Adventures

Let’s Go: Montreal

At some point since we moved North, we started talking about how neither of us had been to Canada before and we thought we should remedy that, being that it’s just a short trip away! We ended up choosing to go to Montreal, because of its European feel and the great history there. We thought we were being so clever, deciding to go to Canada in July, which is the hottest month in NYC, but it turns out, Montreal is just as hot and swampy as it is here. OH WELL. 🙂

We had been traveling quite a bit in the Spring, so we didn’t want to stay too long, so we decided to go over 4th of July weekend, so David would have an extra day off and we could just do a long weekend. Leaving Saturday morning, we had most of the day Saturday left to explore and we came home on Tuesday morning, giving us about two and a half days there. It ended up being a similar amount of time as we had spent in London last fall, which meant it was a teeny bit hurried, but we still had time to hit all the highlights that we cared about seeing, while still having some down time to relax. David is always so good about researching the best things to do and see and eat and drink wherever we go, so I let him do most of the planning this time, too.

We got to the airport in time to stop into the Sky Club for a drink, which, since it was around 9am, it was a mimosa this time. 🙂 There had been a bunch of flights delayed and canceled the night before because of a storm that had blown through the city, so the club was packed and there were people sleeping all over the place.

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Let’s Go: Green Turtle Cay, Abacos, Bahamas

When David’s sister, Liz, and her boyfriend, Jason, got engaged last year, we were so, so happy for them! They had been dating for just about 4 years, and we had been lucky enough to spend a bit of time with them on our previous trips to North Carolina and during our wedding. Jason is HILARIOUS and is just an all-around great guy and we were so excited for them to get married. Liz decided that she wanted to get married in The Abacos, which is one of the Sierk’s favorite vacation spots and a beautiful backdrop for a wedding. David’s parents were all for this idea, so his dad got to work on booking a house for us all to stay in and arranging flights for everyone to get there. It was all he could talk about for the whole year – I’d say he was super excited to go back! 🙂

It was just a family affair, with us, Liz & Jason and his two boys (Garrett and Owen), David’s brother, Matt and his girlfriend (turned fiance!), Jennifer, and David’s parents, Dave and Shari. Dave found a house that was perfect for all 10 of us to stay in together, and we were all set!

David and I flew from JFK to Ft. Lauderdale, where we all met up and stayed one night, before flying from there to Treasure Cay, which is one of the larger islands in The Abacos. Dave ended up chartering two planes to get us all there (each plane had a max of 9 passengers, so we couldn’t all go together…bummer!), so we got to leave from the private airport. Made me feel like a celebrity! 🙂 (We actually flew out of the same airport when we went in 2010.)

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Free vodka tonic in the Sky Club before our flight from JFK. We actually got to the airport early on purpose, just to take advantage of this. 🙂

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Flashback First Year: May and June

One Saturday morning in early May, we decided to go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to see the cherry trees in all their pink glory! It was really an amazing sight! They have a Japanese Cherry Blossom festival there, too, but we just went on a regular Saturday. It was PACKED with people, for good reason, but we were still able to relish the beauty of the trees and flowers. One thing I have missed since we have been living here is my backyard, where I used to sit and drink my coffee on weekend mornings. It was so peaceful and I loved taking a minute to get back in touch with nature. Here, you almost always have something blocking your view. It’s so wonderful to be able to go the parks in Brooklyn and the city and have some breathing room, and a place to enjoy nature again – listen to the wind through the trees and the birds singing. It helps that they are all beautifully designed and created for people to enjoy!

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Spring…maybe?

At the beginning of March, my best good friend from High School, Michal, came to visit some of her old friends in Brooklyn, so she came over to see our apartment and show off her SOCUTE son, Isaac, to me. I had no idea, but when Michal lived in NYC (for part of the 8+ years she lived here), she actually lived IN our neighborhood! I thought it was funny how when we were out walking, she was able to tell me the best places for pho or Indian food and which nail salons and laundromats were the best ones. It made me feel good about our choice of neighborhood (again), knowing that I trust her judgment completely. Here’s me and Isaac at what has turned out to be our most favorite bar & restaurant, called Blueprint.

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Couldn’t you just eat him up?!? He’s such a sweet natured guy and he’s already traveled around the world in his first year of life! Also, please note the lack of coat on me! It was beginning to warm up, slowly but surely!

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January and February in BK

Hold on for photo overload… it’s the only way I have of remembering what happened! Won’t it be fun when I get caught up and can real-time blog our life? We will see if that ever happens…

So, we made it to Brooklyn on January 17th, and David promptly left the next day to go to California to visit the Google home office. Luckily, my mom is retired and was READY to see us by then, so she was able to come stay with me while David was gone. She was SO helpful in getting things unpacked and organized, and besides that, we are the best of buddies so it was great to have her around to keep me company. Nelly LOVES Mom, even though I think Mom could probably do without her…

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(also, could we HAVE any more blankets? I guess I was preparing for the heat to go out or something?)

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Finding a New Home

So, we made it. In the dead of what would become the worst NYC winter in 100 years. But when we first arrived, not even that was able to deter our excitement. Luckily, since we moved so close to Christmas, David was able to have a few days off and we got to go exploring, along with alllllll of the tourists. We just walked around a lot and got a sense of where things were. We practiced our subway skills and honed our knowledge of the City. We sightsaw and learned that when you have to use the bathroom, you just stop into any bar or restaurant and get a drink. They’ll gladly let you use the bathroom if you pay them for something! 🙂

Some of our sight seeing from that first week or three:

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Upper West Side brownstones. Soooo pretty. Almost made me want to live up there. Almost.

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Off We Go…

I am skipping the “saying goodbye” part of our story for now, because, well, it’s really, really hard to put into words how it feels to move across the country from the only state you have called home and to leave all of your favorite people behind. Let’s just say, the ugly cry that happened when we pulled away from our house for the last time (and the subsequent THREE times, because we kept remembering things that we needed to go back for) was a big one. (Side note: I’m doing this all from memory 4 months later, so forgive the lack of details!)

We rolled out of Austin on the morning of December 17th, 2014, and headed off to our new life in New York. We had rented a car to get us across the country, because we really couldn’t figure out how to live for the first couple of months on just what we had in our suitcases, especially since we needed all of Nelly’s gear – her kennel, toys, food, etc. I wasn’t sure what our temporary apartment was going to provide, so in my normal fashion, I completely overcompensated and brought a crap-ton of stuff we never ended up needing. As David would say, ohhhhh well.

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See, told you that we had too much crap. 

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Are you crazy?

That’s pretty much the first thing all of our friends and family said to us when we told them we would be moving to NYC. And after that, the most popular was: “I’m so jealous!” or “What an adventure that will be!” or “That is so awesome!” And it was going to be an awesome adventure. I knew that. But the reality of the move was really hard for me to grasp. It was completely overwhelming to think about, and I was so sad/scared/excited/intimidated by the whole thing, depending on the hour you asked, that I just stuck with my ostrich act and only pretended to understand how our lives were about to change.

I told my office first, just because my position was one that I knew was crucial to the success of the company and I knew they would need a while to find my replacement. It was funny how fast word got out around the office, and how surprised everyone was (Me, too, friends! Me, too!). I told them my last day would be December 5th, which would give me a few days of not-working to finish packing the house for our December 10th departure date. David told his job he was leaving about 2 weeks before we were set to leave, as to not rock the boat too too much there.

At the end of November, David got a message from his new hiring manager that they really wanted him to be in the office in NYC the week of December 8th. Which would mean that he would need to go up without me for a week and we would be delayed in leaving for an extra week. (Hallelujah!) Little did I know, I would need every minute of every hour of every day of that extra week to actually get our lives in order to leave Austin. Totally a God thing. (God Thing #123, if I really told you the ENTIRE story here. He was working on this for a LONG time before either of us knew anything about a job at Google in NYC.)

Google had offered a very generous moving package, which included temporary housing so we had a place to stay while we found a permanent apartment. So, what that meant was that I had to sort our lives into 4 piles: things we would need for the first 60 days, things we would need to live in (what could be a 500 sq ft apartment in) NYC, things we were sentimentally attached to that we wanted to keep in storage in Austin for when we have our next real house, and things to donate/trash. I say “I” had to sort these things out, only because I am a control freak of the highest order, and I was convinced that David would throw out something we needed or that I was attached to (for some probably ridiculous reason). I took ALL of this on, and it almost cost me my sanity, although my ostrich-ing probably made it more of a chore than it could have been. We opted for POD for storage, so as I sorted, David packed things in there. Here is a picture of his genius tie down system for attempting to keep things some-what in place for when it was moved back to the POD storage place.

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What is in those boxes? Anyone’s guess. And, yes, I am quite sure I will need those lampshades whenever we might have our next real house (in Texas??). Blame it on the ostrich.

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Deep Breaths and Deep Faith

So, I guess we should start from the beginning here, shouldn’t we? I guess this adventure all started to unravel in late Summer/early Fall 2014, when David got a LinkedIn message from a recruiter from Google. Yes, Google, like that giant company that runs the search engine, along with a zillion other super lucrative and successful side businesses. He had received several of these messages throughout the past year or so, and we had even considered, on two separate occasions, moving to Houston and Vermont (cannot tell you how glad we are to not be living there in this winter-from-hell). Neither of those opportunities turned out to be what we saw as our “next step” for various reasons. We had been trucking along with our happy little life in Round Rock, going to work at our jobs, coming home to our baby dog in our cute house that we had worked hard to make into our first home. Despite the fertility treatments that had been unsuccessful for going on two years, and the frustration and disappointment that came along with that (a whole other post for a later date), life was peachy keen. So, this message from the Google recruiter was not something out of the ordinary, except that this was actually a really big deal. And the kicker? The position was in New York City. GULP. And that part was pretty much non-negotiable. As in, we would have to move to NYC in order for him to take the position. DOUBLE GULP.

So, we casually talked about it, as he had his first phone screening with the recruiter. And we talked about it some more when she pushed him on to the next round of interviews. And then on to the next. And then it started to get really real.

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