Hello DC!

King Street in Old Town Alexandria, a couple miles from our place.

My last post was Farewell Nashville. My goodbye to the city that’s been my home for the last 6.5 years. This post is Hello DC! We have been catapulted into another life and this post is to celebrate some of the things we look forward to in the N. VA./DC area.

It has been 3 weeks since we moved here. It’s been a lot of adjusting, unpacking, settling, etc. In some ways, I feel like I’m just now getting my head back above water. I have plenty that I want to be writing about, but need to get back to it. So first up is this fun post.

Granted, I grew up only an hour from here. 45 minutes north of DC. But I really lived there from birth to 18 years old when I went off to college. We came to DC for school field trips and to go sightseeing when someone came to visit from out of town. But it’s so different now being in the area (& much closer to DC) as an independent adult.

This new life is ripe with possibilities of endless exploration. We are a couple miles from DC. (9 miles from the White House, for a little perspective.) It is a 7 minute walk from our condo to the nearest metro station, which gives us some wonderfully easy access. From my office I can see the Pentagon and the Washington monument. It’s really surreal some days to look out and go, “oh, look, there’s the Pentagon.”

So in no particular order, here are some of the things I’m really excited about:

• Old Town Alexandria is 2 miles away. It’s a super cute little downtown area, filled with all of the cute boutiques and restaurants you could ever want. For our Nashville friends, it’s kind of like Franklin times 10.
• The endless supply of museums, monuments, and historical sites that are only a short metro ride away. Many of these I’ve probably been to in my growing up years, but I hardly remember some of them (Mt. Vernon, getting a tour of the White House, etc). It will take years to explore the plethora of these.
• Miscellaneous cultural events, like Passport DC, which is happening in May. It’s where all of the embassies host open houses & events that you can just bounce around to.
• The National Cherry Blossom Festival, in March/April. This is something else I’m sure I’ve been to, but I really don’t remember it.
• A whole new world of potential weekend trips – Williamsburg, Philadelphia, New York City, etc. It’s nice to have more options than just Chattanooga now!
• Riding the metro to work. Without the stress of navigating traffic, I’ll be able to read a book or something, and get some walking in on either end. I’ll start this up March 1st.
• Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants. Any type of food you could ever want to find. And I love international cuisine. Now I just need to be able to finance my eating habit!

It’s kind of invigorating to be thrust into a very different world. We’ve already had plenty of “we’re-not-in-kansasnashville-anymore” moments. Like the fact that it took us 15 minutes to drive 3 miles south to a nearby shopping center yesterday [the traffic is definitely something to get used to]. Or how this area is so diverse – by income, ethnicity, age, etc. There are pockets of super nice housing 2 blocks away from really rundown areas, and there are people of every ethnicity (way more than the places we’d  frequent most in Nashville).

A huge bonus to being here – the proximity to so many members of my family. My parents are an hour away. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins are 30-40 minutes. Other grandparents are 2 hours. Brother, sister-in-law, 2 nephews are 4 hours north (which is an amazing difference from what we were before). And next summer, my other brother will be about an hour away. This is huge! We can be around for birthdays, to go to dinner, to see my cousin play football. I don’t even know what that’s like!

I think I’m starting to decide that I want to set a goal for us, so that we don’t get trapped into what feels too comfortable and not get out and about. Maybe something like exploring/doing 3 new things a month. We’ve already purchased a deal to do a walking restaurant tour in Georgetown. I can’t wait! Now we just need to set a date.

So Hello DC! We sure have some exploring to do!

Last Monday, we wandered over to the President's Day parade in Alexandria. So much fun!

Farewell Nashville

Photo by Chuck Felix

As this posts, I am leaving to catch my one-way flight out of Nashville. Is it really time for this? Am I ready? Where have the years gone?

Nashville has been my home for six and a half years and we have many friends here that we consider like family. I worked at Thomas Nelson for almost six years – longer than I have been in any one place (generally changing schools every 2-5 years).

While I know without a doubt that this is God’s plan for us and that He has been preparing us for this for a long time, it feels very surreal to leave. On a one-way ticket.

It was hard walking out of church on Sunday, out of a place where we have grown so much, were very involved, and made so many dear friends. We had the honor of being Bible study leaders for four years. It is out of those Bible study groups and our Sunday morning class where we really developed most of our closest friends here in Nashville. People came and went. Lives intertwined for a time. But that’s where relationships went deep. To a different level than you can get anywhere else.

It was sad leaving our house last night for the last time. It’s where we spent the first years of our marriage. We had it painted and decorated just the way we liked it. We had a very comfortable amount of space and a lovely little yard. It was home.

Then there’s the superficial stuff. I will miss the random warm winter days (like today when it’s sunny and in the 60′s). I will miss Puckett’s, GiGi’s, Sweet Cece’s, Basil, Pancake Pantry, and Sopapilla’s. I will miss the feel of being in a big town/small city, where southern hospitality reigns supreme. I will miss our neighborhood Publix, where we knew them and they knew us. I will definitely miss the low cost of living (in comparison to where we’re headed).

There are many exciting days and journeys ahead, but today I am celebrating Nashville, for all it has meant to us. There go my eyes filling up with tears again…

And so… we leap.

I guess we’re DC bound now.

Farewell to Nashville!

We're DC bound. Come visit us soon! (Taken at the fun going away bash our wonderful friends threw us last weekend.)