A Trip with Purpose

Moving from Hong Kong has been (and still is) a lot of work.  Shortly after we realized how much had to be done, Cody created a Gantt Chart to keep us on track. 

When we left HK, we had completed items #1 through #87.  In Utah we completed items #88 through #101, and at that point we were headed to our new home in New Jersey, hoping to accomplish about 10 more major items.  Then we’d only have about 27 things left to complete (there are 137 in total).  Moving is crazy.  Moving from another country is borderline insane.

Luckily, our parents agreed to help make our life easier by keeping the kids with them while Cody and I flew to New Jersey to get things set up.  This was our first time having a trip sans children since we had them!  Too bad it was full of work and not much play!!  Maybe next year…

Saturday night and Sunday were relaxed as we viewed the quaint downtown of Morristown and visited our new ward. 

 

First thing Monday morning, we met up with the realtor to start viewing houses.  The longest we’ve lived anywhere since we graduated high school was Hong Kong, which was about three years, not even consecutively!  Therefore, we aren’t quite ready to say NJ will be our permanent home, so we decided to rent at first to see how things go.  Currently, Cody’s new position is said to be for about two to three years. 

We probably looked at between 10 or 12 houses.  On Tuesday, we revisited two of our favorites and made a decision. The only problem is we can’t move into it until August 3rd because it has tenants until the end of July.  Of all the options, we felt it was the best value and definitely worth waiting for. 

Here are pictures from our tour of the house. 

I think the above picture makes the house look bigger than it really is.  It is a split entry and the garage takes up a fourth of the house, so in reality it is a humble three-bedroom home.  Obviously, a major upgrade from the small space we were living in though!  We are so excited and grateful to get to live here.  Plus we’ll have a deck and a yard!

 

The upstairs has an open living room and kitchen/dining area with the deck off the side.  LOVE all the windows and natural light...and that we’re going to have a dish washer!

 

 

 

Down the hall is a bathroom and three bedrooms (as well as closets! Oh, heavenly storage space!).  Also, so excited about outlets and counter space in the bathroom!

  

Master bedroom.

  

Boys’ room on the left, Jade’s room on the right. 

 

Going down the stairs. 

 

At the bottom of the stairs is a laundry room (yay for full size appliances!) and to the right is the two car garage (excited about all that storage). 

 

Down the hall is a family room (with fireplace and sliding door to a small backyard) and bathroom. 

 

  

Real estate in NJ is crazy expensive (yet nothing compared to HK real estate), so we are thrilled to find such a nice place within our budget.  It is an understatement to say I’m excited to move in and make this place ours!  We know we are very blessed to be able to live in a place like this. 

Once we knew where we were living, we could enroll Jade into school.  In HK the process is intense. People put their kids in school at as young of an age as two.  Then there are applications (with large fees), interviews, and even résumés!  And all this usually happens a good year before the school year for which you’re applying.  Then if you get in, tuition and deposits are quite expensive.  I had [non-American] friends asking me what we were going to do about schools because we were moving so late in the application process.  I told them I wasn’t worried; we’ll simply need to go register at the school for where house falls in its boundaries.  Deep down I was hoping I was indeed right about this. 

I was.  The registration process was even easier and cheaper than I expected!  I simply found out which school Jade should attend based on our address and called to schedule an appointment.  When we visited the school, I think we filled out three forms, showed a birth certificate and what not, and that was it!  Jade still needs to get a physical, but really it was so simple.  Before we left, I asked if we needed to pay anything.  I thought there would at least be a $40 fee or something… but the secretary just kind of laughed at me and said no and that she’ll see us in September.  Pretty slick!  I made sure to get a couple pictures of Jade’s new school to show her when I got back to Utah. 

 

The next big thing on our to do list was buy a car.  We had done some research and decided on a seven passenger Hyundai Santa Fe.  To be forthcoming, I haven’t driven much in the past five years and I really don’t like driving big cars.  Yet we still wanted seven seats.  That meant suburbans, tahoes, the traverse, mini vans, and the like were all out.  The Santa Fe is a crossover and I feel like it isn’t too big for me to handle.  The only problem is we wanted to buy used.  It is half the cost of new and we aren’t ready to jump into being in debt again.  Unfortunately, used Santa Fe’s with the third row are almost impossible to come by.  After about a gazillion hours searching, we finally found a Santa Fe in our year, price, and mileage range with a third row!  The only problem?  We had to go into New York to get it. 

That doesn’t sound so bad except that traffic was horrible and we had no time to do anything fun there.  It took us between 1 1/2 to 2 hours to travel the 35 miles to the dealership each way.  The one perk on the drive was crossing the George Washington Bridge.  It is beautiful.  Especially at sunset and when the U.S. flag is hung (which apparently is rare so we totally lucked out).   

I never ever would have guessed my first two times to New York would have been to go to a car dealership.  Blah.  After inspecting the car, there were a couple things the dealership needed to fix, so that meant we had to go back a couple days later to actually pick up the car. 

  

We had been in a rental car all week, so I followed behind Cody in our new car.  Up to this point, he had been doing all the driving.  That meant my first time driving in a year was in my new car in New York rush hour traffic.  You might say I was a tad nervous.  But at least we came away with the car I wanted!  And I should probably add, I really, really love it.

After the car was taken care of, we started looking for furniture.  Other than the kids’ furniture (crib, toddler bed, etc.), everything we were using in HK was the landlord’s.  I feel like we are newlyweds again, starting out with next to nothing!  We ordered a sofa, but decided to wait on everything else because our move-in date gives us more time now. 

With that, I was back on a plane all by myself (well, almost all by myself)…

…headed back to the kids in Utah and leaving Cody behind to start his new job.  I’m pretty sure the last time I flew alone was for work back in 2008 before Jade was born.  I had some great views and a relaxing flight to end a busy, big-decision week.