Peoria!

This is why I moved to Peoria.

 This is my dad and daughter.

We left our house in Nashville, unsold (we paid the mortgage there and rent here for 6 mos).  We had to move ourselves at our expense.  My husband had to quit his job so he was unemployed without unemployment benefits.  We sold out house having to pay in $6k that we had to borrow from my parents. For a job paying me well under national average for a librarian. For this.

This is my daughter playing with her cousins on the train at Pioneer Village in Walnut Grove, IA.

(These photos are from my phone and not great quality.  For some reason they tend to have a bluish tint.)

We moved for family.  Living in Nashville was pretty good.  I loved working for Vanderbilt.  I liked my house and neighborhood.  I loved my friends!!!!  I hated the heat and traffic, but I could tolerate them.  But we were so far away from our parents and our parents wanted to see our daughter.  We wanted our daughter to see her grandparents.  And so we moved.  

It has been almost two years since we moved here.  My daughter loves getting so see her grandparents and cousins on weekends.  We seem to spend at least one weekend a month.  Peoria is less than two hours from the grandparents (just North of Davenport, IA).  It makes for a very easy trip since our drive time from Nashville was near 10 hours.

Peoria is growing on us.  Illinois has a lot of problems as anyone who watches the new will know, but it is our home now; for better or worse.