#discoverkitsap

a little something has been brewing in my heart for some months now and i'm so excited to share this little project and a piece of the why behind it. when we picked up and packed up all our stuff and moved back to my home town a little over a year and a half ago, i was worried. i'll be honest. i was super worried. my tiny home town where half my childhood was surrounded with complaining voices about nothing to do and no where to go. was I crazy to try to create the small town, community filled lifestyle we wanted so badly for our family...here of all places? i've spent the last few months pretty isolated. some of my own doing and some come with the realities of moving to a new town with all our friends an hour away. i let myself sit in that little pity party that my old, new hometown wasn't filled with family friendly restaurants and the closest child museums, parks and zoos were at least 30 minutes away. dreams of easy, frequent, family filled evenings we're drifting away. 

sometime in the last few weeks, a few healthy words of hard encouragement from the sweetest of friends included, i realized again what i've always known. that community isn't necessarily what you move into. it's what you pitch in to create. add genuine content, seek out people and places with intentionality and invest. it doesn't happen overnight. you have to tend to it and live life with it. and in time, you'll be a part of something bigger than just your address on the street. 

i am surrounded by beauty in the form of people. i love sharing life with such amazing, talented, honest and sweet people. but here's the catch. so many of my dearest friends live out of state, out of city and out of country. i so desire to have you over for nap time pumpkin loaf (and if you're close enough, please do!) and good heart to heart mama talk that we all need so badly. but for all the days in between traveling to visit each other, here is my home. and my heart is set on pursuing and discovering it. Jake and I stayed up way too late one night this week and made our fall family live list full of all the places we want to find and things we want to do to fall in love with our new home. 

i'm so excited to take you along as we #discoverkitsap and share the places and people that we meet and fall in love with. if you're local, i would love to meet you! and I would love for you to join in with us on building community through this community. if you're not, i encourage you to plug in where you are. bring your local fire station some cookies and meet your heroes. collect the multiple pages of art from your babes and write little love notes to hand out at your nursing homes. try a hole in the wall restaurant you've driven past a million times and shake the owners hand. trust me, you'll feel the loneliness slip away like jello. and in it's place, community. one that you can love on and be loved on by. i love this quote floating around pinterest. let's go give out some smiles.