Day 1: Nova Scotia!!

Ahhhhh, I have been dying to start writing recaps because I’m just bursting to share how incredible these last few days have been, but I have also been just too busy actually EXPERIENCING all of the awesomeness, so… I just haven’t had time! 🙂 Obviously. 🙂

I have a sliver of time right now though in between today’s beautiful adventures and our fancy celebratory dinner out tonight, so I will try to give an update of my first couple days. (Edited to add: nope, I’m being too wordy- you’re only getting the very first day for now!! Day 2 coming tomorrow!)

Wednesday, October 8

You can see the beginning of my story in my last post, which left off in Newark while waiting for my next flight to Halifax. My flight was perfectly on time and even arrived 10 min early, so, yay!

Below is photo evidence of both me and Elisabeth proving to each other that we are in fact real people!! 🤣 Not that we really ever doubted it, but with internet friendships, I guess you never know for sure… 😉

Elisabeth so graciously picked me up around 2:00 pm. (Bonus- Indy (Elisabeth’s almost 11 year old) had a half day and rode along, so I got to meet him right away too!)

We immediately started talking in the car and it was as if we’d known each other our whole lives. No “weirdness” or “oh, hm, you seemed different online”… nope! It was so great.

The drive from Halifax to Wolfville was also immediately beautiful. It took just under an hour or so.

I could tell the leaves were going to be good, though none of my highway pics turned out the best.

We made a stop off at the Deportation Cross, where many Acadian people were deported back in I think the late 1700’s? (Note- throughout these posts I won’t really try to give all the historical and technical details. I’ll leave that to Elisabeth – she has already posted minute details in other previous posts about Nova Scotia, and I’m truly not the best at remembering all the details, especially when I haven’t personally done the trip planning and researching!)

It is a beautiful site though and was just a brief stop off.

There’s a farm right next door with some super cute cows!

We continued on to her house, via more pretty leaf lined roads…. 😍 If you didn’t know it, Elisabeth literally lives inside a real life Hallmark movie setting. You’ll see more later.

At Elisabeth’s house, she got me settled in her guest room for the night. How cute and perfect is this room?

AND she had a little welcome gift waiting, with local treasures! I love it.

During this phase I was honestly too busy talking to her and just getting acquainted that I don’t even know what time it is or what we really did. I think we settled in the living room for a while, along with her 14 year old daughter Belle!, just chatting.

Eventually she heated up butternut squash soup and delicious homemade biscuits for dinner! It was so yummy. Her husband, John, was still away in Germany for work, so it was just us and the kids.

After dinner, we dropped the kids off at Youth Group at church. The weather was spitting rain a little, but I was fine with it as we had no major plans and the next several days looked perfect. Let’s go ahead and get any rain over with now. 🙂

The kids’ schedules had a bit of overlap, so we did a little waiting in the car, talking, etc.. it was honestly fun to just be along for “drop off” and to witness Elisabeth’s regular life happenings!

After both kids were in their groups, we hit up a couple of thrift shops. You all know how big Elisabeth is into thrifting, so this was a must. We mostly just moseyed around and browsed, though Elizabeth scored a great little puffer jacket for Indy! It was fun and low key which met my needs for this first travel day evening. 🙂

Side note, I apparently forgot to take any pictures of Elisabeth in the thrift shop! Darn it.

We picked up Indy, and then had some time to kill before picking up Belle. We ran into the grocery store with him for a few things for the next day’s dinner.

Here I did think to capture Elisabeth, as I have been saying, “in her natural habitat”. 😅

We headed back to church and went in to wait for Belle to finish up. It gave me serious WARM FUZZIES to witness all the teens and kids milling around and to get a glimpse of Elisabeth’s beloved church community. It was so special! At one point I ended up on a couch in the corner, just observing, and it was so awesome. Everyone knew everyone, everyone was so happy to be there… it just radiated love. I know how special Elisabeth’s church is to their family, so I’m so glad I got to see this. 💕

It was pretty late by the time we got home- well after 9 pm. I’d had a very early morning so I was a little sleepy but not too bad. I wanted to unwind with some tea, so after Elisabeth got the kids into bed, we sat and talked some more in her exceptionally cozy living room.

I don’t want to sound like Mary Poppins here, but it was all really so wonderful. Now that I’m a few days into the future, I can attest to that it gets even better, but I was just so happy to finally meet Elisabeth, see her lovely home and meet her awesome kids, and have such natural, easy conversation. What a joy to have found a friend like her!!

We eventually called it a night- we had big plans for the next day. We had one full day on our own (Thursday) before SHU would join us on Friday!