Oh my! It’s been a very long time since I blogged. I mean, it was last year!

First, the New York Adventure has come to an end. Over the summer, Maggie and I decided it was time to think about heading back to Texas. It wasn’t anything wrong with New York, we just realized it was time to move on to the next steps in our lives. We both wanted to come back and finish school and we were also thinking it was about time to start thinking about having our own family.

I called up my previous employer and luckily I was greeted with “When can you start?”. That set the wheels in motion for us to come back. We were renting out our house in Texas and the lease of the people we had in here ended at the end of October. Our lease in New Jersey ended at the end of November. It seemed that the stars were aligning for us. This was sometime in August.

At that point, Maggie and I made a huge list of things we wanted to try and get done before we left the NYC area. We did a pretty good job going through that list. It ranged from the simple ( “Ride the Staten Island Ferry” ) to the slightly more complex ( “Visit Niagara Falls” ). The one thing on there that we didn’t do that I wished we had was visit both Boston and Maine.

I started back at my old job on October 17th, spending the week in Dallas staying at a hotel. Then spent the next few weeks back in Jersey working from my apartment. Which also started the long process of packing up everything and preparing it to move back to Texas. As Maggie will point out to anyone who asks, I saddled her with all the packing on the move up to New Jersey. So she was bound and determined to make sure I didn’t miss out on the packing this time. And man, I didn’t. If I ever pack another box for moving again, it will be too soon.

We used the same moving company coming back that we used to get to New Jersey. They did another excellent job, and almost beat us back to Texas. The drive is 24 hours long, and we did it again with our dogs in the back seat ( luckily, they were sedated with some great pills the vet gave us ). Everything went pretty smoothly, except for the 3 hour traffic jam on the second day as we were trying to get out of Knoxville, TN. In 3 hours, we went 3 miles. Ouch.

We’ve been back in our house since November 18th. Our stuff got here the morning of the 20th, which was really fast. We started the process of unpacking and get re-aquainted with our house. The renters didn’t damage it too much. And my in-laws had done a lot of work cleaning it up and setting up some things for us so we wouldn’t be without anything while we waited for our stuff.

So, you might say, wow Patrick, that’s a lot going on in your life. And I’d say, yeah, it is. But guess what, there’s more! Maggie and I are going to be parents! We found out when we got back from Niagara Falls that Maggie was 5 weeks pregnant! We’re so excited about it! But to be honest, I’m excited and scared sh*tless at the same time. I’m scared I won’t be a good parent, or I’ll break the kid or something. But I’ve come to terms that if I just use some of my instincts, I’ll be okay. Maggie is doing great and is starting to show the “Baby Belly”. We go for the big sonogram later this week. And for those that want to know, we’ll be going the “surprise” route for finding out if it’s a boy or girl.

Ok, that should just about get me caught up with all the major things I’ve got going in my life. I’ve still got a couple of draft posts that I’ll get posted about some other things that went on in NYC before we left. Oh, and one final note, I really, really miss Street Meat. 🙂