Adam and I had our NINE year wedding anniversary June 3rd. Avery Ana's first birthday followed the next day (letter to you soon lil' roo). This has been an insane month, to put it mildly. It has also been a month of intense reflection, and I've spent many hours contemplating the steps that brought us right here, to this point in our lives. We've got a lot going on, and soon I'll be able to talk about it.We recently went to the wedding of our good friends Chris and Laura in Linville. On the way home, we hung a left at Pumpkin Run and took a roll up to our old mountain home in Wilkes County. The remote cabin community has become a "gated neighborhood" in our seven year absence. We had pulled a drive by to Buck Mtn. about a year ago, and couldn't get in. This year, however, an open house was going on and they had the gate code written on a cardboard sign. Fancy, I know. Our log cabin had been painted a lighter color and new cabins had appeared close by. It almost looked a little town up there. Even the waterfall was now overlooked by a little cabin; a little cabin that we will most certainly rent for a weekend at some point!
How we came upon Wilkes County in the first place is still remarkable to me. We had been living in Normandy, TN. Adam was scientisting it up for Tyson Foods, and they were looking to move him back to NC. We were pretty sure we didn't want this job, but it was a
free trip home-ish, so we went for the interview. While Adam was off selling himself, the spouse of this interviewer/future boss took me to the Wilkes County Schools central office. I had not planned on teaching at that point. I was in the midst of the interview process to become a Red Lobster manager after spending six months waiting tables. Yeah, I know. Anyway, within three minutes of stepping foot inside the building, I was introduced to Michael Matheny. He was a principal, looking for an eighth grade English teacher, though he had only dropped in that day to meet up with a friend. The next thing I knew, I was in the middle of an interview myself, though I didn't realize it until I got a call a few days later back in TN, offering me the job. Adam also got an offer, so we decided to go for it and make a move. We never doubted it or questioned it, but all of our friends there were in disbelief that we would just pack up our life and leave, without remorse, without sadness, without doubt--just because we wanted to do it right then, and we assumed it would work out. We went with Adam's father, now referred to as Papa Jim, to search for our first home to buy. We looked at a lot of homes. A lot of homes. We took a long drive out from Wilkesboro to this cute little mountain community, Buck Mountain, of Purlear. Gravel roads, small log cabins, beautiful views, and we were hooked. We looked at two cabins, but when we walked into our cabin, we let out big sighs and knew we'd found it. I'm not sure I can even describe how perfect this spot was, so I don't think I'll even try.
This was such a great time in our lives. We were thirty minutes from a grocery store and twenty from a gas station, our friends were too far away to see with any sort of regularity, and we were blissful. It was just us, our two dogs and the monkey-rat-pig-dog Bijou, the cat. We wouldn't have wanted to live there forever, but it was two of the best years of our lives, and I'm glad we packed it up for the experience. It brought us here.
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Life has not resumed the normalcy that I spoke of last post and will elaborate next week. We're good, we're happy, we're figuring it all out. Change helps to cleanse and restore us, right?
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Avery Ana had her first ice cream cone with actual ice cream IN it. We'd been giving her a just cone when Gracen got the real deal, and Ave eventually figured out she was being cheated.
