The Final Coundown: Days 10-6

It is so crazy to think that we will be moving away from Lexington in less than a week. David and I have lived here for 7 years, and what started out as our college town has become our home; the place where we spent our first 3 years of married life; the place we made the best of friends; the place where we brought our daughter into this world. Although we are so excited for our move to NKY and we are confident that it is the right decision, we will deeply miss Lexington.

During the last week in this bluegrass city we wanted to make sure we hit up our "hot spots". Even though we lived in Lexington during our undergrad years, David and I have always lived a kind of low key social life. We have obviously been busy with school, but him and I are definitely introverts and so we have found places in this city which are calm and beautiful and fun for us. So this list will not be a "what you should do while you are in Lexington" list, but it will give you a glimpse into our everyday kind of life that we lived here. Also... there will be a lot of food. Because we love to eat.

Day 10 - On Wednesday, May 2nd, I went walking with a friend at the Arboretum. This is by far one of my favorite places in Lexington, and I don't know of anywhere like it in NKY. It is a big, beautiful park which (obviously) has a focus on displaying all kinds of trees and plants found around Kentucky, and other places. They have a beautiful flower garden, a shady trail through a small forest, and, my favorite, a 2 mile loop walking trail. It is the perfect place to get exercise on a beautiful day, or to have a picnic on a nice night.

Day 9 - On Thursday David and I celebrated my last exam with a couple of doughnuts from Magees. My eyes have been opened in this city to the beauty of small bakeries. I wasn't really a doughnut person until I moved here, but I am sure that when we transition back up to NKY I will want to find a yummy small-town bakery. The doughnuts at Magees are out of this world. So thick and sweet and delicious - definitely a meal. This bakery is literally 3 blocks from our current apartment so we visit it a lot and it will be very missed.

Day 8 - Our last day at the University of Kentucky! David graduated on Friday evening and I cleaned out my desk and finished my teaching duties. UK was the main reason we came to Lexington in the first place, and it is mostly what has kept us here for all of these years. Even though going to UK was not even an option in my mind during my senior year in high school I am so happy that it is the place I chose to get all 3 of my degrees from. I truly got a great education and had some wonderful opportunities from this prestigious institution. Oh, and I did plan on documenting all of these things with photos, but I have been forgetting my camera! However, David's mom snapped a few good ones on Friday.

Day 7 - On a the cloudy Saturday morning of our first day with no school we went to the Lexington Farmer's Market that I talk about all the time. We really, really love it and I hope to be able to find something like it once we moved. We bought all of the things we had always wanted to buy, and some of our regular items too. We got homemade pasta and bread, fresh corn on the cob, some local ground beef, a block of sundried tomato and basil cheese (YUM!) and a delicious bacon date scone for breakfast. Everything was so good. I love the idea of taking a part of our grocery budget each week to support local farms and eat some good, organic things. I hope that as we continue to increase our income over the next few years we can incorporate as many local products into our diet as possible.

Day 6 - This was a rough day because it was our last time attending Southland Christian Church as members. We love our church down here - and it is not dramatic to say that it has changed us and molded us as people. We have a great community of friends at Southland and the thing that we are most nervous about with the move is finding another home church. We have faith that God has a place for us in NKY and we are definitely excited to see how our experience there will shape us also. But... we will really, really miss our church.

Today we also visited the dog park at Jacobson park for the last time. This was the dog park that we took Rooney too all the time when he was a puppy. It is a really beautiful place and we have so many Saturday afternoon memories associated with it.

Check back at the end of the week for what we did during our last 5 days in Lexington! Now time to make some tacos for dinner. Happy Cinco Seis De Mayo!