Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Summer Adventure

It's been well over a year since I've blogged. But I'm hoping to capture the memories of our newest adventure.

The Wood's are on beautiful Grand Manan Island for the summer!  Since I was a little girl I remember traveling over to the island with my parents and loving it! During my school years I traveled on not so calm waters to come play basketball.  It was a lot of fun, we'd sleep at the school, the islanders always made us feel welcomed!  Many years later my brother met a wonderful girl from the island and she's been my sister-in-law for over 20 years! So I have many reasons to be thankful for this gem of an island.

My husband is now in his 2nd and final (Yay!!) year of family medicine residency. In his final year, he is required to complete a 3 month rural medicine block.  We discussed the idea of going to Grand Manan for it. We thought it would be a great learning experience for him and for us. Once the request was approved we sat down with our daughters to discuss yet another change in their life but also a fun adventure. We received mixed emotions but for the most part they were on board.  They truly have been so supportive of their Dad through this journey. It is their summer and we understood it was asking a lot to take them away from their friends and activities but we felt this move would be well worth it for our entire family.

We put forward the search of a home to house our family of 5 and dog! So blessed to have my sister-in-law's family here to help with the search and advise us. The pieces began to come together when a lovely lady on the island, who we are so grateful for, offered her home to us!

We moved here last Monday July 7th. It took 3 vehicles(Thanks Mom and Dad) to get all of our stuff here but we made it. The first few days were a little stressful to be honest. Not because of anything specific just the fact that reality had hit us and thoughts of "did we make the right decision?" loomed. But as each day passed it became more evident that this was the right decision - Sheldon loved his new work, the kids and I were finding lots of great things to do and we are all much more relaxed and happy.  Just what we needed. So very thankful for my sister-in-law's family as they have been very welcoming and helpful. So nice to see familiar caring faces when you are feeling a bit lost <3

This island is beautiful and I will be sure to write more entries about the beauty of the island. But for now I'll leave you with this beautiful sunrise taken from our porch!


Grand Manan Sunrise July, 2015