Core Truths

  From the moment we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway in June 2018, we knew the mountains were calling our name. Sometime following our third trip to these mountains this past summer, I began following Blue Ridge Mountains hiking and waterfalls groups on social media. At that time, pursuing our dreams and moving to the mountains wasn’t even an option. We had a hefty mortgage and loads of student loan debt. We had just put in a pool. It was in these groups that I saw people actually hiked on the Blue Ridge Parkway during the winter months when the road is closed to traffic. I would always show Opal people’s posted pics in disbelief. I knew I wanted that to be us. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. But I knew I wanted to hike the snow-covered Parkway. Here we are just a few months later. We traded it all in and are now debt free. Today after church, we came home, bundled up, and headed to the Parkway. We took our traditional selfie with the National Park sign, and then we hiked on...

Twenty years ago today, we walked down that aisle and out of the church doors together, hand-in-hand, ready to start our new life together. All of our hopes and dreams waiting just on the other side of the lives we had previously known. We were young, eager, and excited, and while we didn’t have it all planned out, we had faith and we just knew. For many of those years, we held tightly to those hopes and dreams and so many plans. Much of what we dreamed about came true, much of what we worked towards happened, and much of what we had planned to do, we did. It has been a good life. One year ago today, at our anniversary dinner together, we did something we hadn’t done in years. We talked about new dreams, and new hopes, and new plans. We were now older (sometimes if feels like much older), hopefully wiser, and the things we wanted out of life had changed over the years. One year ago today, we sat at a bar table outside of the movie theater as we waited for our showtime. We probably soun...

And for us, what a very new year it is. New house, new town, new beginning. None of this is quite as new or quite as exciting as us starting this new year DEBT FREE! That’s right, we are rolling into 2021 without student loans, without car payments, without any other consumer debt. This is very new. So new, we have never experienced this ever before…ever. Our first New Year together as a married couple, we were already up to our eyeballs in student loans and car payments, and every year after that seemed to carry more debt with it than the year before. We never questioned what we were doing or when or how we would ever pay it all off. We never had a plan until February 2020. There were so many things we wanted to do, so much more in life we wanted to experience, but every time we put pen to paper, the monthly payments held us back from living life the way we wanted to live it. That’s when we started having our weekly budget meetings and really getting serious about digging our way out ...

  This. This is the place where we were led. This is the house we will call home. When we took our quick trip to North Carolina in October, our plan really and truly was only to see the fall foliage and we thought it would be a good time to scope out towns. We wanted to see if there was a town or place or area that felt like a good fit so we could one day hone in on finding our next home. We had a few towns on our radar and had been casually checking houses for sale in these places. But we made a deal that on this trip there would be no realtor and no seeing houses. We wanted to enjoy the scenery and we knew we could always look at houses later. Much later is what we thought. But there was this one house. Since the summer, Brandon and I both had been looking on various realty sites. I mean, not much else to do on a Friday night, right? While Brandon would scope out just about anything that hit the market, I would always ask, “What about the white house with the circle drive? Is it ...

One of my favorite memories from when Brandon and I were dating and engaged was driving around, eating Blizzards from Diary Queen, and dreaming. We would dream out loud with each other for hours and hours. We would say all of the things we want, all of the things we want to do, all of the things we want to be. At some point, we stopped. At some point, it’s like we accepted some reality of our lives and ourselves and we stopped dreaming. Or we at least stopped saying it out loud. When we started looking at North Carolina as a place we want to be some day, all of that changed. It’s like we had new life breathed into us. If we were going to make this major change, we wanted to make sure we ended up with what we wanted, able to do the things we want to do, to become the people we want to be. It seems unbelievable some of the things on our list. I think there was even a time I said something like, “this doesn’t actually exist.” Brandon has always dreamed of owning a historic house. We know ...

If you want to do things you have never done before, you sometimes have to do things you have never done before. This is what was playing over and over again in my head and in my heart less than two months ago. Brandon and I had been talking about how much we hoped to one day relocate to the Smoky Mountain area. While we felt like that decision could be months or years down the road, we were eager to hone in on some places. We knew if we were ever going to find our next hometown, we were going to have to set our eyes on some of the towns we had only driven through or seen in pictures. We also dreamed about seeing this region during the fall. For years we talked about just taking a quick trip there, but that quick trip never worked out. Anytime we would look at our fall calendars, every single weekend was spoken for every single time. There were football commitments and cheer commitments and band commitments. There were days marked out for school and there were days marked out for work...

We shared recently that our family is headed to the mountains of North Carolina. And like any other good story, there’s a backstory... Two-and-a-half years ago, our family visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the first time. When we booked our trip, we had no idea this area would be written on our hearts forever. When we left our mountain cabin at the end of our first trip there, we felt as if a piece of our hearts stayed behind. We knew then that we would eventually end up there, even though we didn’t know when and we didn’t know how. There was no way to know just how things would play out. Since then, we have visited the area four other times and have left feeling more connected with each visit. We have dreamed about property in the mountains that would allow the kids to roam and explore. We have dreamed about hiking and waterfalls and all four seasons. We have dreamed about a forever home close enough to the National Park where we could explore anytime we’d like. Our ...