An Adventurer’s Life from Then til Now

My life has been one big adventure.  I’d like to give you a little background into who I am.

My name is Angela, and I have been married to Daniel Chesery for almost 30 years now.  We have 3 biological children and have adopted our grandson, Ben, who is now our youngest.  He is 4 years old.  

My Childhood Life

As a child, I lived in many places.  I never lived anywhere for more than 2 years until after I got married.  By the time I graduated high school, I had been to 20 different schools.  I went to 2 colleges and 1 tech school up to now. 

I did move an awful lot as a kid.  My parents separated, so I spent a lot of time between their houses.  And my mother was constantly moving.  That’s one reason why I went to so many different schools.  It was a tough adventure not having roots to put down.

Sometimes I even spent extended amounts of time with my grandmother.  The time with her was important.  It was a time of learning about my family history and to get a desire to want to find out more about them as I was taught information about my genealogy.

I didn’t have roots, but I learned to make friends fast.  Now, I can talk to anyone anywhere.  I always had a variety of friends from all different walks of life.  That probably happened because of all the moving.  I never got pegged as being in one group or another. 

Jumping into the Unknown

So far, I have lived in nine states.  I have never been to Europe.  Never even left the continent of North America. 

I never liked living in one place for very long.  When we lived in the same house for 11 years in Florida I was constantly rearranging the furniture to make it feel different.  It was foreign for me to be there for so long.

So, you can see I like adventure in my life.  When we first decided to move to Tennessee, most of our friends thought we were crazy.  We didn’t have a place to live or jobs lined up. 

We found a place to live while we were visiting on our yearly motorcycle vacation that we took from FL to TN.  Then we went home to pack and loaded our moving truck.  With 2 teachers’ summer pay and hope with our degrees, we set out on our new adventure to find jobs.  We did find jobs, but it was an adventure to say the least. 

We have lived in East Tennessee for 9 years now but have lived in 3 different addresses in that time frame.

My sister-in-law and my husband figured out that they are Italian citizens and are in the process of being recognized by Italy.  Once recognized, they will be EU citizens and that allows them to live in any EU country. 

My sister-in-law is a great researcher and has found that Portugal is a great place for our families to move to.  It has a simple, slower lifestyle and has lots of culture for us to experience at an affordable cost of living.  So we have started planning to move as a multigenerational family. 

Family Stories

One of the big things that has been so exciting is watching Daniel and Alecia finding out about their families as I did as a kid.  It is a passion I have to find out more.  My cousin and I still work on it.  I am excited to actually be going to Europe where I will have closer access to documents and information to fill in some blanks we have and learn more details. 

I want to know the stories behind their migrations across Europe and their emigration to the United States.  Like the fact that my great-grandmother and great-grandfather were born on separate ships in the same year coming from Ireland to the United States, met each other, married and had 14 children.  One of those was my grandfather on my mother’s side. 

Or the story about my grandmother on my dad’s side telling me how she met my grandfather.  He was much older than her.  He was the same age as her father.  She met him because she lived with her sister in a rooming house in Washington, D.C., during the wars.  They worked at the Pentagon.

There was a lady about the same age as her who wanted to set her up on a date with her dad. And they hit it off and married. Who knew that could happen. But it did, which makes my story twisted and interesting. 

These are just some of the stories I know because of my introduction to genealogy from my grandmother.  I look forward to finding out more and creating our own stories for future generations.

Heading to Portugal for an Adventure

Alecia and her daughter are moving with Daniel, me, and the 2 youngest kids. Brad is 19 and Ben is 4.  So you can see there is quite the spread of ages that are going.  It will be interesting to have one looking for a job and to really start adulthood and one who we will be enrolling in elementary school.

I think moving to Portugal will be much like when I would move to a new area as a kid.  I will watch people for a bit.  Explore the area to find fun things to do.  I usually find that stuff by asking others who are from the area, then I just start wandering around until something catches my eye.  Of course, I don’t speak Portuguese yet, so this may be harder than I think.

I believe Brad will have the hardest time adjusting because he has had a much more stable life than I did.  He has lived in the same house for 10 years.  He says he is up for the adventure. 

We have talked as a family about how we are not comfortable with the events that are happening in the United States.  It has been a huge motivator for us to pursue our move as fast as possible.  This is encouraging Brad to experience life abroad.

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