The First One

It was in May when Paul and I decided that we wanted to move outside of Richmond.  We were at a bar and I turned to him and blurted out, "I wanna move," and he said OK.  At first I thought I wanted to move to New Orleans and help with the post Katrina clean-up, so we wrote a contract out on a bar napkin that said,"I Jeffrey Paul Hansbarger and I Jessica Dawn Noe promise one another that we will move to New Orleans, Louisiana on August 1, 2010."  It was not until June when Paul and I decided that we were going to go to Montana.

When I tell people we are moving to Montana their first response usually is,"Why Montana?"  If you know anything about Paul you have heard his obsession with the word "Mon" and all things that are "Mon" related.  So, naturally the funny response is because it is MON-tana.  But, in all seriousness that is not the reason why.  Paul had always talked about moving out west, even before we met he signed up to do Americorps in Montana, but never went through with it (mainly because he met me).  So, one night when we were talking about New Orleans he just brought up Missoula.  I had no objections to Montana, I had gone out there when I went to Yellowstone, so I knew it was a beautiful state.  However, I was nervous because I still wanted to be around people, and I was scared that we were going to be woods people, and I felt like I am still too young to retire into the wilderness.  It was not until I talked to my dad that he told me Missoula was a small college town.  My dad had gone through Missoula on a fly fishing trip, and said it was like a small city.

Missoula, Montana is actually a city inside of Missoula County with the population of about 65,000 people.  It is the location of the largest media market in the state, and has the International Missoula Airport, so you can fly in and out of the town.  It was also ranked number 10 in CNNMoney's list of best places to launch a small business.  Missoula is also home to the University of Montana.  Paul and I always said we both wanted to go back to school, and the UMT has both wild life conservation for Paul, and a special education degree for me.  So, Missoula, Montana was the perfect compromise.