the fireworks, I’ll be ready to go.

Heather Heath Chapman is accepting all travel tips. She will continue to write for Annarbor.com during her family’s sabbatical in Sweden. You can reach her at heatherchapman1@me.com.