Home Sweet Hoyleton: An Introduction

A year ago today, we rolled into Hoyleton, IL and our life has never been the same. I would like to take some posts to tell everyone just how much we love and appreciate Hoyleton. We are thankful for all the places that we have lived as single people and as a family but Hoyleton almost immediately felt like home.

Hoyleton is located in Southern Illinois about 1 hour east of St. Louis, MO. As almost all of you know, I am from St. Louis, so it is so nice to be close to where I grew up and close to friends and family. If we need anything, at the most, we drive an hour. Target is 35 minutes away, not too bad, and it probably saves me a lot of money.

Here are some more facts about our lovely little town. The Village of Hoyleton is a town of 550 people. Yes, you read that right, 550. When we lived in Cape Girardeau on vicarage I made comments on how living in a town of 39,000 people seemed so small. Try 550. Our church worships, on average, 220 people. You may say, "You have 220 average attendance in a town of 550?" Yep, we draw from the people outside of town in the countryside and a good deal of our members live in town as well. Hoyleton has two banks, a post office, feed store, implement dealer, two churches, a school, a park, a children's home and a bar and grill. No, we don't have a gas station but we have one about 5 minutes down the road.

When Nate told me he had an interview for little Hoyleton, I was like, you can interview but I don't know if you can convince this girl from the burbs to move to the country. Little did we know that moving to the country was the best thing for us. I love living in this tiny town where everyone knows everyone. I think that tiny towns are actually great for my personality because I don't mind people knowing my business and I love knowing everyone. This might just mean that I am nosey. Oh well. I love how everyone has family in town and how you get to know an entire family. If you don't have family in town, the town becomes your family.

Zach is hiding out under my coat in this picture. Hehe.

In Hoyleton, when you go to the store (not in town), you see people from "the village" and get to chat. That didn't happen to me much in the bigger places we lived. Hoyleton is also the type of town that if you see someone you know (because you know what everyone drives) you stop and roll your window down. I stopped to talk to my buddy Norma yesterday while she was pulled over to text a friend. She was on the shoulder and I was just stopped in the middle of the main road that goes through town. In the past, this would have made me so anxious, now, it's not a big deal at all. No one is coming? No rush. Not only do you know what everyone drives, but you know where everyone lives and who lived in the house before them. Everyone knows where I live and knows who lived in the house before me. Haha. The funny part is that not many people know what I drive because I don't drive to church.

I love that Zoe's friends from church and school live right down the street from us, so when we moms want to take our kids to the park after dinner during the summer, its no big deal. There is no getting in cars. We just walk to her friends house and then all walk together to the park.

We have a little Lutheran grade school. It is lovely, Zoe doesn't even have to cross the street to go to school. A fun little fact about Hoyleton is that the public school closed and not the Lutheran school. In this church climate, that's incredible. We also, however, live in the State of Illinois that has no money for anything so it's not super surprising.

Hoyleton is gorgeous. We have so many trees. In McAllen mostly had Palm trees and those are pretty and fun for a while but they don't turn in the fall. We see the most beautiful sunsets out the back of our house. And let me tell you that miles and miles of fields full of corn, soybeans and wheat are just good for the soul.

Hoyleton is a small town that has had such a large impact on us. Hoyleton is everything I never knew I wanted and I'm so thankful we are here. More posts to come.

That's all for now. God is good.