Martha's Trouble

We moved to Auburn, AL from Hamilton, Ontario, well this year will be six years ago! One of the biggest questions we get asked, especially at home is “Why Auburn?”.  An answer we have given on many occasion. 

When we moved from Hamilton, we could have moved anywhere in the US we wanted. We were that free! A couple of deciding factors led to us choosing Auburn.  To preface this, Jen’s travel permit for her green card had expired. We were given the option from US Customs & Immigration to either surrender the green card and continue living in Canada OR move back to the US to keep it.

1. We were playing ‘a lot’ in the southeast and especially at our now, home venue, Eighth & Rail in Opelika, AL. In fact the owner’s of Eighth & Rail were really ‘selling’ us on the idea of moving down and becoming apart of their community.  We were sold!

2. Rob’s parent’s had decided to retire in Auburn about a year before we moved there, so there was a family connection too. Always nice to be near family. And who knew at the time that 5 years later we would have 2 kids!

Auburn is a great town to live in, although there certainly was an adjustment period. It’s been named in the Top 10 Best of Small Towns to live in the US.  For some, you may not know that it is centered around Auburn University and more importantly (at least for the locals) Auburn Football.  It’s talked about year round here much like Hockey for us in Canada.  It’s a huge deal.

Those that follow college football will know that Monday night Auburn played Oregon for the national BCS Championship and won! Auburn is the best college football team in the country. Crazy.  We watched the game at home (and were txt’ing back in forth with our brother n law in Canada who was watching the game…eh Stu!) and by the 3rd quarter, Wilson was packing up the toilet paper ready to head downtown to Toomer’s corner. It’s a tradition here that after Auburn wins, everyone heads to Toomer’s Corner and throws toilet paper in a big tree.  IDK, an Auburn student/alumni could better explain the tradition, the kids just enjoy the activity!  

Here’s a picture of Rob & Wilson at the party downtown 12:30AM after Auburn won! Wilson’s got his toilet paper ready!