News Photo by Alyssa Ochss Lisa Sirosky stands by a Christmas tree in Rusty Petunias Marketplace on Thursday.

ALPENA — Moving to and settling into a new town can sometimes be challenging, especially during the holiday season.

However, Lisa Sirosky, an employee at Rusty Petunias Marketplace, has found the Alpena community to be warm and welcoming this holiday season.

“It’s been awesome, yeah,” she said. “I think I was telling you the other day with the parade and then working here at Rusty Petunias (Marketplace) and having our holiday open house on Nov. 6, which was just amazing the number of people that came out and supported, and I’ve had an opportunity to meet so many people from the local community just from working here which has been really nice.”

Sirosky, who moved with her husband to Alpena over Memorial Day weekend from Rochester Hills, said the holiday season in Alpena has been a little different this year.

She said one of the things she misses about living downstate is being with her kids, but they’ll be together for the holidays. She also misses the Rochester Hometown Christmas Parade which she said is one of the biggest in the state.

Sirosky said so far her holiday experience in Alpena has been good.

“So it was so nice to be here for the parade,” she said. “The parade here was wonderful. It made it feel like home.”

When she moved here, Sirosky said she was surprised by the weather and the high level of community involvement.

“What surprises me is how involved everybody is,” she said. “There are so many things to do. You know Rusty Petunias (Marketplace) does a lot of different things. I’ve seen a lot of cookies and cocoa with Santa at a lot of places and Santa breakfasts and so there have been a lot of really great things that are happening up here.”

Sirosky had been coming to the Alpena area from Rochester Hills for 30 years before moving north. Though they moved in during the holiday, her and her husband didn’t have any trouble.

“So we’ve actually been coming to the Alpena area for about 30 years,” Sirosky said. “And so we always knew that when we retired that this was where we were going to move. And so we moved here full time in May. But we didn’t have any trouble, no.”

Her husband still works full time, so six weeks after she moved up to Alpena, she asked if Rusty Petunias Marketplace was hiring part time. She said since owner Laura Shearer knew her retail background, Shearer asked “When can you start?”

Sirosky said that though she’s only been here six months, she already feels like a part of the community and started to say she’s from Alpena. Before she would tell people she’s from Rochester Hills when asked where she was from.

“But I feel like everybody has been so welcoming and just super nice,” she said. “So I just feel at home. It was interesting because people would ask me, working here, ‘oh where are you from’ and I would always say ‘oh Rochester Hills’ or ‘downstate’ and just recently I noticed a customer asked me where I was from and I said ‘oh I’m from here, I’m from Alpena.’ So it was the first time that I said I’m from here, which I am now.”