Connecticut taught us some good life lessons:
There are amazing people everywhere.
Winter must be avoided at all costs.
We never want an apartment with electric heating again. Gotta be gas.
You can fully furnish an apartment for under $300.
No matter how much you crave Red Robin, do not attempt to drive there in a snow storm.
Regardless of how long you plan to live somewhere, unpack your bags (and throw away the boxes!)
Explore the places around you while the opportunity is there.
Mario Kart/Super Smash fixes everything.
You can never eat too much pizza.
On that note, here is a snap shot of what our time in CT gave us.
We made some great friends.
We had some good food.
I wasn't a huge fan of Louis Lunch, but it was cool to try 'The Original Cheeseburger'
Connecticut was pretty good for it's location benefits. We were a few hours away from Boston, Rhode Island, New York and Washington DC. All places that I hadn't fully experienced before.
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| Yale University - reminded me of Hogwarts. |
We loved having the beach less than 30 minutes away! Except the weather made it more of a wear your wellies and coats to the beach type of occasion.
We couldn't pass up visiting the smallest state in America! We really enjoyed our quick trip to Rhode Island. We visited the beach and got to tour The Breakers house. Thanks for the recommendation Lindsay and Blake!
New York City was less than 2 hours away so we ventured in quite a few times. Spencer was a PRO at driving there - I didn't dare - and we only got honked at a few times. (We did our fair share of beeping at the pedestrians though! It was fun)
We even found free parking a couple times! Score!
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| 9/11 Memorial |
We went inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw some amazing things!!
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| Original Van Gogh! |
I also had the chance to go into New York with friends a couple times. Stacy got tickets to be in the audience for The Jimmy Fallon show AND The Seth Myers show! Such a fun experience! :)
We had our best halloween month yet. We visited Salem and Sleepy Hollow, went through a haunted forest and went to a harry potter party :)
We were Lupin and Tonks (my hair was purple, I promise! Or at least the bathroom definitely was...)
Stanley also had his best - and only - halloween experience.
He took his role as a pirate very seriously.
He wanted to go trick or treating, but we took him for his op instead!
Stanley had some drastic haircuts. We had one of those 'is this really our dog?' moments.
Winter was BRUTAL and NEVER ended. I did get a lot of snow days out of it though!
No matter how cold it was, it was never too cold for ice cream!
I taught 3rd grade. It was a huge blessing that I was able to be hired as a full time teacher, even when my Connecticut teaching certification hadn't been cleared yet. I met some great people, both student and staff alike and I will miss them. However, I think it may have been the hardest thing I've done in a long time. When will I learn not to take over a class mid year? Here are some of the 'highlights.'
Average weekend workload... :|
It's sad, but this meme got me through some rough times!
The Pez Factory was randomly down the road from my school. Spencer and I visited it and then I found out the school had planned for third grade to go on a field trip there the following month.
Yey, 40 kids on sugar highs then sugar crashes all day!
I turned 25. Spencer spoiled me big time and took me to see The Lion King on Broadway. We had an amazing time!! We knew we couldn't move away from CT until we had seen a Broadway show (and I think we definitely picked the best one).
On my birthday, Spencer signed the papers accepting a copywriting job at Mullen in North Carolina. We were pretty excited but so busy it didn't really sink in for while! Within 2 1/2 weeks we tied up lose ends at our current jobs, gave endless tours of our apartment and managed to sell our contract, sold some other stuff, packed and moved off to North Carolina! Crazy, but fun :)
After 3 hours sleep and a lot of help from friends, we made it out on time. Closing the door on yet another era. We miss our friends but are excited to see what North Carolina will bring!
