Hi Friends! I’m Kate from Daffodils and Martha’s best friend. Ok, so maybe Martha has many, many people that claim to be her best friend, but I can at least assure you that meeting Martha changed my life. My husband, son and I had been living in Winston-Salem, NC for over a year when one fateful night, Martha and I were assigned the same job of sorting through donated clothes at a Junior League function. While Martha was trying on every sparkly jacket she could find, I was chatting with another girl about how we moved to Winston from DC because my hubs was in the Army and now working at Wake. Before I knew it, Matha ninja-style ditched her sparkling shoulder pads and was immediately at my side. Half an hour later, we were, more or less, best friends. You see, it turned out that Matha’s studly hubs was getting ready to join the Army as a JAG, we lived 6 houses away from each other (true story), were both teachers, both had blogs and loved children, wine, sweet tea and locally butchered meat (our first friend date was to a butcher shop…totally normal). So time and our friendship went on and I got pregs with our second baby, only to be followed a month later by Matha announcing that she could no longer drink beer either. And in true soul-mate friend style, shortly thereafter, she and Sam found out they would be stationed cross-country at Ft Lewis and Kev and I decided that he would attend grad school at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.
Now, as Martha and I embrace our new west coast life, I cannot be more thankful to have a friend to dissect this new lifestyle. So without further ado, here are my top five perks about moving to Monterey.
1. Trying new things.
My life in Winston was fairly complacent without me knowing it. But here, I wake up every day wondering what kind of adventure the boys and I can get in to. We try new parks, playgrounds, beaches and stores on a weekly basis. We have been up to the beach in Santa Cruz and down to the beauty of Big Sur and everything in-between.
2. Living on post.
Kev and my military experience as a couple has been very different from the usual and this is the first place we have been where we have actually been part of the community, even though it’s an academic one. We have a two and a half year old and a 5 month old and I am so thankful for playgrounds and other stay at home moms. It is a very unique situation live completely around people your age with kids and we are doing our best to embrace it and connect with other families in our neighborhood.
3. Early Football
Ok, so maybe this isn’t exactly a plus, like when Auburn’s (my team) first 3 games started at 9am Pacific Time, but the good news is, we can catch the ‘late’ SportsCenter on time. No Sunday morning upset alerts for us!
4. My Little Family
Every time my hubs and I get homesick, we also remind ourselves that if we were close to home, we would be home, every other weekend. We both come from big families and when we lived in NC, we were on the road heading up to DC a lot. Our time on the West Coast really has allowed us to just be ourselves and do our own thing as a little family. Side note: It also elevates the excitement for visitors. You can ask my hubby, I was a giddy mess last week with the anticipation of my parents’ arrival this week. Absence makes the heart grow fonder indeed.
5. The Sunset
Y’all. Can we talk about the sunset? I have never felt so small in my life. There is something absolutely magical about watching the sun set over the water. We don’t get this on the East Coast, and every time I start to be sad about being so far away from ‘home’, I see this amazing sight and am thankful. I’m thankful for the beauty of the sun, for my darling family, for selfless men like Kev and Sam and for once in a lifetime friends like Martha.
Monterey may not have Chick-fil-a, or a kaleidoscope of fall foliage, but we have good people, and beautiful scenery, and great friends just a phone call or a blog away.
I hope you’ll come visit me over at Daffodils to read more about our Monterey adventure. Thanks for letting me visit, Martha!
Love that BOTH dudes are making the “too cool for school” face… this is not a good sign for me.
