Reflections

Our sea freight is currently being packed. As a result I've been doing a lot of reflecting on our time here (feels like it's gone so quickly!) and for blog completeness I'm sharing below.

THINGS I WILL MISS

Friends - I didn't expect to make such great friends. In particular, Caoihme, Lucy and Ben have been my extended family spending a large chunk of our weekdays with them. They leave for a trip to Ireland on Wednesday so this week sees early goodbyes.

Seasons that do something - winter is freezing, summer is hot, spring is beautiful and Autumn is perfect. Here the seasons do something. The weather I hate the most here is the English type weather and I think it's going to be a hard adjustment!

Selfish family time - visitors aside, we are able to be totally selfish with our family time. We have no pressures on us of places to be, things to attend and it's been great having 2.5years of such quality family time.

Trader Joes - trader joes is a great supermarket. Small, own brands and great customer service. It's possible to do a weeks food shop in under 20minutes!

Ethans nursery school - l love Ethans nursery school and he's had a great two years there. I wish I could take it back home with us (along with his swim school!)

THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO

Family and friends - it's been hard missing out on good times and tough not being there to support through bad times. It will also be great having support with the boys.

A good social life - we've enjoyed our selfish time but we are looking forward to having a social life again!

Countryside - can't beat those beautiful English countryside walks.

Ocado - the USA has a surprising lack of decent competitors to Ocado. No one is quite as good. Can't wait to get Ocado back!

Less travelling - vacations plus trips back to the UK has meant too much travelling!

THINGS THAT HAVE SURPISED ME ABOUT LIVING HERE

How varied the country is. With so many states each state is like its own little country. I have no patience for American generalizations now as you can't generalize a country this big!

How the ready meal options are not better in a culture where people cool less and eat out more.

Seeing first hand how terrible the maternity culture is. It stinks.

THINGS I'M BRINGING HOME WITH ME

Joshua!

A new found knowledge that I (and we) can handle most things!

Spring is here!

Beautiful spring weather hit NY this week. As a result we had a great outdoors week. 5 days and 5 different parks and the boys are tired! It was also 'free cone day' at the local ice cream shop so we took an obligatory visit!

Half marathon

As my landlady called it 'My last hurrah'. I've spent winter training for a half marathon and last Sunday I joined 7,500 other women in Central Park at 8am. It was a fun race and training with a double stroller and two kids in tow paid off as I knocked 14mins off my previous half marathon time (back in 2008) clocking in at just under 1hr 55min.

Pre race (bad) selfie!

The Besties visit

The Parker's came to visit us at the start of April. It was great showing them some of our favorite haunts and seeing the kids have so much fun together. Made us start to look more forward to moving home.

We went to the zoo, the children's museum and hung out locally too.

Inteprid Air, Sea and Space Museum

A couple of weeks ago we had a family day out to the Inteprid Museum in Manhattan. It was a fun day out with the boys, very visual and lots of things for them to interact with. They even had a Concorde!