Leaving the Lowcountry

We have enjoyed living in the Lowcountry. The Charleston area is wonderful and is filled with good food, lots of history, and interesting activities. However, we underestimated how much North Alabama had become home in the 3+ years that we lived there. We moved to Alabama right after graduating from college and getting married. Neither of us had ever been there, and we thought it would be a temporary location for us until Dave got some work experience and we could move closer to home. We got involved in a wonderful church, made great friends, and really enjoyed the area. Though we loved our life there, we felt like we needed to get closer to our families in North Carolina after we had our first child. We got that opportunity when jobs started opening up in Charleston a little over a year ago. 

We enjoyed weekend visits to see our families and the times when people came to our house to visit and spend a little time in Charleston. However, it was still a four hour drive and our families weren't around the corner. We we optimistic going in, thinking that we had moved before and re-established ourselves just fine. As the months went by, both of us were working on making friends and getting involved in activities but we really missed our friends and our church back in Alabama. When we found out we were going to have our second child we both really started thinking about home. I had multiple friends who were pregnant and due within a month of me in Alabama. I kept thinking about how wonderful it would be to go through our pregnancies together and have our children grow up as friends. Our daughter was also getting to the age where she remembered the kids at our parents church and other kids she had played with and didn't understand why she couldn't play with them more often. Our lack of close friendships and really getting plugged into a community meant that she didn't have a consistent group of playmates. When we thought about the kind of community we wanted our children to grow up in we realized that we had left exactly what we wanted. 

Dave talked to his old boss in Alabama and mentioned that he might be interested in coming back. Not long after, Dave applied for a job at the site there. We decided to take a Fourth of July trip to see our friends in AL and get a feel for the area again. The trip was wonderful and our daughter had a blast playing with all the kids. It was so nice to see our friends again and feel like a part of a community. We knew at the end of the weekend that, given the opportunity, we would return. 

A few weeks later Dave was offered the job and we started planning. We finished up our last minute house projects and put our house on the market. Now we are waiting for a buyer and planning to move in a little over a month. I thought I would give a little tour of our sparsely decorated house since we are at the end of the projects we plan to do here. I'll do some more before and after posts in the next few weeks and talk more in depth about some of the projects we haven't posted on yet...but for now here is the house:

Great Room

Kitchen

Dining Room

Downstairs Hall Bath

Nursery

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

Guest Room 1

Guest Room 2