Our Serendipitous Journey

There's nothing like being stuck inside during a blizzard to remind you to blog. I recognize that MN gets a lot of snow, but this amount of snow and wind is pretty intense, even for our MN blood. I didn't stock up on water, toilet paper, milk, and bread like the rest of the East Coast, but we are sticking to the indoors and staying off the roads. One thing I've mentioned before is how narrow the roads are here. It's not that they can't or don't plow, it's that there is nowhere to put the snow. I've heard that with a big storm like this, the roads might be narrow and pretty rough for a long time. I guess I'll find out in a day or 2. Until then, let's catch up on the past month. Christmas and winter break were really wonderful. We were in MN for 5 days and got to spend time with both of our families. I also got to catch up with some friends and take our nephews out for some Auntie and Uncle time. It was great to be able to be with our ne...

Today while talking with Andy we realized that when we stopped counting the weeks, somehow it turned into 5 months. We have been out here almost 5 months! It's already Christmas break. At my school they call the gym, music, art, computer classes "Specials". "We are going to specials", "when you go to specials", etc. At my old school we called it specialists. I started to call it specialists the other day and stopped myself and said "Wait, you guys call it specials, right?" and my teammate looked at me and said "We aren't you guys anymore. You are one of us". Just a few months ago I was 'funemployed' and now I'm part of another team of people that I didn't even know existed before August. Our journey to PA has become our new life and it's amazing how easily we slid into it. Along the lines of school I think it's time to point out how incredible my new coworkers are. Teammates, coworkers, colleag...

When Andy and I first decided to move to PA we were trying to figure out where to live. It's a bit overwhelming looking at a city where you know none of the suburb's names, let alone what they are like. The few times I had driven through Philadelphia on major highways I had only ever seen row houses. I figured that was for sure what we were getting ourselves into. It turns out I was completely wrong. (Please don't tell Andy I said that. It will ruin everything that I have led him to believe for 11 years.) We started by picking a general area that we heard was a good place to live and was close to Andy's office. There was hardly anything to rent. The houses were small and the rent was expensive. Andy started looking at apartments and I had a few good reasons why that was a terrible idea (1 of them being Deb). As we continued to look we realized that apartment does not have to mean 700 square feet of 15 year old crappy carpet, dusty window air conditioners and ...

In case you missed the memo, Sarah's having a baby! I could not be more excited to become an auntie (again) and get to spoil that perfect baby girl. My mom and I were able to fly out to Denver to help throw a shower for Sarah and John. Of course, everything went as planned...well...or not really. But it DID end up to be a perfect weekend! I am trying to save up my 'personal days' so I can travel to Denver when the baby is born and get to snuggle with 'Boo' and her cute little adorable perfect bundle of babiness. All of those words together are a thing. I booked my flight for the early evening and had a connecting flight out of Minneapolis. Due to weather somewhere, my flight out of Philadelphia got delayed and I found out mid-flight that I wouldn't make the flight to Denver. That was the last one out of town for the evening. After feeling sad, I got a hold of my friend Amanda and she was free for the night! I landed in Minneapolis, called my dad to co...

Last time I blogged, I left off at 'company karaoke'. So fun! They rented a place downtown and we had so much fun hanging out with so many different people. It's hard to imagine how quickly this company went from an idea, to a group of over 100. I'm not even sure how many people there are working there, but I know I don't recognize most of them. It's really, really cool. It took us quite a bit of time to recover from our night out, so we finally got the weekend at home that we wanted. It was lovely. One of the best things about being on the East Coast is that there are SO many places you can go and it's just a couple hour drive. Philadelphia is really located in the perfect spot for what I want to do. We are about an hour and a half drive to New York, 2 hours to the shore (as I'm sure you know by now) an hour to Baltimore, and 2 hours to Washington D.C. Last weekend, our aunt from Chicago was in D.C. so we drove down there on Sunday to spend...

Counting the weeks can no longer be a thing because I have now lost track. We are settling in to our life out here and it feels like home. We are busy during the weeks and exhausted at night and the weekends seem to always be full of more than we can fit in. The only complaint Andy has is that he's not home enough. Andy has been traveling back and forth to MN and when he's not there, people from MN are traveling out here. That makes for a lot of happy hours and dinners with friends. I get to tag along with the boys, which I love. We generally are just having fun. A couple weekends ago we went to Wisconsin/Michigan to spend time with Andy's family as we said our final goodbye to his grandfather. While it's not the ideal reason that we like planning trips, it was really a great weekend with family. It was peaceful and relaxing and absolutely beautiful. It is always great to see Andy's side of the family, especially since many of them have made their homes i...

So I'm two weeks into the school year which makes it feel like I am officially into the swing of things. This week I've really been thinking about how grateful I am to have a job teaching in an elementary school. Coming out here I wasn't sure what I was going to do. My PA license is 4-8, so that limited my elementary school options to 4th or 5th grade. I obviously would teach in the middle school but that change would have been a lot to handle. There were hardly any job postings so I just assumed I'd end up subbing for a year and I was really okay with that. I wasn't sure that I wanted the stress of working full time with a move to a new place. Now that I am doing it, I am so incredibly happy. I can not even imagine how bored or lonely I would have been without a group of people that I interact with on a regular basis. I love having a schedule and I can not even explain how happy I am at this school. I know I keep saying it, but it is an absolutely perfect ...