They’re newlyweds. Soon-to-be new parents. And new South Dakotans. The past year has brought a lot of life changes for Matt and Mikel Crispo, but as they settle into Sioux Falls, they’re nothing but positive about the future. “We weren’t really sure what to expect,” Matt said. “We’d never been to South Dakota. We didn’t know anyone that lived in South Dakota.” The two are both nurses and grew up in the Salt Lake City area. Their career paths led them to Sioux Falls when Matt decided to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist and was accepted into a program at Mount Marty University ..read more

The Berger family got a full-on introduction to what a South Dakota winter can be like – and raves about their recent move anyway. It all started when Travis Berger moved from Texas to Sioux Falls in February. He works in private equity and is a food scientist and chef doing product development for a local company. While traveling here leading up to the move, “he was stuck in his hotel and got snowed in, and everything shut down,” his wife, Paige, said. “So there are people stuck in the hotel, and he literally hopped in the kitchen and helped feed everyone.” Neither of them knew anything abo ..read more

A short stay in South Dakota was all it took to convince Jared and Katrina Smith to move east. “We visited at the end of February and on the ride back home to California we decided to move,” Katrina Smith said. “From there, we just started packing and three months later we were headed here with our truck and trailer.” They had come to South Dakota – Hartford, more specifically – to help settle the estate of Jared’s stepbrother. “And we decided it would be in everyone’s best interest for us to buy the house and keep it in the family,” Katrina said. “He lived in Hartford, so we just decided to ..read more

A job search and a college search collided in one place this year for a Detroit family: Sioux Falls. Dr. Bart Miles and his wife, Jennifer Knightstep, have lived all over the country. She was born in California and spent much of her life in Michigan; he has been in the Detroit area since 2003. The closest he came to South Dakota was as a student at Dordt Univeristy in Sioux Center, Iowa, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “I had friends in Sioux Falls, and at the time I was at Dordt, I’d come over once in awhile to go to a movie. Sioux Falls was significantly smaller, and I hadn’t been back s ..read more