The adventures of moving: Chapter 1

Checklist for moving to Connecticut:

1. Survive the plane ride

2. Make it to Stratford, CT

3. Find a hotel

4. Get a car

5. Find an apartment

We have arrived in Connecticut (well, we did on Wednesday), after a long and grueling night of travel. Anabelle was acting like she'd had a red bull for the first 2+ hours of the flight, so as you can imagine, that was a blast! It would have been much funnier had I not been so dang worn out. So, after only maybe 2 hours of sleep for the night, we arrived at the JFK airport in NYC at 6 am EST (#1: check) and set off to find a way to get to Stratford, CT (about 1 1/2 hours away). We took the airport air tran several stops to the car rental area, which was a large disappointment. Each place either had no cars, no locations where we needed to go, or cost almost $300 for one day. Ha! Scratch that. We took the air tran/trek back to the terminals and found a shuttle bus that would take us to a hotel we thought we might stay in (in CT). By the time they got there to pick us up (and we had bought some airport breakfast cuz we were starving!), it was about 8:30.

We began the drive with our crazy driver. Mike got mixed up on where exactly our hotel was and it took us a while to find it, so after some major complaining by an ornery old lady with a stinky cat who was on the van with us, we finally arrived at our hotel shortly after 10:30 (#2: check). At least we were able to get a short nap on the drive. We were stuck here with all of our luggage for the 4 months we will be living here, which included 2-50 lb. large suitcases, 2 carry-on bags, a car seat, stroller, diaper bag, laptop, stuffed animals, purse, and more, so here we waited until enterprise could pick us up just after 12:00 so we could get a rental car that was a fraction of the cost of rentals in NYC.

The hotel wasn't all that great, so we wanted to check out another up the road a bit. We waited around, checking in with enterprise every 15-20 minutes, until they finally got there around 1:00. (I realize that this wait was only about 45 minutes longer than what they told us it would be, but it seemed like an eternity. We hung out in the hotel lounge area that we weren't even sure we'd be staying in to kill the time. We hadn't showered and had hardly eaten. We brushed our teeth, put on deodorant, and fed Anabelle the remainder of the snacks we had for her while she pushed her stroller all over the place entertaining herself. Then, we waited outside in the sweltering heat and humidity (which Anabelle thoroughly enjoyed, demonstrated by her sweat-soaked head and flaring red cheeks). Eventually we loaded up and made it to enterprise, crossing over the hurdle that would relieve all our transportation needs for the time.

To be continued...