Coming to a close: Settling Down in Greenville!

This post is suuuper late. We got so wrapped up in settling down and (spoiler alert) having a BABY that we never rounded out the blog with our final honeymoon phase. For memory's sake, we'd like to record our lasts couple months here so that they can be printed out and added to a scrapbook.

For the last part of our honeymoon, we toured around cities in the southeast to hopefully decide where we'd like to put down roots. Although we considered random places like Tucson, Santa Fe, Salt Lake City, and St Louis/Springfield, we really wanted either Denver or a new town with a lower cost of living within a 3 hour drive of family. In the running were: Chattanooga TN, Knoxville TN, Charlotte, NC, Greenville SC, Athens GA, and Marietta GA. In each city, we tried to find the local dance scene, go to a few open houses, walk around different neighborhoods, do a hike or outdoor activity, and attend the local Anglican church.

Denver, CO

Believe it or not, Denver was our first stop on this city tour. Even though we knew Denver pretty well, we had to drive all the way back from Florida in order to simply register our car. It need an emissions test and could not be done while out of state. We were always so grateful that the Knehans let us stay at their house on our long cross country road trips.

During the short time we were there, Clare met up with a friend (Megan Bortner) who offered her part time, remote digital consulting work. She was very excited to be working again and bringing in some money during the last logistical phase of traveling. In the various cities, she worked from airbnbs or coworking spaces and Adam cooked amazing meals.

Chattanooga, TN

Our first real touring stop was Chattanooga. And, to be honest, although we enjoyed the quick visit from Adam's dad, overall, it was pretty discouraging. We had heard so many great things about Chattanooga having a similar culture to Denver with the mountains. However, our experience was not great. We cut the Airbnb stay short because we had already ruled it out. We were pretty disappointed because we had expected this to be the primary contender as it was only a short drive from Jake and Lauren and we were told it was an amazing city. 

-Great downtown! A major benefit of the city was a spectacular river walk and cute little downtown.
-Too mountainy. The nicest neighborhoods were up very steep windy roads. It was hard to get around to anything without feeling like you were going over mountain passes. 
-Generally underdeveloped and run down. There weren't a lot of events or things happening. And many areas of town seemed bad/unsafe or just sad looking.

-The highways through Chattanooga are major thoroughfares with tons of trucks. It felt like way too much traffic for that size of city and a lot of unsafe drives near huge trucks.

-Nearby Collegedale was very nice but only accessible via truck filled highways and the neighborhoods were still very hilly.

Knoxville, TN

Knoxville seemed like a real option. We were relieved to find that we liked it better than Chattanooga. It was a bit more of an affluent city with more flat roads. There were nice sprawling neighborhoods everywhere. We loved the area with the Powell YMCA in West Hills with pickleball courts and walking trails. The downtown was very nice with the University side and the shops/restaurants side. And, there were some nice nature areas like the botanic gardens, Ijams Nature Center (fun but lots of bugs), and the arboretum. Toward the end of this trip, we got sick, however, and stopped over in Murphy to recover.

Charlotte, SC

We didn't actually add this city to the list or visit it until after the family reunion when Adam had officially accepted a job with an office in Charlotte. But, we did evaluate it strongly since Adam would have had the benefit of being able to go into an office space if we lived there. Charlotte is a huge city. It had a lot to offer including major league sports teams, a lively downtown, museums, fun hipster restaurants, etc. However, with the traffic and size, it felt very similar to Denver but without the benefit of the mountains or our built in friendship communities. So, we decided against the city that would be just like Denver except worse (for us).

Greenville, SC

We liked Greenville even better than Knoxville. We were so relieved that each city we visited got better and better. 

-Small enough to not have a ton of traffic and no major highways with truckers

-Large enough to have a very vibrant scene of museums, stadiums, theaters, concert halls, etc

-The downtown is spectacular with a bridge overlooking a waterfall, a fantastic library, and lots of nice shops and restaurants

-The swamp rabbit bike trail through the city is so nice! It is shaded for a good portion of it and is paved.

-Paris Mountain State park is a hiking area just 20 minutes from downtown. Conestesee park is a nice nature area that is free to the public in the southern part of the city.

-The pickleball scene was very active too!

Athens, GA

Athens was very cute. The Botanic Gardens were nice. Downtown was essentially an extension of the university. The board game cafe we found was very fun. To some extent, we liked the idea of raising a family in a college town. We thought that had some pretty good positive elements. There would be cheap plays, concerts, and events and a culture of academics and learning. There may also be a great deal of drunkenness and partying, though. We didn't get a true feel for the city because probably a quarter of the population leaves during the summer. It seemed like a very small town without the college students. Neighborhoods within walking distance of the University and downtown were very nice and historic with sidewalks, but probably still very expensive and out of our price range. None of the houses for sale outside of the downtown area seemed promising. Additionally, we noticed a lot of homelessness. The library was not very nice because it seemed like a homeless shelter. Overall, we decided we probably preferred Greenville.

It does, however hold a special place in our hearts because that is where on Fathers day June 18, 2023, we took a couple of pregnancy tests and found out we were pregnant!!!

Marietta, GA

While dog sitting for Jake and Lauren, we explored the Acworth/Marietta/Woodstock area and even went to a few open houses. We obviously liked the proximity to family, but didn't love that it felt like sprawl from Atlanta with still a good deal of traffic. And the housing prices were relatively high. 

Back to Denver for Pregnancy Healthcare 

Our marketplace health insurance only provided non-emergency coverage in Colorado. So, we needed to head back there to get our first ultrasound, for Adam to do some job searching, and to plan out our future life! We rented an apartment downtown for two months and really enjoyed catching up with friends.

Family Reunion

A family reunion had been planned for the Kasten/Knehans/Berlinskis in Georgia. It was great to visit with family and especially to talk to Hannah Knehans about pregnancy - as she was pregnant too! We played games, had great meals, visited a winery, hiked up a waterfall, swam/boated on the lake, and did devotions together.

Moving - the Pink Palace

Finally, we made the decision to move to Greenville, SC. And Adam accepted an Actuary job with Equitable. We packed up our storage unit into a packrat pod and moved across the country into a temporary rental near downtown Hampton/Pinkney area. We called this rental the "Pink Palace" (207 Echols St). 

While in the temporary rental, we started adjusting to the new southern culture. Everyone is extremely friendly here. Also, the absolute openness and pervasiveness of Christianity here in the culture was a huge change from Colorado. Front desk staff at law firms talk about the holy spirit and even the Yoga classes are religiously based. We got really involved in young adult bible study groups from church and made a lot of friends there.

We got to attend Youssouf's wedding at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia PA. Adam visited the Charlotte office a few times and the NYC office once! We spent Thanksgiving in Acworth and Christmas in Florida.

We kept up with doctors appointments and tried to find a name for our sweet girl on the way.

The baby timer was ticking. She was growing and kicking. Clare was desperate to find a place to unpack permanently and set up for baby to arrive.

House Hunting 

At first, we were very discouraged house hunting and definitely felt a little hopeless. We decided that Simpsonville was too far outside of Greenville downtown. We moved to Greenville for the city, not to be in adjacent towns. But most of the houses we looked at in Greenville had one major downfall: no sidewalks and not walkable with two-lane busy country roads everywhere and a fair amount of hills. Greenville is really not walker friendly except for the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown, which are either extremely expensive or rather run down. A couple of small neighborhoods like Viola street seemed promising but no houses were for sale at the time we were looking.

We ended up putting offers on four houses.

We put a really low-ball offer on a house near Furman University in a fancy HOA subdivision. The "Haddington estate" house (211 Haddington Ln) was immaculate. But the location was somewhat far from a lot of friends and activities, which are more on the eastside. A different offer was accepted over ours. It just wasn't meant to be. 

Then, we put a lower but reasonable offer on the "Yorkshire strange house" (109 Yorkshire Dr). It was near very nice Bottany Woods neighborhood but had a weird layout. It was also just one street from busy and Wade Hampton. And the train was very loud to hear from there. The owners rejected our offer and would not come down to our price point, but they later regretted it. After weeks of not selling their house they came back to ask us if we were still interested. But we were under contract already and their house ended up selling for lower than our original offer to them.

We then went under contract for the "Melbourne Flip house" (12 Melbourne Ln) in the Wellington Green neighborhood. It was a nice and walkable non-HOA neighborhood with a community pool. However, the house was a flip and we questioned the integrity and skill of the flippers. When the inspection revealed some shady work done and when the owners maintained that no permit was needed for moving piping or taking out a load bearing wall, we decided to pull out. Dejected, we continued to look.

Finally, we found our home at 17 Kendal Green Drive. The neighborhood is by far the best out of all the homes. It is very walkable for a stroll but also to an ice cream store, nice restaurant, donut shop, sandwish shop, coffee shops, parks, pickleball courts, and more. The house needed more work than we realized, but we do not regret the purchase and are slowly working on improving the home.

New House and New baby on the way 

With a new house and a new baby on the way, our 15 month honeymoon and 3-4 month settling in journey came to an end. What a wonderful experience we had. We look forward to growing our family and for everything God has in store for us in the future.