Josh (according to Allison):

Josh is crazy. I am pretty sure his goal in life is to either live it to the fullest or make me have a nervous breakdown. He owns a sword, enjoys blowing fire, can bake a really awesome rum cake, and once drove his parents’ car into a pond. He is extremely loyal and extremely honest. He’s probably the best friend you could ever have. He has about 10,000 ideas on how to make a million dollars, but they haven’t panned out yet. There’s nothing he believes is impossible, legitimately. People say crap like that on cheesy hallmark cards, but Josh really believes it. And people who really believe that can be scary to be married to, but I wouldn’t trade him in for anything.

Allison (according to Josh):

Allison is wonderful.  She is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever met.  She is a great cook, everyone likes her, and she can also be quite adventurous (though sometimes not by choice).  She is from Alabama and watches way too much college football (she likes that red team).  Without her my life would be empty and filled with unfathomable sorrow.

 

The Story:
Josh and I met in 2005 after Josh was in a motorcycle accident. About three weeks after meeting, Josh told me, “Hey, so I think we’re going to get married,” and in 2007 we did.

Originally the “life plan” was to go do service work in central Africa. Then we got jobs running afterschool and summer programs for refugee students in Nashville. We loved our jobs. Every few months, however, I’d tell my boss we weren’t going to be around much longer. We traveled a lot, thought we were moving to Malawi, applied for jobs overseas, kept working, and kept saving.

In 2010 we went to Haiti and we loved it. In fact we didn’t really want to leave. I had been reading this blog called Bumfuzzle where these folks bought a boat and sailed the world. So, while on a beach there, I (Allison) flippantly said, “What if we bought a boat and just lived here.” So we got back and bought a boat. No, we didn’t grow up sailing. No, we didn’t sign up for tons of lessons (I did take a 6 week course on a lake here in Tennessee though). We just jumped right in.

The boat was in rough shape. It cost us a whopping $4000. We rebuilt a lot of the engine, replaced a bulkhead, rewired, reworked, and redid almost everything on our Tartan 30. We were originally going to live on the boat for a year, but we got jobs in Haiti working with the Salvant family at New Hope Haiti Mission. So, we sailed for the summer and then moved to Port-Au-Prince in August. It was one crazy ride and we loved every minute of it.

Then, we moved back to Nashville and lived on what we like to call Joyce Lane Farms. It’s not a farm at all. It’s a normal house in a normal neighborhood but we have a goat, chickens, bees, and gardens so we deemed it a farm. When we moved back, our friends over at Hey Wanderer lived in the same house as us, and our friends Klint and Kyle were across the street, and our other friends Jen and Adam just a few houses down. It was like a mini hippie commune. Between us all there were 8 adults, 6 dogs, 5 chickens, 1 goat and about a million bees.

Josh and I still live at JLF. We’ve got more neighborhood friends, an AirBnb, and still have 4 chickens and 1 goat. Josh is a realtor and I work for an amazing company doing support-related product commercialization. Now, we’re working on adopting from Burundi!

This blog is called the Tinii because that is how I like to say our name in plural form. Think syllabus/syllabi. Yes, it’s a grammatical nightmare but I like it and it has stuck with us.