Welcome to New Jersey!

I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see a sign in my entire life. The moving weekend started with a couple glitches - the first one being the lawn mower. I decided to be all ambitious and mow the backyard with the riding mower for one last time. After one pass down the hill in the backyard, the thing sputtered and totally died on me. Did I mention it was at the bottom of the hill? Needless to say, I decided to leave it there until John could help me. So after that debacle I headed out to the airport to pick up John. Well, he arrived just fine but his luggage on the other hand - did not. We had so many things in there that were important (and valuable) that we about flipped. Luckily, American Airlines came through for once in our history with them and delivered the bag to our home the following morning.

Thursday was spent packing, moving and loading. Once the house was unloaded we (I use the term loosely) went through the house and got it all cleaned up. It looked so good and brand new once we left. Leaving was pretty sad and I tried not to get all sentimental over it, but the McAllister jeans in me took over and I got a little choked up. This is the house John and I built together, we got engaged there, was our first house together, brought Bella home there, and much more. It's so sad to be leaving all of those great memories, but we're sure to create many more at our new home in the City!

We said our goodbyes to our empty house and got on the road. We stopped in Dubuque to unload a lot of items to store, to pick up Bella and to see our family before we left. Then the three of us packed up the U-Haul and started the long journey to our new home. After two days in the car, 18 hours of driving (by John), and seven states of scenery we are here! We arrived in Jersey City by 5:00pm on Saturday night, we were so relieved to get here and we did not run into any holiday traffic! The drive actually went better than expected. Our biggest fear was how Bella would handle that many hours in a car since she is a notoriously bad traveler. I don't know if she had just missed being with John and I for the past month but she was amazing - such a trooper!

Here is a photo of the condition of our apartment kitchen on Saturday night. You can see we have our work cut out for us! The weekend will be spent unpacking and hopefully doing a little bit of exploring as well. Until next time, Happy 4th!