The contract is signed...we are MOVING TO:

BRISTOL, TN!!!!!!

A few people know this already, but we finally feel like it is the right time to tell everyone! We interviewed (yes, WE!) at several places in October, and this was a REALLY TOUGH decision, but we are completely confident that Bristol is the right choice.

*I know some of my former Hoover kids and friends will read this and be sad, because we had tossed around the idea of returning to Alabama. We LOVED it there, but ultimately the better job and location for our family was in Bristol. I do love y'all!*

Right now, you are either thinking..."Bristol...where the Nascar race is?" OR "Bristol...where is that?" I understand both questions. Honestly, we weren't actively seeking a job in this area or anything, so it was definitely a surprise for us when we kept coming back to it as the right choice for us. It still seems weird, even though I keep practicing saying, "I live in Bristol." I seriously think I may get a Nascar shirt.

Bristol is in East Tennessee, bordering Virginia. (It is about 1 hour, 45 mins from Knoxville). This is just some random picture loaned to me by google, but Bristol really is beautiful. We have been surrounded by mountains for our entire married life, and they definitely make life more cozy.

Bristol is TINY. In 2009, the population was 25, 821. They have one McDonalds and don't actually have a Chick-fil-a OR A TARGET, BUT it is like 23 minutes from Johnson City and Kingsport, and 15 minutes from Bristol, VA...ALL of whom have Targets. No job offer is good enough for me to give up my Target. Since there isn't really traffic in the Tri-Cities, it is really about the same time as sitting in traffic in a bigger city. STILL, it is a small town...this was our biggest concern when trying to decide on living here FOREVER. But, the group where Hughes is working is so strong and stable that it outweighed the negatives. Plus, we are ECSTATIC about no traffic!!!

Ultimately, we are THRILLED to finally have a forever home. It has been really strange for the past nine years, having no idea where we would be at the end. I cannot wait to have a home that we know we will be in for many years. When we move in July, it will be our FOURTH move in nine years-TN, AL, NC, TN.

Perhaps you are thinking... "What would it be like to marry a doctor?" Well, I can't answer, because, unfortunately, I married a medical student. Big difference. It is quite the journey:

(I was trying to find this one picture of Hughes holding up his Match Day envelope, and I ended up posting a million pictures here of our journey. I kept finding fun pictures that told our story!).

At 22 years old (!!!) you will marry your only crush and your first/only serious boyfriend. Those other boys were all losers. You will have no clue what you are doing in any aspect of your life. It will be hilarious that you think you are marrying a doctor...you will have NO idea of how long this adventure will take. Or of how broke you will be.

You will be eerily tan.

It will be the best day of your life.

(Thanks, Mom and Pops!)!

And, NO, having Lily is nowhere NEAR the best day of my life. SHE is the best thing, but how is going through childbirth the best day?

You will leave Knoxville, DEVASTATED to be leaving your twin sister (tears! sadness! devastation!), friends, and internship there but excited (as only the totally naive or totally stupid can be) about being an ADULT! You will move to Johnson City and start your first official teaching job (in Kingsport), as a clueless 22 year old, the day after you got back from your honeymoon. You will have 120 8th graders. You will be mega-nerd teacher and make homemade semi-colon mascots. (Years later, you will be SHOCKED that apparently you used to wear heels AND makeup to work?!?!).

You will immediately fall in love with your new school! You will develop amazing friendships, teach some of the greatest kids (shout out...anna f!), and make some of your favorite memories. You will chaperone the DC trip for 3 years, and above, your friend, Sara, and you will be inaugurated into K(appa) F (u) Chi) . It is hard to explain, but middle school teachers just do stuff like this.

**ON the most fun side note, ever... Sara will STILL LIVE in the Tri-Cities, and they will all still teach at Sevier! EVEN MORE FUN...The man across from her (Aaron! Love him, too!) will be her NEW FIANCE!!!!!!!! You will have been there when it all started!!!

You and Sara will be scarily alike, and you will talk/email/visit obsessively once you have to move. "Sara" will be one of your top "Pro's" for Bristol.

You will have the CUTEST nephews, ever. They will come visit you in the summer, and you will love every second. You will take them fishing on the same lake in the Tri-Cities that you may have a house on one day! You will be so broke, but they won't mind, as you eat McDonald's several times a day and make homemade ice cream.

Noah at the same lake.

You will feel so desperate to reverse time when you look at these pictures years later.

You will be excited that one day, SOON, you will be able to hopefully do fun, cool-aunt stuff with them on this SAME lake from years ago.

It will be really cool that you were so close to your forever home and had no idea.

You will love these boys so much.

You will live in the tiniest "house" ever. Your dining room table will come from the clearance section at Fred's. You won't use the dryer, because it is too expensive, and since you won't have a laundry room (haha! right) or even a hallway, you will SERIOUSLY have a retractable clothesline that your frugal/resourceful husband will install across your living room. I cannot make this up, people. You will have one drawer in the kitchen and none in the bathroom. You will stand in one spot and see the entire house.

It will be so perfect, and you will, somehow, be completely happy.

I needed to include a picture with people, so you can see just how cramped your living space will be. You will have many, many friends, though, because nothing creates a bond like being impoverished and, for your husbands, like dissecting a cadaver together.

You will make a few half-hearted efforts to decorate, but you will be very broke and desperately just trying to figure out the whole being 22, married, starting a new career, trying to accept that your husband doesn't want to just eat cereal for dinner, and having just moved away from your twin sister...to really care about decorating. Plus, pinterest doesn't exist, yet.

How broke will you be, you ask? Well, since your hefty teacher (AND coaching stipends!) are actually LESS than the med school loans, technically, your combined income will be in the negative double digits. You will only be able to afford one box of Wheat Thins every two weeks, so you will literally COUNT out the exact number of crackers that you can bring in your lunch each day. You will be so poor that you won't really use the heat and instead just use space heaters. When your parents come to visit, they will unknowingly set it to fan instead of heat and just sleep in their heavy coats rather than ask you to adjust the heat.

You WILL find a way to meet your friends (Melissa, Sara, Emily Hortina) for Harry Potter releases. And you will nerd it out.

You will make other awesome friends with the med wives, even though you know you will all be moving soon, and it all will just really sucks sometime.

After FOUR years of medical school, your husband will have chosen a speciality (anesthesia!), interview at 16 places, rank each of them...and hope for the best. On Match Day (March 15), in what is the scariest form of Sorority Bid Day, ever, he will receive an envelope with the letter of where he matched and where you will be moving for step 2 of your journey.

Luckily, your hubby is mega stud and will, of course, get his first choice in a very competitive specialty, too!

You will move to Birmingham, AL! And...your husband will get PAID! (less than you, and you are a teacher, but STILL!)

You will pack up and move to a different state, once again DEVASTATED to leave all of your friends and your comfort.

But, God loves you, and somehow a month after you move, your brother and his family will move to the same city. You should never complain about anything ever, again.

They will be able to just take off work and drive to you when you need/want them most.

You will decide it's okay that you had to move across a few states.

(When you are typing this post, you will be very homesick for them. Sadness.)

You will have the easiest pregnancy in the world, coaching cross country during your entire first trimester, and working on the Friday before you go into labor on Monday (your due date!). You are a trooper, and after never even taking a nap while pregnant, you are totally ready for how easy parenthood is going to be.

But, you are proven wrong on more than one million occasions. Your baby is perfect but also intense, demanding, and really loud. Your husband will work 80 hours a week and be stuck in traffic for 20 hours. It will be so rewarding but SO hard. SO hard. "My husband is at work", "I can't come- my husband is on call" will be repeated so often that you think about just laminating a sign to hang around your neck, just to save people the trouble of assuming you have a husband with a normal job.

You will still find time for the important things in life, though.

You will, once again, make AMAZING friends and be so fortunate to have this opportunity to meet so many different people. You would NOT survive without the support and understanding of other medical wives.

You will all have babies around the same time, too!

It will be wonderful having so many friends, but there will be the ever-present knowledge that this is all temporary....that knowledge is just always there, hovering.

You will watch football, celebrate holidays, and go on trips together. You will think about maybe taking away that juice box and substituting with calorie-free water.

You will, once again, fall in love with so many special middle schoolers. You will help coach cross-country and track.

You will have the best teacher friends in the world. These are just a few of them...it was too hard to post everyone I loved there!

Your kids will throw you a surprise going-away party, because ONCE again, after 4 years in Alabama, you will be moving.

Your hubby will decide to be EVEN more specialized and be accepted into a cardio-thoracic fellowship at Wake Forest in NC. You will sell your house/give it away and move nine hours away, ONCE AGAIN leaving all of your friends BUT also knowing you will make new ones and have new adventures. You will leave half of your belongings in storage units in AL, because your new house- while charming and precious- was built in 1941 and will be old/cramped.

You will make lots of new friends, and, even more importantly, LOTS of new friends for Lily! One of your favorite new friends, from Playgroup, will have a Daddy who is an ER resident and who will have JUST signed a contract in Johnson City, TN...one of the tri-cities by Bristol! ONCE AGAIN, you will not be able to believe your good fortune. You will be amazed by how sometimes life can just be so perfect. Because you are a worrier, instead of just being excited, you will also seriously be nervous that maybe your good luck will run out soon? You are ridiculous.

You will be more grateful than you ever could have imagined for this beautiful, fun, adventurous, memorable, fulfilling journey. You will be BEYOND excited about having a forever hometown and making EVEN MORE friends. You will be so lucky to have such a genius, hard-working, persistent, hard-working, funny, generous, HARD-WORKING, stud of a husband who has led you to this destination. You will look at this spunky, precious except when you are trying to get her dressed baby girl and won't be able to believe she is yours to love. You will be excited about 6 more months in this fairy tale city of Winston Salem, but you will also be counting down the days until you move to Bristol!

"I live in Bristol, TN."

"I am a Nascar fan." probably not

" I am NEVER moving, again after July. I hate moving."

" I am the luckiest person in the world."