Well, today caps off the end of our six month stint of living in Connecticut. The movers are in our apartment as we speak packing, we picked up our keys to the new place yesterday and tomorrow will be our first official day back in Hoboken.
I kicked off the week with lunch with my running friend, Maria. I had the day off and she works just 15 minutes from our apartment, so we had one last lunch hurrah (we had one in November before I started working) in CT. Tuesday and Wednesday were my last two days of work and then we spent the last couple of days preparing for the move.
My coworkers spoiled me to lunch at BAR on Wednesday. I had so many slices of pizza I lost count. This delicious mashed potato and bacon pizza is worth a try if you’re ever in New Haven!
It took me leaving the company to finally get them to take me to New Haven pizza. We’ve been talking about this since I joined and all the hype is worth it! The pizza is not round like New York-style pies and the crust is not thick like Chicago deep dish. The crust is chewy (which I like) but I think it’s less cheesy than New York-style. Anyway, I’m no pizza connoisseur so you’ll have to try for yourself.
We even capped it off with incredible ice cream from Arethusa Farm Dairy. I chose the Coconut and Dark Chocolate Chunk flavor after sampling a couple of others and it was delicious. There was real coconut flakes in the ice cream! I really don’t know how I managed the self-control to only eat a couple of scoops and saved the rest for Josh.
And then there were presents! Everyone was incredibly thoughtful and gifted me and the baby some wonderful treats.
With all this eating, I managed to make it to the gym four times this week – twice on the elliptical, twice on the treadmill and light strength training. I will really miss this spacious gym with windows.
And here we are to today, the movers are working at rapid speed. In the last three moves we did, we had the movers pack us and I have to say it is worth every penny. The cost is not much more in comparison and to not have to worry about having enough boxes, tape, or bubble wrap and paper is totally worth it. While we may be generally organized in everyday life, we are procrastinating cheapskates when it comes to packing, so we’re the ones at midnight the day before the move scrounging the garbage rooms looking for newspaper and boxes. While the movers may occasionally take you literally when packing (i.e. when we lived in our tiny 1-bedroom in NYC, we had shoes by the kitchen since it was right in the entry way, the movers threw shoes in with our pots and pans!), it is worth the extra money and slight surprise when unpacking to not be fighting into the wee hours of the night and approach moving day with as relaxed of a mindset as possible. How else would I be able to be blogging now?!
And with that we’re saying goodbye to this view. See you back in New Jersey!
Last Saturday, we celebrated our upcoming arrival with our family and friends. When we started thinking about this party, we knew that we wanted essentially a party where we can invite all of our family and friends. It didn’t necessary have to be baby themed but the baby was a good excuse to throw a party!
Enter my good friend, Melinda who knew exactly how we felt and really knew what we wanted better than we knew what we wanted. She helped us plan and coordinate the best and most memorable baby shower we could ask for. To us, it was special and exactly what we wanted and more.
—We invited all of our closest family and friends – male or female. Kids and significant others were all invited. We did not put a cap on the number of people. We’re fortunate in that we were able to rent the residence club room in our apartment building that could easily hold over 300 people, so the number of people was not an issue. This party was about me as much as it was about Josh and our families.
—We wanted our family and friends to eat, drink and be merry! Our shower was catered by 
—We did not play baby shower games. I have played my fair share of baby shower games and but they are not for me. We didn’t want our guests to be put in any awkward situations or felt obligated to take part. This is not to say we don’t like showers where games are a part of it, it’s just a personal choice to not have them at ours.
We loved every minute of our baby shower and would not change any aspect of it. Melinda did an amazing job making it very personal and special for us and we are incredibly grateful. We appreciate everyone traveling the distance to CT to celebrate with us and fortunate for all the wonderful memories and well wishes from everyone.
Deciding to have a baby shower or not, is a very personal choice and so are all the details that come along with it. Everyone has different opinions in what they would like to have in a shower and by no means, does it mean that what we did is right or wrong, these are just options we decided to go with. I truly respect all opinions and options on this topic and wanted to just share what we did as food for thought for others who are going through a similar process.