Hey fellow Steemians! Here's the verification you all deserve.
My first and hopefully last selfie...ever.
It's me again! I recently went back and looked at my initial introduceyourself post and realized how incredibly bland it was.
Steemit was new to me at that time and I was unsure of what I was doing...I'm still not fully sure what I'm doing. To be honest, I didn't really understand the basics or what you guys like or want, but I'm slowly learning. It has been just over a week and I am really enjoying it here. I have been met with warm welcomes and nothing but kindness and help. Thank you all so much for that! It is really encouraging and it helps me to keep pushing forward.
ANYWAYS! Enough about you, what about me? I'm a twenty-five year old that has lived a crazy past 5 years. At age twenty, my girlfriend (at the time) and her parents were gearing up to move to the panhandle of Idaho from Nashville, TN. We had been together for roughly four-ish years at this time, and after four years and many emotions, I couldn't let her go. We were in love. (Spoiler alert:We still are.)
This is a picture of our first winter in Idaho. Being from Nashville, I had never seen this much snow before.
So we arrived in Idaho and after two months of looking, I was blessed with a job in the medical field. I became very content with life. In 2012 I proposed to my now wife atop of the Coeur d'Alene hotel garage. It was the Christmas season and the light display on the lake was beautiful in the dark. I popped the question and she said yes...in that moment I was so incredibly happy that as I was standing up, I slipped on a patch of ice and nearly fell off of the roof. Ok, not really off, but it makes the story a bit more exciting. We walked around the town the rest of the night in complete bliss.
We decided to get married the following February. Now when I say married, I don't mean with a ridiculous $50,000 wedding. I mean, we went to The Hitching Post, a tiny chapel down the street from us and eloped. Neither of us have ever wanted a "wedding", I will even take it as far as to say that my wife has DREAMED of eloping in a small chapel and then heading out for our honeymoon. So that's what we did, we left Cd'A and headed west to Seattle with a detour to the nearest Taco Bell, of course...We're simple people.
Source here
Shortly after returning from our honeymoon we were informed that her parents had felt that they were supposed to move to Chile. We were dumbfounded...what is in Chile? Why would one do that? But I mean, we were our own people and we had zero desire to move to Chile, so we didn't. We stayed behind in Idaho, she got a job with me, we found an apartment and all was well....Then one day about 8 months later, boom, we're having a baby! Holy heck! What?! So we did what all soon-to-be parents do and made appointments for the necessary prenatal care and continue our journey. We were so incredibly excited, yet scared.
This picture was probably 6 months into the pregnancy.
At about four months into the pregnancy, my in-laws felt to plan a trip to visit us. They got there and with much persistence tried to convince us to move back with them...But we weren't having that. Why would we do that? That is stupid, we're about to have a baby. Then ( you saw this coming didn't you?) two weeks before the end of their trip, something happened to my wife and I. We were broken and our hearts turned to goo; we suddenly became open to the idea of moving. To this day we feel that God allowed this change in our hearts and our thinking because there is a larger purpose for our lives, as prior to this, we were VERY against the idea. We were headed home on a Sunday evening and we both just began to embrace these feelings; we both sobbed the whole way. We arrived safely and we sat in silence...what were we supposed to do with these feelings? After a bit of time passed, my wife texted her dad to find out if there were seats available on the plane and his response was, "Yes, of course there are!". We talked about this and prayed about it for the next 3 days and finally came to the conclusion that the timing was perfect...again, too perfect to be just coincidence. We made the leap.
This was a picture from our walk through Santiago. That is the Costanera Center, the tallest building in South America.
In exactly twelve days, by the grace of God, we sold everything we owned and fit the essentials along with a few extras into nine-ish suitcases. The feeling of not having sh-stuff (did you get that?) tying us down was exhilarating. I still remember the feeling of having nothing to worry about...Well, except the upcoming trip as we had never been out of the country.
This a shot from our hotel window in Santiago.
Anyways, long story short, now we live in Chile and our baby was born incredibly healthy and is now 19 months old; He is such a spitfire. We are searching for our next step in life as we attempt to learn a new language and a new culture. We are also trying to develop a furniture business that makes furniture from reclaimed wood. We have had our good days and our bad days, but definitely more good. It is gorgeous here, and honestly, I have nothing to complain about in this country. Of course, there are small, stupid inconveniences, but as I've been told before, "You still have the freedom to pick your stupid"....Ponder on that for a bit.
This was a recent trip to El Saltos del Petrohue.
My father-in-law stumbled across Steemit just over a week ago and was very intrigued, he mentioned it to me and suggested maybe putting some of my art on here to see what would happen...So I did, and we all know how that story goes: I'm hooked. I want to understand this platform and use it to it's fullest potential, and I really look forward to the next few weeks of posting and seeing what doors this incredible website opens up for my wife and I.
I plan on posting mostly original art and stories of Chile here, but my wife is an incredibly writer, so we will be featuring some of her original pieces, also! If there is any thing you want to know, feel free to ask; and if there is any advice you have about steemit or how to make my posts better, please feel free to give it!