It was a great weekend!

We spent the evening at home on Friday with veggie pizza and salads, and then hanging out with my brother who was up for an overnight visit. He was here for Saturday morning and then headed out around noon. It feels so strange yet to only be six hours from my family, versus the thirteen hours that we had from New York to South Carolina.

We spent Saturday morning having a leisure breakfast and sitting out on the deck, soaking up the really gorgeous weather right now! I was expecting to have to deal with the extreme heat of August that the south typically has this time of year, but it’s actually been really nice since we’ve been here. Woot! We don’t have near the view that we did in New York from our deck, but we have a fenced in yard and a little tiny fish pond (which i say is our little consolation prize for leaving our lake view) and so we still love being outside when we can. We did a quick run into town to Lowes later in the morning and then spent the rest of the day working on house projects and organizing. We had taken down an upper section of cabinets in the kitchen to replace with some open shelving, so Ben was working on that and I’m excited to get them put up so I can get my stacks of dishes and drinking cups and coffee mugs off of the counter top. We also had a perfectly gorgeous rainstorm that came through in the afternoon, so I was of course delighted with that, hehe.

Later in the evening, we went walking around our neighborhood introducing ourselves to our neighbors and also bribing them to like us with some little coffee cakes that I made, hehe. We weren’t able to meet all the ones close to us yet, since some weren’t home…but the ones we did meet were friendly and sweet. Our neighborhood feels quiet so far, and we like that. We’re at the end of the subdivision, so we don’t get much through traffic and the main things you hear are mowers and dogs. Living in the suburbs does take some getting used too though…you just can’t just go walking around in your underwear with the window blinds open or play music as loud as you want or let trash in the driveway. We’re used to living in the country with no one around so it’s a little different, but we are enjoying it so far!

We went into the city for a breakfast date on Sunday morning, relaxed at home for the rest of the day, and then went to the evening service at a church in the city that we wanted to visit. We’re churching-hunting, I guess you could say, which is both a little overwhelming and pretty exciting. We don’t know where exactly God will lead us to plug in so we’re just taking it one week at a time for now. The service we were at was really beautiful and full of life and it gave my heart such a good shot of energy and inspiration. It was a little loud for Ayla, so I spent half of the service in the nursing mama’s room with her…and was totally shocked to see Christa Black come walking in the nursery with her little Birdie girl! I loved her book so much and follow her on Instagram and didn’t realize she even lived in Nashville. It was the sweetest thing to see her in person with her tiny baby girl and talk to her for a few minutes. #starstruck

Here are five things I love:

– this pretty thing
– this song
– this inspiring word
– this great cause
– this delicious looking cake

What about you: what was the highlight of your weekend?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Hi from Nashville, dears!

We said goodbye to our first family home in upstate New York on Thursday morning and it was both bitter and sweet. Bitter because we loved our home and our lake view and our community…and sweet because we feel so much excitement about being in Tennessee and the things we will experience, do, and learn in our new home. We got our things all loaded by noon on Thursday and jumped in the car to make the journey south. It took us a lot longer than normal thanks to a million work zones, a few issues with our moving truck load, and a poor baby girl who was worn out from all the activities going on for the past week, but we finally made it to Ben’s brothers house around three o’clock pm. Our load didn’t make it to our house until Friday evening, but we spent the day doing some cleaning, making a lot of trips to Target (there’s one five minutes from my house!! help!!), and then scurrying to get everything in that we could once the truck arrived with our stuff. My parents and sister were up to help us and Ben’s brother came over too, so we had lots of good help and got the furniture inside and beds set up before it was too late.

Saturday was a big day of more unloading, unpacking, and trying to make sense of the utter chaos of boxes and totes and piles of stuff all over the house. At least by the end of the day, the utter chaos was diminished down to just chaos, hehe. Our house is about half the size of the one in New York, and while I really like the new house and having a smaller place, it does take some creativity to get everything put away. I didn’t think we had that much stuff, but moving makes you want to be like “why do we have so much stuff?!?” We did some pretty good purging even before we left and now I’m tempted to do even more, ha! We worked hard all day and then decided to go into the city for dinner that evening. After a forty-five minute wait just to get a table and another forty-five minute wait to get our food, we figured out that The Pharmacy really does actually live up to it’s reputation. Maybe I was just hangry by the time we got our food, but it was literally one of the best burgers and sweet potato fries of my life.

My family was still here for Sunday morning so we decided to go out for brunch at one of our favorite spots before they headed for home.  Ben, Ayla, and I spent the rest of the day at home just relaxing and recovering from the craziness of the move. We’re big Sabbath-rest people and even though there are unemptied boxes and piles of laundry and stuff hanging around that needs to be put away, it can all wait for another day. It’s so nice to have the big move behind us and be in our new home and thinking about un-packing rather than packing!

Have a great week!

Here are five things I love:

– this t-shirt
– this sign
– these challenging thoughts
– this cool product
– this tasty meal

What about you: have you ever moved + what are your tips for getting through the transition with ease?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!