A Lifetime of Adventure
The massive life update I've been teasing.
In the weeks leading up to my wedding in March 2015 I learned that the groom is supposed to give his bride a sentimental wedding day gift. I’m not a great gift giver. Material things don’t mean that much to me and I don’t know what means anything to anyone else. When I think about winning the lottery, I don’t dream about the car or house I would buy, I envision the trip I would take. I’m all about experiences. So I thought for weeks about what thing I could buy her that would have meaning for the two of us.
But I couldn’t come up with anything. However, there was one big experience we’d talked about. The problem was that I couldn’t afford it at the time. Instead, I did all the research I could, broke down the costs and the schedule and I planned a trip for a year and a half later. My gift to her was a piece of paper with a description of a future trip to Iceland. I told her that we could make it work if we followed a strict budget and saved up money.
Frankly, I felt a little stupid. I gave my wife a “gift” that wasn’t real. I just needed her to trust me. In the note I promised her a lifetime of adventure. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. But she was thrilled. She believed that I’d follow through.
A year and a half later we were on an overnight flight on a budget airline headed to Reykjavik. It was a life-changing trip and led to two more trips to Iceland in the coming years. Our life of adventure had truly begun.
Our ten-year anniversary is coming up at the end of March. Those ten years have involved four living situations, two dogs, two kids, and nearly 10 job changes. We’ve experienced some of the greatest joys in life and the darkest seasons.
In our friend group we’re seen as some of the more adventurous travelers. Most people do some kind of big trip to celebrate their ten-year anniversary.
One of my friends asked me the other day, “Y’all got big plans for your ten-year anniversary?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We’re moving to Tennessee.”
My family and I are packing up and moving to Chattanooga, TN this spring. Specifically, we’re moving to Signal Mountain, TN, a town on a ridge 1000 feet above Chattanooga. Our house goes on the market tomorrow, so I’m giving my Trial & Error readers an exclusive scoop.
We’ve told our family and friends over the course of the last five months and have fielded so many questions about our decision. So, for the rest of this piece I’m just going to treat it as an FAQs for our move.
Why are you moving?
There are so many reasons that pushed us to this decision but it boils down to these:
The Outdoors
We love being outside. Our kids love being outside and thrive outdoors in ways they cannot while being inside. Perhaps the greatest shared interest that Sami and I have is hiking, exploring, and enjoying God’s creation. As technology continues to encroach upon all of our lives, and specifically into our children’s lives, we want to reject this invasion and raise our children in the natural world that God created for our enjoyment, enrichment, and education.
The Weather
Piggybacking off the first reason, enjoying the outdoors in Texas is a limited game. Summer temperatures soar into the 100s sometimes as early as May and don’t subside until mid-October. Playgrounds are empty for a vast majority of the summer due to the scalding hot equipment. Even hiking in the shade through the woods is not possible with kids during the middle of the summer. We live next to a nature preserve, and when the weather is below 95 we spend as much time there as possible, even in the bitter cold. But we were unable to go from mid-June until early October this past year. Twice we tried when it seemed to be cooler and it was a disaster. People with dark, endless winters often experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I know for a fact that many in Texas like myself get the same way during the late summer.
We started to talk about moving somewhere cooler in the summer of 2023, when our son was born on June 23 and didn’t live a day that was below 100 degrees for the first 40+ days of his life. Kids need to be outside, especially newborns, and we couldn’t take him outside anywhere for more than 30 minutes without endangering his life. It made us realize how much we were limiting our abilities to raise our kids well due to the heat.1
The Size
I grew up in a town of about 85,000 people and I went to a private school with 52 people in my graduating class. My wife grew up in a town that had about 8000 people when she and her family moved there. Her older brother graduated from a 2A high school. We both value smaller communities and think that kids are better raised in these types of environments.
We currently live in Plano, a city of 290,000 surrounded by a metroplex of nearly 8 million people. Our school district has 50,000 kids in it. Plano is consistently ranked as one of the best suburbs and places to live in the entire country. Our problem is not with Plano, but rather just that we’re situated smack in the middle of 8 million other people. Traffic is a nightmare any time of day. Costs are soaring. Taxes are insane.2
As we talked about our vision for our family and our kids, having our boys be just one of 50,000 kids or one of 8 million people in this huge city just didn’t feel right.
Why not somewhere else in Texas?
Looking elsewhere in Texas was our first option, but we realized that nowhere truly satisfied those three main desires. The weather in all of Texas is basically the same, except with varying degrees of humidity. But, let’s say that we could get over the weather and the lack of outdoors options, where in Texas could we move that isn’t rapidly expanding and becoming part of a huge Metroplex?
The town Sami grew up in, Prosper, had 8000 when she moved there in the late 90s. They have 41,000 at last check and are growing exponentially. They’ll have six 5A high schools within the next few years.
The small town of Princeton, outside of McKinney, had to pause all new construction because their infrastructure couldn’t keep up. Melissa, north of McKinney, had a population of 4,800 in 2010. They now have nearly 30,000 and have grown 85% since 2020!
The Austin, San Antonio, and Houston areas are experiencing the same thing. Every small town within two hours of a major city is being taken over, whether they can support the influx of people or not.
And, frankly, most small towns that are far from big cities are dying, losing their young people at significant clips. So, it seemed our options to stay in Texas were either move to a small town that would be overwhelmed within a decade or move to a small town that is far from thriving.
Those factors, plus our strong desire to be somewhere outdoorsy with better weather caused us to look to other states. We considered Northwest Arkansas, a beautiful, booming region, but decided against it due to the fact that it is experiencing such huge growth that it will soon look like the DFW suburbs we wanted to avoid.
Why Chattanooga?
It’s called the Scenic City for a reason. Chattanooga is surrounded by mountains, with the Tennessee river running right through the middle, and is in very close proximity to numerous state parks. It’s also only a couple of hours from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There’s an endless amount of hiking trails, water activities, and natural beauty.
It’s also on average about 8-10 degrees cooler in the summer than Texas, but doesn’t experience extreme winters (which is why we ruled out places further north).
From a size perspective it’s a great mid-sized city, with less than 200,000 in the city itself and about 500,000 in the greater metro area (which includes parts of northern Georgia). It’s only two hours to Atlanta and Nashville. So any needs one might have from a bigger city are well within reach. But Chattanooga seems to have every amenity that a city needs, without the insane traffic and overcrowding. We have driven on the main highway at 5:30 PM multiple times and it was like a ghost town. I’ve never seen Dallas traffic so light, even at 2 AM.
And yes, Chattanooga is growing too. Those dang Californians are everywhere. But it’s not growing at near the rate of Texas.
Signal Mountain
Signal Mountain sits about 1000 feet above Chattanooga, one of two mountains that tower over the city. Signal is actually not a mountain, it’s a ridge that’s technically called Walden’s Ridge. But everyone calls the whole area Signal Mountain. Signal stays 5-7 degrees cooler than Chattanooga due to its elevation, meaning summer temps rarely go above 90. Despite being up on the mountain, it is only 15 minutes from downtown Chattanooga.
The town of Signal Mountain and its neighboring community of Walden have a population of only 10,000. So small, in fact, that they didn’t have a middle or high school on the mountain until 2008.
It’s a town with an extremely strong sense of community, oriented around families and the outdoors. Kids ride their bikes around the town together unsupervised. There’s trails through the woods where kids to walk to elementary school together. The ridge is crisscrossed with numerous hiking trails leading to waterfalls and overlooks.
Additionally, Signal’s geography prevents major explosions in growth that have plagued small towns in Texas and other areas, including Nashville.
We’ve visited Chattanooga and Signal twice. The first time we went in the hottest part of August, and local residents complained about the “sweltering summer heat.” It was literally 92 degrees. I wore a long sleeve shirt when we went to a playground in the morning because it was in the 60s. I felt like I was in heaven. We also went in January when temps were in the mid-30s and 40s. In Texas that means no one is outside. But in Tennessee the playgrounds and parks were still packed with kids and adults. No one seemed bothered.
These are our kinds of people.
Do you know anyone in Chattanooga?
Well…we didn’t when we picked it. But through our two trips we’ve actually met several people in our life stage with kids around our age. Some have even moved there recently from Texas for the exact same reasons that we want to move. They said it was the best thing they’ve ever done.
These new connections have really helped us feel comfortable with taking the leap. But still, we’ll be moving somewhere completely new and without family or longtime, deeply loved and trusted, friends. It’s going to be extremely difficult. This is by far the biggest reason that we agonized over this decision. We love our community in Texas. Our families are here. Our entire lives have been spent in Texas, besides four years in Oklahoma for college, and we don’t really know what it will be like elsewhere.
But we feel like God will provide people for us there and have already seen Him working to do so through the connections we’ve made.
What about school?
Carter should be starting kindergarten in August. The schools in Signal Mountain are top rated, especially the elementary schools which are beloved and supported strongly by the community.
However, we plan to homeschool Carter for at least the first year or two. There are many reasons we came to this decision. Trust me, I never thought I’d be in favor of homeschooling. But he is a very unique kid, in both amazing and challenging ways, and we feel that traditional kindergarten won’t be the best fit for him. Frankly, it’s not a great fit for many young boys. Kids need to be outside expending energy. They learn much better in those kinds of environments. Carter is also very intelligent and loves to teach himself things3. He will thrive as a homeschooler learning at his own pace and not being held back by classroom rules.
We aren’t committing to homeschool for life and we both envision him transitioning to regular school eventually and Signal Mountain gives us an amazing school for him to do so.
What about your job?
My transition to full-time business owner facilitated this move. As we realized that we had the freedom to work anywhere we began to question exactly why we were living in a place that didn’t make us happy. Most people who live in DFW do so because their job has them here. Few choose to move here simply because they love it.
A vast majority of my clients have not been in DFW and the ones who are don’t need me to be here. Yet another reason I’m so thankful for the opportunity to run Bedgood Marketing.
What about comedy?
Yeah…this is a tough one. I’ve spent nearly three years building up my reputation here in Dallas as a comedian. Comedy is a difficult game to break into, especially when you can’t spend as much time as others doing shows. It’s a cruel irony that my first ever headlining show, March 1 at Jax’s Comedy Club in Rockwall, comes after I have put my house on the market.
So, you know, if you’ve never been to one of my shows, this is one of your last chances. It’s a totally clean show, so if you’ve avoided going to shows for fear of a bad experience, give this one a shot.
I’ve loved getting to do comedy in Dallas and I’ve especially loved running DeadGood Productions with Kevin Deanda. We did some amazing things together. It was hard work but it was super fun. DeadGood Productions isn’t dead, but it will take on different forms now. DeadGood, like Outkast, is forever.
Chattanooga does have a solid comedy scene for a city of its size and is in close proximity to the big-time comedy scenes in Nashville and Atlanta. I’ve already started reaching out to people there and plan to begin building up my reputation in my new hometown as soon as I can.
How has your family taken the news?
“I hate you.”
“What god are you praying to?”
These are just a few of the rave reviews this news has received from family! They are not thrilled. Don’t worry, the utterers of those retorts apologized…sort of.
We truly feel that this is the best choice for our children and ourselves. We hope and pray that our families will come to understand why we believe this. Ideally, they’ll come visit and see why we made this decision.
Frankly, we’re heartbroken to be leaving family and friends. It’s been incredibly difficult for us to process.
Are we doing the right thing? Are we ruining our lives? Is it better for us to suck it up and try and make things work in a place we think isn’t good for us, just to make sure we don’t offend anyone?
We processed all of that. At the end of the day we felt our reasons for moving were stronger than our reasons for staying. We’re thrilled to be making this big change, but sad to be doing it without family and friends.
Trial & Error started as a way for me to try silly things that might make me look like a fool and give the readers some entertainment. But those things taught me valuable lessons. Sometimes doing things that scare you, like stand-up comedy, will open up whole new worlds that you didn’t even know existed.
Are we scared? Yes. But we’re going to push past that fear and see what adventures await on the other side.
So, please, come visit us if you’re ever in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, or the Carolinas. Or just plan a trip to the Scenic City to experience the place that we’ve fallen in love with.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll want to join us on this big adventure.
Yes, I know that there’s this thing we Texans do where we have to act like we’re all tough and the heat doesn’t bother us. Maybe 107 is breezy for you. But it’s not for us. We also love the bitter cold and spent hours and hours outside in the snow and freezing weather. Often we’re the only ones at our neighborhood park when the temps are below 45. Some people just have different tolerances for different types of weather.
I paid nearly 4X as much in property taxes for 2024 as comparable houses do in TN.
As I write this I can overhear him learning about the island of Tuvalu on his own. Bonus points to you if you have ever even heard of Tuvalu before this moment.