We Bought Our First House!

WE HAVE BIG NEWS…

But before I spill the tea, let me give you a little backstory. Logan and I attended college in Arkansas, where we met. After graduating in 2014, we got married and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where I taught 3rd grade and Logan attended optometry school at the University of Missouri St. Louis. For the four years we lived in St. Louis, we rented a small, cozy apartment.

We loved that apartment. It was our first home, it was where we brought our dog, Bentley after adopting him at a local shelter, it was the site of many get-togethers with friends and family, and also the place where Logan spent countless hours studying while I spent countless hours grading papers and crafting lesson plans.

But not many of you would know that because we didn’t share these parts of our lives. Why? I could chalk it up to a number of different things, being too busy or not having anything interesting to share (this was true some of the time too).

But really it’s because I’m ultimately a pretty private person and the thought of showing my face on Instagram stories or writing more about our everyday lives on our blog is incredibly intimidating to me. In my mind, opening up invites unwanted comments or negativity that I’ve been unsure I can handle. 

But sharing more everyday life can also be a huge source of encouragement and beautiful connections. In the time Logan and I have worked on Pages of Travel, we’ve made some incredible friendships with people we’ve met on Instagram and our blog. We’ve even met up with a few of them in person and formed even stronger friendships. 

I’ve been encouraged countless times by some of the people we follow when they’ve opened up about the good, the bad, and the ugly or even the struggles they face from day-to-day whether it is something I face too, or not. I may not know all of them personally, or I may not have even reached out to them when they touched my heart, but it taught me something… to take more risks.

Hang with me, I promise I have a point to all of this rambling.

After Logan graduated from optometry school in May 2018, we packed up all of our belongings, put them in storage, and moved to Japan for three months – a dream of ours that we’d been saving up for since we visited in 2015. If you’re new here, you’ll find out quickly that we love Japan and visit there often. 

When we returned from Japan, we moved to Northwest Arkansas where Logan started his first job as an optometric physician and I started blogging full-time (more on this in a minute). Eeeek! 

Why did we decide to move to Northwest Arkansas of all places? Well, while we were in college in Arkansas we spent a number of weekends traveling to Northwest Arkansas for Razorback Football games at the University of Arkansas (we are both fans) and noticed how beautiful the area is. 

So, during Logan’s 4th year of Optometry School, he had to do a number of rotations at various practices, hospitals, and surgical centers around the country. One of these rotations was at a multidisciplinary practice in Fayetteville. Since it was during the summer so I was able to travel with Logan to Fayetteville and we borrowed/lived in his parent’s 5th wheel camper at a local campsite. During this time, we really fell in love with the Northwest Arkansas area for a number of reasons. 

While I’ve always lived in a city, Logan grew up in a small town, Northwest Arkansas has the perfect balance of both. It’s large enough that it has all the amenities of a big city (minus Trader Joe’s which I’m still pretty bitter about) but it doesn’t have as much traffic and has a smaller city vibe.

Another factor is the proximity to our families. One of my sisters also lives in Northwest Arkansas and my parents and youngest sister are in Tulsa, Oklahoma (only 2 hours away). Logan’s family is only about 5 hours away in Southeast Missouri so it’s easy to visit them and for our families to come to visit us too.

Although we spent 6 weeks here on Logan’s rotation, we still didn’t know much about the area and couldn’t decide where to live once Logan got a job and we moved here. Thus, we rented a house close to Logan’s work until we got a better feel for the area and until we decided if this was where we’d plant some roots. 

That brings us up to speed and we can announce that… WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

This summer we started looking at houses and fortunately, we didn’t have to search for too long! We quickly found a house that we knew was perfect for this next step in our lives. But boy, the steps to actually buy a house is almost a full-time job in itself. From contacting lenders, organizing inspections, packing YET AGAIN, hiring moving companies, changing utilities, and texting our realtor daily, we pretty much only thought about this move for the past few months. But here we are. We closed on our house, it’s now ours, we’re OFFICIALLY HOMEOWNERS.

I’m thinking about sharing in detail about our house buying process so let me know if that’s something that would interest you in the comment section below!

While we normally share travel guides, itineraries, and things to do or places to eat in xyz, we wanted to share this big news with all of you and ask you to be a part of our transition as homeowners. 

Don’t worry, we aren’t transitioning to a home reno or decor blog. Trust me, we aren’t HGTV-worthy like Chip and Joanna. You’ll still see majority travel here. 😉 But we wanted to make you aware that in addition to travel, you might start seeing some lifestyle-focused posts as we invite you into our home (photos to come!) and share more of our daily lives with you. You’ll see a lot more updates on our Instagram, but we’ll be sharing some of this process on our blog too!

We want to thank each of you for being open to our next step with Pages of Travel.

P.S. I guess this means you’re stuck with us, Arkansas. 😉