Monday, June 22, 2015

So We Moved to Philadelphia.

People always seem mildly interested/genuinely confused when I try to explain this to them, but Greg's finance job at Johnson and Johnson is in a leadership development program that's designed to give him a lot of different experience in the company. It kind-of-sort-of is supposed to take the place of an MBA, which is cool (no worries though...I have a feeling that there is still a lot of grad school in our future!) 

So the reason I'm telling you all this is because we always knew that living in Jacksonville would only last for a year, and then we would be sent to another JnJ subsidiary company for a year. After that, we go back to Florida. It's confusing, but you know, it's not THAT confusing.

Well anyways, now we live in the suburbs north of Philadelphia. Although we really miss our ward and friends in Jacksonville--and the beach, too--we're kind of loving this whole living in the northeast thing. Seriously, I live in the top floor of a 1930s Dutch Colonial house with original hardwood flooring and a ton of character. It's stinkin' cute. 


Made some cute tie-up curtains for my kitchen as soon as we got settled in: 


You'd think that I would have some cool pictures of downtown Philly or maybe New York or the Jersey Shore or something, but I don't yet. I plan to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall at some point, but it just hasn't happened in the last three weeks. However, we have found some less intense activities that are still super fun. This past Saturday we took a short little tour of Winterthur, which is a mansion house and gardens that belonged to the Du Pont family across the border in Delaware. Nine floors and hundreds of rooms, all filled with the largest collection of Americana art and artifacts that exists. Yeah, I'm into that sort of thing. All the cool kids are. 


Everyone on the tour was approximately 45 years older than Greg and I. Senior citizens are surprisingly brutal when it comes to jostling people out of their way to get the photos they want. 


Loveliness. 


One of the few full-frontal Heather shots that exists these days. 



FERNS. 


So a list was recently published about the best ice cream places in every state (Reed's Dairy, anyone?) Well, we weren't going to go to Delaware and not go to the best ice cream place in the state. So we went to Woodside Farms and I ate the best chocolate ice cream that has ever graced the tongue of mankind. Also we watched this little bluegrass band and that was pretty cool: 


So now I've been to like 30 US states and have lived in four states in the last few years alone, which I feel like is sort of an accomplishment. Moving is never "easy," but it's a great experience for us, and I love having those kinds of experiences with Greg. When it comes to the big names in exploration, it's like Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, and Greg and Heather Zollinger. 

Or you know, kind of something like that.