Home Sweet Home

No matter how long you've been away or how much fun you had on your trip, it's always nice to come home.  We couldn't wait to sleep in our bed, eat our favorite foods, see our friends, talk to our families and celebrate our engagement.  We landed in NY in the early evening so by the time we got home all we wanted was a small snack, a shower and to go to bed.  The snack of choice: popcorn.

With all our luggage in our apartment lobby

And the next morning, we had the food we had been missing for two months: an American breakfast!  Pancakes and bacon. 

Our trip was planned between Chris' graduation and his first day of work.  He's been fortunate to have a job lined up for the past year. We left only days after his graduation and returned a week before his first day of work. So when we returned from our two month trip, Chris had to immediately begin prepping for his first day of work.  Prepping included: a drug test, ID photos, and hours of online tests.

The weekend before Chris' first day of work we invited a few friends to a bar for drinks to celebrate our return, our engagement and Kate's birthday.  This was the first of many small group celebrations.  We also had a few friends throw a small dinner party and surprised us with a birthday cake for Kate and some wedding planning magazines.  It was so wonderful to be around our friends again and celebrate our future together.

Since we've returned on our trip, there's been a lot of change in our lives. Chris is back to work, although fortunately not yet working the long hours we anticipated. We've started looking at wedding venues, however, wedding planning has taken a back-seat to Kate's job hunting. Kate is looking for a job in marketing/advertising and while the economy isn't great, we're optimistic. We've moved apartments to a more "neighborhoody" part of Manhattan. And we've celebrated life by attending a close friend's wedding in Texas, Chris' grandpa's 90th birthday in Chicago and many other friend's birthdays and life achievements in NY.

As we settled back into life, we started to really reflect on our trip of a lifetime. We'll share those reflections with you in the next few blog posts.