Top 10 Meaningful Moments of 2022
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Top 10 Meaningful Moments of 2022

Because it’s been an eventful year, we thought we’d hop on the bandwagon here and share a few of our top meaningful moments of 2022.

Steve

Closing the Bakery

Few things can match opening a business, but closing it falls closely behind in so many ways. Fear mixed with anxiety, mixed with anticipation, and finally, with mixed with more gratitude than we’ve ever known. Thank you, Tarboro and everyone who supported us. Love and miss you 😘

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The time to relax, reflect, and re-energize

It’s hard, running a small business, especially during these past couple of years. Our hearts will forever send blooms of love and lasers of vim and vigor out into the universe for all who do it. To get ready for what came next for us, we took advantage of the downtime that followed our closing for some much needed R&R.

Did somebody say I do?

Our oldest got married in April. If there is one thing that gets you thinking of the future again it’s a wedding. These two have From This Day Forward written all over them.

From This Day Forward

Re-homing our Stuff

When you are planning on selling your business, the one question that looms  largest in your mind is what to do with all that stuff.

The bakery was easy once we’d found a buyer (finding a buyer, that's a whole other story). While we’re not sure when it will see the light of day again, we do hope it brings whoever’s behind it as much meaning, joy and fulfillment as it brought us.

Selling the House and Leaving Tarboro

While we were only in this house a short while, it was the best home in which we had ever lived in up to that point. The location, the walkability, the layout. It was everything we’d ever wanted in a home and more. So, in this regard, sometimes good things do come to those who wait.

This. Old. House.

There was a lot of emotion wrapped up in leaving Tarboro, just as there had been upon our arrival. Similar hopes, similar worries, similar dreams. On the one hand we were excited for the journey that awaited us, but on the other Tarboro had taken a vital role in us becoming the people we are today. Audacious. Confident. Resilient. Okay with being uniquely and unapologetically ourselves.

Weird Beer and Bread

Arriving in Sicily

So, by the time this happened, we had mostly reduced the things in our possession to that which we could carry. It was fun, but exhausting; useful, but costly; and also a mistake, as we know now by the number of times we’ve said about one item or another in the past six months, “Whatever happened to that thing? Who did we give it to?”

Four Bags
Breath, Just Breathe

Like Vacationing, But Not

Thankfully, our children came to our rescue. Both in terms of bringing us additional things we’d left behind, but mostly—honestly, entirely—in just being once more in their presence. And while I’ve written before about how I felt as if we’d left them behind in America, spending the better part of our first full summer in Sicily with these two (and their cousins!) was just what the occasion called for. Now, come back. Please!

Exploring our new landscape

In this regard, Sicily has not been a letdown. A true selfie-paradise!

Will someone please take his phone!

Finding Community

Seriously, Sicilians are some of the kindest, most welcoming and authentic people we've ever met. It did not take long for us to find them, and them to find us. We couldn’t ask for a better tribe of tutors, journeymen and companions.

Learning how to peel the prickly pear (named so for a reason)

Staying and Buying a House

The legal process for both obtaining approval to remain in Sicily, in my case called a Permesso di Soggiorno, and buying a house are both good lessons in patience, perseverance and what we used to call in East Tennessee, bird-doggedness. Nonetheless we prospered on both accounts.

Home Sweet Home, literally and figuratively.

Ruins

Just kidding.

Front entrance
attic kitchen and terrace
wine and wood ovens pair nicely, just saying.
permesso per me 😀

Olive Harvest

The last to make this list, we’ve covered in quite detail, so I’ll leave you with what we consider to be the best film of the year, as well.

That's it, and thank you so much for letting us share this adventure with you. It's meant the world to us and while it hasn't all been rainbows and roses, your love and support has made all the difference! See you in 2023 with more stories from Sicily!

What I mean by another universe.

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