Family Matters

When people ask us why we stay in our small, southern, and (mostly) conservative town, the answer is almost always because of family.

Case in point: My brother called me yesterday right after we picked up the kids from school asking if I could come to our mom’s house real quick to help him unload the new couch and chair she bought, and then load up her old furniture to haul it off.

“Of course,” I said. “Be right over.” It’s one of the many perks of living 0.5 miles from your mom- getting to help her out anytime she needs it. And PJ does the same for his mom all the time, too. We wouldn’t be able to do that if we moved away.

I drove over and met my brother and sister-in-law and then, a little bit later, my mom, to help set up her new living room furniture that she’s been searching for for more than a year. She bought this sage green sofa and this armless chair from World Market and it looks so cute in her little cottage with her white walls and blue kitchen cabinets. If you want to see how we bought and renovated her sweet little house, click here.

The couch has been out stock here locally, and the crazy thing is they actually had one in Florida about 20 miles from our beach shack that we went and almost picked up for her, but the day before we were scheduled to load it and bring it back to Tennessee with us, PJ had his thumb accident. Needless to say, we weren’t able to really do anything but go home after that, so I was thrilled when she said she found her exact couch just 30 minutes down the road.

It’s rare we can all get together these days, with busy schedules and businesses to run and nonstop work taking over our lives, but yesterday in her little cottage with my brother and sister-in-law (who used to be my college classmate), I found myself savoring every second of our time together. We laughed, joked, got frustrated moving the heavy furniture. But it was fun, and it was so, so nice.

If you ever gain anything from this blog or from following us on any social media, I hope the biggest takeaway is that family is the most important thing in the world, whether it’s the family you’re born with or your chosen family. Time with them is precious, and so worth sticking around for.