Springfield

We made our first trip across state lines to Springfield, MA, and that day it actually felt like spring for a brief moment. We went with some friends, so the guys went to the NBA Hall of Fame and the girls and kids went to the Springfield Museums to see the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden and a few of the other sites at The Quadrangle.

 
Alarie with the kidlins.

You bring toddlers to a museum and of course they are most fascinated by the snow and mud outside.

These faces...

  I think Dr. Seuss would have liked the kids climbing all over the sculptures right in front of the sign telling them not to.

This sweet little kiss was my favorite moment of the day.  Mariah and Tyson kill me with their cuteness.

 And seeing their smiles after was pretty cute too.

 

Sarah put on a lovely impromptu puppet show

 Meanwhile, the dudes were doing basketball stuff until they met back up with us.

Bye UT, Hello CT

Phew, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Probably won't be the last time you hear about it (sorry!) but I feel like I can talk about other stuff now. Like the fact that WE MOVED! Far away!

Long story short medium length:
About a month after we bought our house in Salt Lake, Matt found out about this opportunity to work for Cigna, so last June he flew out to Philadelphia (where we originally thought the job would be) to interview for the position. We weren't THAT serious about the job, mostly because his current job was going really well and we had just bought a house that we loved. The new job ended up not working out, which we were sort of grateful for because it made our decision to stay very easy. In October, while we were in Vegas, Matt happened to run into the hiring manager and they discussed the position. About a month later, Matt received a formal offer for the position at the company's headquarters in Connecticut. It was SUCH a hard decision. (I realized I never even posted pictures of our home on this blog, so now that we don't live there anymore, here they are...)

It was the little things that were hard to leave. We had installed all the hardware in the kitchen. Walls had all been painted.  I had refinished the fireplace. My precious little vegetable garden in the backyard! We loved our neighbors, we were walking distance to the elementary school, this was our HOME! Our first real house together! I will miss those mountains being the backdrop of our daily lives. When things were tough I always found myself looking at that Wasatch skyline, as if that was where all the answers were. I was of course super sentimental about the whole thing, but I was also excited for the possibility of a new adventure.

We really enjoyed our time and friends in Utah but never saw ourselves being there permanently. We had always kept an open mind for a move, but when the opportunity came for Connecticut it didn't look like what we had expected. I guess we always pictured moving closer to family, not on the other side of the country! So lots and lots and lots of prayers were said and we made our decision and didn't look back. Within the first few days of accepting the offer, so many things lined up and worked out I knew it was the right choice. We put our house on the market (I was not prepared for what a headache all the showings would be! Keeping the house clean with a baby toddling around became my full time job) and then we were under contract by Christmas. Less than 10 months after we moved in, we packed up all our stuff and moved back out by the end of January. It makes me sad that Mariah won't have any memories of her first year of life there, even though that's always where I'll remember her first days, her first bites, her first steps.



If I had been a little more capable those couple months I would have taken more pictures and videos but I was sort of out of it for a long time.

We did manage to take a picture the morning we moved. These pictures make me laugh. I honestly don't know how I was functioning. And I didn't even realize that Mariah had yogurt smeared all over her face hahah.

Matt worked both jobs during January, flying weekly back and forth between CT and UT working one in the daytime and the other in the evening. We knew that month would be hard even without all the personal stuff we had going on, but looking back...yikes. January 2014 will go down in the books.

So, we decided to rent out here for awhile until we know the area a little better. Matt came out for good in the beginning of February, and then Mariah and I joined a couple weeks later. Now that it's been a month I feel like I can finally breathe that sigh of relief. We did it. We're here in one piece and we're happy!

(That's our little building there on the left. It is brand new so we were the very first ones to move in and had the place to ourselves for the first month while construction finished up!)

Connecticut is VERY different but I love it. A lot. There is a lot of snow, and it is really really cold but it feels kind of like this big breath of fresh air. Literally. Turning over a new leaf couldn't have come at a better time. Super grateful for the church and how easy it's been to make new friends. We'd heard the rumors about the frosty people back east but so far everyone we've met has been overwhelmingly nice and kind and welcoming. It didn't take long to become a part of book club, craft night, playgroup, switching off babysitting with other couples, having families over for dinner, etc...I guess I'm surprised that going to someplace we'd never before been has felt very much like coming home.