Moving Up: Florida to Connecticut for Seasons, Schools and Safety

Moving Up: Florida to Connecticut for Seasons, Schools and Safety

By Ellie Doyle / Illustrated by Shannon Seitz

I always knew I was close to Connecticut as a kid when I’d press my hand to the car window and feel the glass turn cold. That chill was the most exciting feeling in the world. Every year, we would leave Florida to venture up to Cheshire in Connecticut for Christmas—and those trips hold my happiest childhood memories.

Let’s be honest: Christmas doesn’t really feel like Christmas when it’s 90 degrees out. Even as a kid, I knew that one day, when I had a family of my own, I wanted them to grow up with that same magic: four seasons, snowy Christmases and a real Halloween where you trick-or-treat through your neighborhoods under the changing fall leaves. 

Thankfully, I married a man from Buffalo, N.Y., who not only shared my love for pizza but loved the cold and craved the same things for our family. So, we packed our bags, traded hurricane days for snow days and started on our biggest adventure yet.

Coming from a family of educators, schools have always been important to me. With the constant changes in Florida’s system and massive budget cuts, we knew we wanted New England schools, and specifically Connecticut.

In October 2024, my husband and I took a kid-free trip to scope out neighborhoods. That’s when we fell in love with West Hartford and all its quintessential New England charm: white picket fences, Victorian houses, kids running from yard to yard, people walking their dogs, live music downtown, farmers markets, and mom-and-pop shops on every corner.

And the diversity? It surprised me in the best way. Within a few miles, you can find a European market, an Indian market and the biggest Asian supermarket I’d ever seen. Don’t even get me started on the food. Forget the freshman 15! I was gearing up for the “Connecticut 15.” Every cuisine you can think of, with pizza that makes NYC jealous.

The schools sealed the deal. West Hartford has two free magnet schools with resources that blew us away: fully stocked libraries, science and art labs, music programs, and so much more. Touring one of them made me want to re-enroll myself just for fun. With our eldest starting kindergarten, we knew we had to make the move that summer.

We found an 1892 house we loved—our kids call it the “UP house”—loaded up three kids and two dogs, and road-tripped north. Connecticut summers hit us with a calendar full of more events than we could 

possibly attend—five to ten every weekend, most of them free. And while yes, the taxes are higher, you can actually see where the money goes: free concerts in the park, massive library festivals, museums with Van Goghs and dinosaur fossils, and the list goes on. More than half of what we’ve done here hasn’t cost us a dime.

We were also drawn to the safety. In Florida, owning a gun felt like a rite of passage. Here, it feels more like the exception than the rule. There’s more diversity and acceptance. There is a sense that people are free to live, love and dress however they want without fear. I’m excited to raise my kids in a place that not only accepts differences, but celebrates them. And that feeling as a kid I got to experience once a year driving north? My kids get that every single day. And that’s all I ever wanted.

Ellie Doyle is a Florida transplant turned Connecticut blogger, showcasing her journey and the best parts of Connecticut through her growing Reheated Coffee Club community.