April 2017

Moving In

Full disclosure, month one flew by. Therefore, we are sharing this with you in retrospect. Our move was a little...hectic. There were a lot more logistics involved this time. What's going into storage? What should we keep? How much can fit in our cars? We went into this whole plan with the idea that we would only bring three plastic bins of items (kitchen, shoes, misc.) and clothes. Although, as you'll see, not everything goes as planned.

For those who have seen our apartments, you know we have a lot of stuff. Camping stuff, outdoor sports stuff, music stuff, kitchen stuff, craft stuff - we like our hobbies. Planning ahead, we booked a 10'x10' storage unit, thinking, this should work perfectly. Alas, after packing, moving, sweating and a few tears, we arrive at the storage unit - opened it, and we all immediately looked at each other dumbfounded. After the initial shock, we thought, "Challenge, accepted!"

Lesson learned: when you leave three engineers alone for two hours it's amazing how much can fit into a 10'x10' storage unit. (Yes, everyone involved was an engineer of some sort - Katelyn, on the other hand got sent off on another errand, and was not there). So in went two queen beds, a kitchen table, a sectional couch, a coffee table, a dresser, one china cabinet, a grill, Sean's tools, camping gear, and 80+ boxes labeled FRAGILE.

And after a few hours, a few rounds of rearranging the storage unit, and inches to spare, we treated ourselves to some much needed beers at Das Brew.

The Condo

And so our adventure began with a one bedroom condo located in Northeast San Jose. This was a rather large one bedroom condo with all the amenities we are accustom to, including: a garage, in-unit laundry, dishwasher, and a pool/hot tub right outside the unit. It was a perfect starting place because we brought about twice the amount of stuff as we planned. After loading the moving truck, we realized there were a lot of belongings left behind -it was everything we didn't know what to do with (do we take our vacuum with us? what about a hamper...?). Luckily, this time we just loaded it all into the garage, and we could forget about it for a few weeks.



After the first night in the condo here's what we wrote to bring the next day:
- Beach towels (for the hot tub)
- An extra shower towel (this place only had two)
- Bathroom rug
- Hand soap and dish soap (there was some at the condo, but Katelyn thought we would need more)
- Brita water filter
-Kleenex, it is allergy season after all

Each day for the first week we jotted down items we were thankful to have packed, including:
- Oven mitts
-Tupperware
-Our own blankets (Sean got sick the first week, and nothing is better than your own blankets)
- Aluminum foil
-Brita water filter

We noticed right away we had instantly downgraded from a new, foam, queen bed to a full, and, let's just say we felt awfully close to each other at night. But after a few midnight tug-of-wars over the covers we eventually adjusted. What we never could adjust to was squeaky boxspring mattress. Whenever one of us moved, even an inch, you would think someone opened the door to a haunted house. One night Sean turned to his side and Katelyn jolted awake - "WHAT HAPPENED?!" Alas, Sean had just turned over.

The condo was very easy to find and close to our previous apartment. That made it very convenient to have friends over for dinner. The big kitchen made cooking easy to do, although, we are pretty sure the smoke alarm was broken as we almost set place on fire...TWICE (friendly reminder, twist ties can have a metal wire on the inside, which will start to immediately spark when you put it in the microwave and try to defrost frozen raspberries...), ALSO when you place foil below a dish to catch the drippings, remember to remove it before turning on the oven the next night, or your home will fill with smoke....

Overall, the condo was nice, plenty of room for the two of us, and even to have a few friends over for dinner. The toddler upstairs was a little noisy, but apparently it is important for kids to learn how to walk and run.

Restaurants

When Sean was sick, we ventured out to Milpitas (five minutes away) for some Chinese food- the universal cure for the cold ;) We found a great place, called Chili Garden located off McCarthy Blvd. The food was authentic and the portions were HUGE. We had Chinese food for days after, and like a fine wine, it just got better with age. We ordered: hot and sour soup, kung pow chicken, chow mein, and pork dumplings - everything was delicious. We would absolutely return to this restaurant.

We also loved living within WALKING DISTANCE to HOBEES, a favorite local breakfast place. One Saturday when we weren't traveling, we enjoyed a nice warm walk to the restaurant for brunch and enjoyed their infamous coffee cake.

On our last week, we tried Premier Pizza, which is also walking distance and in the same shopping center as Hobees. We ordered a large half cheese and half Hawaiian. After calling in our order, it was nice to walk down and pick it up. The walk was better than the pizza, if you ask us. Not somewhere we would order from again, personally Mountain Mikes was 10,000 times better. Too much cheese and not enough sauce. It wasn't our favorite, but we are glad we had the chance to try it.

Activities

We drove to Southern California this month to celebrate our friend Matt's 30th birthday at one of our old favorite spots - Malibu Wines. We had a great time getting to see him and his girlfriend Summer, along with an old friend, and roommate Christian and his new girlfriend, as well as seeing our newly engaged friend, Scott. There were also tons of other old friends and college acquaintances. A lot of old friends to pack into one day (:

We also took advantage of our trip down south to see some of our other best friends, Billy and Janna, and to meet their newborn son, William! It happened to be Easter that weekend, so the new family of three (five, if you count the dogs) was looking lovely, so we had to do a photoshoot. It was a very special weekend to us, and made us really miss our circle of friends from Southern California.

Our friend Matt's family also invited us to have Easter brunch with them before we left. The wine was delicious, the food was delicious, the cookies were delicious, and the friends were delightful.

It was also Sean's mom's birthday at the end of the month, so the family went camping in Capitola. We had a great time celebrating by cooking some Pinterestesque meals over the fire, playing with ladybugs, taking long-exposure photos at night, hanging out at the beach, and realizing that we are so white, that even after applying sunscreen every 30 minutes, we will still come away nice and burnt.

Immediately afer we got back from our camping excersion, we loaded our cars, and began to move to our next home...

Moving Out

Ok, we are officially exhausted. We said “GOODBYE” to our first squeaky bed and we are off to our next adventure. We have about FOUR carloads of stuff with us right now. Although after some organizing and strategic packing, we are estimating that our “take with us” pile is exactly two VERY FULL carloads. Therefore we have about one full car to take over to the storage unit.

Here's what is going to storage this month:
- Dirty clothes hamper
- Another bin of Katelyn's clothes
- Office / desk stuff (1 box)
- Empty meaningful wine bottles (we aren’t the only people with these…right?!)
- Winter jackets
- Box of bathroom stuff (waste bin, soap dispenser, random bathroom toiletries we don’t need)

What's been traveling with us that we didn't initially plan or think about ahead of time:
- An entire box of hard liquor…margarita party at our place, anyone?
- Also for those who know about it…the Obama beer is in route to follow us from fridge to fridge…
- Cleaning supplies… typical Katelyn ;)

Would we move here? Probably not. The condo is located in the center of business parks within San Jose, surrounded by large corporations. (Fun Fact, Katelyn's dad's company has a satellite office right across the street from the condo complex. That isn't why we wouldn't want to live there, just thought we would mention that...) But overall there wasn’t much going on in this concrete jungle. It was just was a small community of condos packed in the middle of office buildings. If one of us could walk to work from the location, now that might be a different story.