Eight States Later, McKenna and Her Family Finally Feel at Home

Vincennes, Indiana, wasn't on McKenna's radar until her brother's realtor sent over a link that took her to the MakeMyMove platform. But when she looked into it, she realized that she could be near family in a town that was welcoming newcomers through its relocation incentive program. It didn’t take much convincing before she and her husband started loading up their vehicle and made the move official.

Indiana is McKenna’s eighth state. She’s lived on the East Coast, near the Appalachian Trail and spent years in Utah and has moved enough times to know that the logistics of relocation are rarely the hard part. The hard part is landing somewhere that actually feels like home. Three weeks in, Vincennes is looking promising.

What Utah Couldn't Offer

Utah had a lot going for it, including mountains and plenty of access to the outdoors. But after she had twins, McKenna and her husband found themselves isolated in a state where they didn’t have a support system nearby and the weight of that started to show.

“We had the twins and we were like, ‘Good Lord, this is a lot of work,’” McKenna laughs. “We didn’t have any close friends or family in Utah, and we needed some help.”

Her brother had already moved to Indiana, and the idea of being close to him and their parents, who were also looking to move to be near him, made Vincennes the perfect landing spot. There was also another factor nudging them out of Utah, a lack of water.

“Utah is currently in a drought and it’s really bad. The Great Salt Lake is their main source of water and it’s super low. It would be nice not to have to worry about how much it’s going to rain each year.”

Indiana, with its green summers and reliable rainfall, offered a different kind of reassurance. “We like storms,” McKenna said simply.

Refreshingly Painless

The link to MakeMyMove came through the family’s realtor, who passed it along to McKenna’s brother while he was house hunting. He sent it her way, and the rest of the process moved quickly.

“I hadn’t heard of MakeMyMove before,” McKenna said. But the application process didn’t give her reason to hesitate. “It was really easy,” she said.

That simplicity mattered. Between FaceTime house tours, infant twins, and coordinating a cross-country move without ever setting foot in Vincennes first, McKenna had enough complexity to manage. A straightforward relocation process was exactly what the situation called for.

Buying a House They’d Never Seen

The house hunt itself was, by McKenna’s own description, “a mess”, though a productive one. They were unable to view houses in person, so she and her husband did the whole thing over FaceTime, eventually committing to a home they’d never been to.

“Most people would be like, ‘Oh, that’s really risky,’” she said, laughing. “And maybe it was but I really like the house, so the process worked for us.”

It turned out to be a good fit in ways she couldn’t have fully planned for. The layout keeps the kids’ bedrooms at one end and the main living areas at the other. There are no stairs, which removes a lot of safety hazards for babies and in their new backyards sits a detached garage with heating and AC, which will be remodeled to serve as the future home office for her husband, who works remotely.

“We’re going to end up putting his office in that detached garage when we fix it up a little bit,” she said. “It’s going to be epic because we won’t hear him on calls, which can get loud at times.”

Painting Cabinets and Meeting Neighbors

McKenna has only been in Vincennes for a few weeks, and much of that time has been spent painting cabinets and recovering from being sick post-move. She hasn’t had the chance to explore her new community much yet but the impression the town has already made is hard to miss.

“Everybody in Vincennes has been amazing since we’ve moved,” she said. “Everybody’s been so kind.”Her parents, who’ve been visiting to help with the move, have noticed the same thing.

During a recent evening when her brother was over with their parents. After they left, McKenna turned to her husband and said something she hadn’t been able to say in years.

“Wow, it was weird having people at our house,” she told him. “I mean, it’s just my family, but still, it meant everything.”

What’s Next: Triathlons, Trails and Becoming Vincennes University’s Biggest Fans

McKenna is an outdoors person at heart - she’s hiked 8% of the Appalachian Trail and has a running list of athletic goals that includes competing in a triathlon, a marathon and a bike-packing trip when the twins are old enough to be left with her brother for a weekend. She’ll miss the Utah mountains, she says. But she’s not worried.

“I know we’ll find plenty of outdoor activities to do here,” she said.

She’s already headed to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a camping trip with friends next month.

Closer to home, McKenna is already eyeing the YMCA membership that came with the MakeMyMove Vincennes program. “We’re going to use the heck out of that,” she said. “I am super excited about it .” The Vincennes University sports pass is also on the list - partly for the experience and she says, because they are new converts.

“Have we ever been fans of Vincennes University in the past? No,” she said, laughing. “But we’re the biggest fans now.”

The Life They Were Looking For

For McKenna, the move to Vincennes has already delivered the thing that mattered most - her family. Her brother is down the street, and her parents are planning to relocate to the area soon. The support system she and her husband spent years without is finally nearby.

Part of what's drawing the whole family to Vincennes is something that goes beyond proximity. McKenna's brother Austin and her parents are set to open Vinyl Pies, a pizza restaurant coming to Vincennes this August. It's a family venture in every sense. Austin will be running it full-time once it's up and going, with their parents involved part-time. For McKenna, being nearby for the launch is as much a part of the move as anything else.

"I think while we've got the little kiddos and potentially more in the future, it'll be a nice place for our family," she said. "We have more family in Ohio, too, so Vincennes is just a really good place for us to be."

For anyone curious about what relocating to Vincennes through the MakeMyMove program is actually like, McKenna's advice is simple: "Just check it out."

The cabinets are painted, the detached garage is on its way to becoming a home office and come August, there will be a family pizza place just down the road. McKenna says she can finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that she has family near her new home.