I've been reading old journals, looking at family photos and reading my old blog posts.
As I think about our future while looking at our past, one item stands out...
When the hubby and I were engaged, I would bring home tourism brochures from the travel agency I worked at. We would look through them and talk about all the places we could live. We were young and the whole world was available to us. The thought that we could live anywhere in the world was exciting. After looking for weeks at brochures for a reason that I do not know we settled on Prince Edward Island. It seemed perfect. We talked about it for weeks, months...but I had a mortgage and a good job and after we married, we stayed where we were.
Nine months into our marriage, I was given the opportunity to take a business trip to New Brunswick. The tourist board flew a number of us over and showed us why we should send our clients to New Brunswick. If I had been single without a mortgage, I would not have returned home. I loved it. Each place I went I fell more and more in love. I remember the last night of the trip standing outside the Algonquin hotel in St. Andrews by the Sea. It was very late at night and tears were running down my cheeks and for the first time in years, I felt like I was home. I missed my new hubby but I did not want to leave. I spent an hour on the phone with him trying to convince him to drop everything and meet me there. We could open a BandB or something, right? We could make it work. I loved the few days I spent in New Brunswick and talked of it often over the next decade.
When my hubby mentioned graduate school in Nova Scotia...I jumped at the chance!
FINALLY...I would get to live in the maritimes.
We spent two years there and as I look back at our pictures at the smiling faces of my children playing on the beach I realize that (aside from the long commute that my hubby had) we were happiest there.
We loved the ocean, the day trips, the museums, the galleries, the history, the architecture, the slow-paced lifestyle.
The maritimes suit us.
The past few weeks we have spent hours discussing and more hours pondering and praying about what we should do. Looking at our photos...of the house we lived in (that is owned by my mother-in-law and rented out) and available to us...it did not take us too long to decide where we should be.
Plans are in the works for a more permanent summer move to Nova Scotia...we feel relief, peace and happiness...no more lobsterless summers for us!
