Making friends

So far, meeting people and making friends has been much easier for me since moving to Eureka Springs. Everyone is so friendly. You could say it is the "Southern Hospitality", but most of the people who live here have relocated from other states. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who is a native Eurekan.

Maybe since most people have moved from somewhere else, and since we all made the choice to live here, we feel more at ease starting conversations with people to find out what made them pick Eureka. That seems to be the question when you first meet someone here. Anyway, I am very happy and have more friends now than I've had since high school.

No more Wal-Mart for me

Ever since the accident we saw last weekend, we have decided to drive as little as possible. We have even reconsidered our weekly trips to Berryville to do our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. Then, I checked out a DVD at the library that solidified my thoughts even more. It is called "Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price" - a Robert Greenwald Film. When faced with all the facts and statistical data against WM's practices, I can't justify making the drive to shop there.

The local grocery stores may have higher prices, but I am less likely to impulse shop like I do at WM. So I spend less and don't end up with useless items. Plus, I feel better supporting local businesses to keep my community thriving. Eureka Springs relies so much on tourism for much of its capital already, then if all the residents do their shopping in other towns we will be totally reliant on tourists. We want our town to thrive on its own, with tourism being an added bonus. So from now on, we'll find what we need right here and encourage other locals to follow suit.

Early in the Christmas Spirit

Today is the day after Thanksgiving, and almost the whole town is decorated in Christmas lights! Most of the commercial buildings and hotels have been done for a couple of weeks already, but now all the residents are following suit.

I must say, it seems to be contagious because we decided to put up our decorations today also! Maybe we can start a new tradition. Instead of the day after Thanksgiving being all about shopping, we can stay home with our family and decorate the tree and our house. We're such procrastinators, we have never shopped this early for Christmas anyway.

We've decided to spend the Christmas holiday here in our new Eureka Springs hometown, instead of traveling far away to spend it with other relatives. Of course, our parents are very upset about this, but we're sick of always trying to please everyone else and getting ourselves totally stressed in the process. Traveling during the winter with young children is stressful enough, then add all the holiday crap on top?? No, thank you. We'll just have a nice, quiet Christmas here at home with us and our kids.

Dangerous stretch of road

Even before we moved to Eureka, we had heard about some serious car accidents which occurred on the stretch of road between Eureka Springs and Berryville. The highway is kind of curvy, but not too bad. When looking at the police accident reports, every accident was caused by one of two things.

Either the driver was going too fast and couldn't negotiate a curve, driving off the edge of the road - Or the driver crossed the middle yellow lines during a curve and hit an on-coming vehicle. Another very disturbing fact is that every person that was not wearing their seatbelt and got in an accident there has been killed. And yet, people continue to speed and do not wear seatbelts.

On Saturday, November 18th, we witnessed a fatal car accident on this road. We were in the right lane going about 50 miles per hour. Then, a car passed us on the left, coming inches from side-swiping us, doing about 100 miles per hour.

About 20 feet ahead of us was a curve in the road, and the other car just lost control and went right off the edge of the road. Then they hit some gravel and spun sideways, then hit a ditch which propelled the car up about 30 feet in the air. It flipped twice in the air and landed in a shallow ditch.

The passenger was not wearing his seatbelt, so he was thrown from the vehicle and died almost instantly. The driver was still conscious in the car, but she stopped breathing for a few minutes just as the ambulance got there and thankfully, they were able to revive her. Then she was transferred to a helicopter to take her to a hospital.

This experience has affected our whole family to some degree. Our young children saw the whole thing, so they have lots of questions. I can't get the visual out of my head and have felt nauseous since then. It just really makes you realize how fragile life is and that everything can change in a matter of seconds.

Not Worthy to Blog??

OK, so I feel like a big loser who doesn't know her way around her own blog page. I just realized I had comments from people that I needed to "moderate" and post. I guess I thought I would get an email when I got comments, but apparently not.

So anyway, sorry it took me so long, but your comments are there now and I promise to check my "Moderate Comments" tab regularly now!!