It isn’t easy to leave

Robert and Dorothy Bode moved to Minnesota from Seattle 15 years ago as a young, married couple without children. Recently, they packed up their stuff from their northeast side Minneapolis home and their 10 children and headed back west, to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Robert took a new job. "Its big for our kids ..they have never lived anywhere else. But they are all with us in the decision even though it hurts.�It's simply a new leg of our journey," Dorothy recently wrote. "Moving hurts when the living has been done well.� If there are tears and a ripping in our hearts then we have succeeded in really living and not gotten lost in the busyness of life.� This move will leave an ache in every one of us and by that we know we have loved and been loved well." The Bode family - Dorothy and Robert and children John, 13; Leah, 11; Jesse, 10; Josh, 8; James, 7; Lydia, 6; Noel, 5; Lily ,4; Joseph, 2,; Jeremiah 2; and Isaac, 1 month - recently prepared to spend the night in sleeping bags on the livingroom and diningroom floors before setting out on the journey to their new home in Colorado. (Jamie Hutt — DML - DML - Star Tribune Star T/The Minnesota Star Tribune)