3,200 mile drive: upstate new york to home sweet new hampshire

as we drove away from our friends' house after nothing less than a delicious homemade whole wheat pancake breakfast and homemade bread in our arms, we felt tinges of anxiety, relief, excitement and exhaustion. after a short three hour drive {our shortest driving day in 6 days!}, we crossed the river from vermont to new hampshire - our new home. 

 {quechee gorge - about 15 minutes away}

we spent the hot, muggy day exploring our new town and townhome {3 rooms! 2 bathrooms! built within the last decade! are you kidding me!?}.

we had heard rumors of our new stomping grounds being quite rural. no target. no trader joes. no costco. while i will concur with those rumors, there are plenty of stores to get us what we need. restaurants, movie theaters, department and grocery stores, and more. there is even a bj's - the east coast version of costco - just a few miles away. as for target and trader joe's, those will have to wait for a bi-monthly roadtrip to boston. and i'll probably end up saving money or something crazy like that.

we survived without our belongings for two whole nights. the first night we slept on the ground {leah had an air mattress, no worries}. sunday at church someone heard we slept on the ground and lugged their futon mattress to our front door not an hour after we got home. so the second night was most definitely more comfortable. 

monday morning, we waited with baited breath while the kind abf employee expertly unloaded our two pods into the parking lot. i had fears of the wrong pods being dropped off...or all of our belongs broken and damaged inside. but, other than a bit of settling, everything was in working order! everything except for my file box which did open up in transit and spill all over one pod. not one thing is in the right folder. that's gonna take some time. 

i think our most important item was leah's brand new big girl bed. i love it. ryan loves it. and leah loves it. seriously loves it. and she's only fallen off twice. ouch.

we're pretty much settled and almost everything is hung. ryan and i have polar opposite feelings about what things should we should hang on the walls. i'm all for family pictures, clocks, etc. being displayed. ryan would rather live in a barren-wall wilderness. so i'd rather not talk about it. but so far, i'm winning the debate...and he may or may not come home from school one day with the remainder of our items nicely hung. i even promise to use a level.

after 3,200 miles, it's nice to be home sweet home.