9.07.2017

Here we are Indy!

It's been a little bit of a whirlwind of change around here lately... we relocated to the Indianapolis area which, in turn, means I had to leave my students mid-year for this lifestyle change. As I write this I gaze out upon a cornfield, and through the haze of homesickness for Chicago and guilt of leaving my students, I wonder "how did we get so lucky to be here?"

This change, when I sit back and think about it, started to unknowingly take place summer of 2016. I was on summer break as a teacher, and my husband was working in Chicago in a job he enjoyed. I had taken our two year old son to his regular sitter's house for some quality play time, and I locked in a lunch date downtown with my husband. In the months prior to this lunch date, we had talked (with no tangible outcome) of getting out of the city, and making a life with more room to roam. We loved Chicago, and we loved our professions, but there was an itch to leave that we just couldn't scratch.

During that lunch, hubby said "I know a guy in Indy I could contact to see if he knows of any places hiring." I said, "Um, sure sounds good. I've never been there. Where is it exactly?" Fast forward to September 17th of 2016 and we were driving through Westfield, Carmel, Zionsville, and downtown Indianapolis just to get a 'feel' of the city. We stopped to let our son stretch his legs at Lion's Park in Zionsville and capped off the night with ice cream at The Scoop. We headed to our hotel, and fell asleep with visions of living in the country dancing through our heads. Just a few short months after that visit, my husband accepted a job downtown Indy so we began crossing items off of our Chicago bucket list REALLY quickly.

In a maelstrom of house hunting day trips from Chicago, nearly every Saturday, with an active two year old, we finally saw it. A shell of a house, just studs at the time, with a lot that we were truly dreaming of. It was in a 'community' with several homes just built or about to be built, but the lot was NOT on a pond, had a fairly large backyard, and it did NOT have some crazy slope usually reserved for snowboarding. We drove home that night and both just knew this was the place we needed to call home.

In February we closed on our house, I said my final goodbyes to the school I ADORED and the second graders I was so heartbroken to leave.

And here we are, living in Indy, and roaming around because we have the space to and there are SO many awesome places/things to see and do, and amazing Midwesterners to meet.