You Wouldn’t Believe How Much Has Happened Since I Last Blogged

Yep, definitely my bad. I haven’t blogged in a loooooooooong time. Too much happened. Good, bad, surprising, wonderful, scary, exciting and everything in between. So many ups and downs and sleepless nights but we are in such a good place right now. Here, I’ll catch you up and you’ll see what I mean:

• Traveled to see my very first cow fights (yes, you read that correctly. Cow. Fights. And I wrote an article about it. (did you remember that I write for an awesome online mag Girlfriend Guide to Zurich?) 

• I went on my Babymoon vacation to Dubai with Florian (which was amazing and I will be taking more trips there in the future during the gray winters of Zurich). Which just now reminds me that I never officially announced on my blog… I’m having a baby!!!!!!

• I went on a food and beach vacation to Spain with my friend Ashley (San Sebastian is amazing and I highly recommend it!)

• I flew to NY to be with my family while my mom had emergency surgery and stayed for 6 weeks (she is recovering well and should be completely healed in another 5 months or so). Also loved spending time with the rest of my family and good friends. Below is a pic from Mother’s Day with my mom and my sister Elana (aka Lily’s mommy) and me with my mommy-to-be bump. 
  
• My other sister Rachel had her first baby and my first nephew! I had the lucky job of holding little Grayson Forrest Eddey during the Bris ceremony (men, if you don’t know what that is, don’t click my link, you won’t want to know. I warned you). What a head of hair this kid has!

• Some of my best girlfriends from college met up in NYC to have a big joint 30th birthday celebration together since we’re all turning 30 this year! (What happens in NYC, stays in NYC. Here is a nice civilized picture of us the next morning 🙂

• My friends and family threw me and Florian a baby shower in NY and people drove and flew in from all over the country just to be with us (I always feel so darn so lucky to have such amazing people in my life!!). Even though we weren’t really sure about the sex of the baby, we took a chance and told everyone it was a girl. We really hoped those two suitcases of girl clothes weren’t gonna go to waste…

• My best friend Kelly got married (we’ve been best friends since we were 7!) and I was a bridesmaid in her gorgeous vineyard wedding! She looked so beautiful and it was so much fun partying the night away with her big Italian family. I love her husband already so I didn’t even have to threaten him or anything! And her daughter Sofia was so cute that day in her little dress I almost melted away.

• We found out we’re having a baby girl… whew! 🙂 And got a new doctor and switched hospitals for delivery and I began facing the idea of what a natural childbirth would actually entail… (note to self: work more on your squats!)

• The builders started building our new house and we started picking out all the details (no, I seriously mean all of them. Every single tiny one I didn’t even know existed. What tiles, where to put a door, what stove to get, what faucet in the bathroom – you name it, we have to make a decision on it!). If you have any advice, remember that I need it! 

• I started getting the apartment ready for the arrival of our little baby and buying all of our “OMG-this-is-really-happening” items like a stroller and diapers. Baby C is due to join us in just 2 months!! I actually texted Florian this exact picture and wrote “shit just got real.” He was not amused.

• Poor Bella had to have surgery again to remove more growths on her ear. The last ones were benign so we’re hoping these will also be! Still, not fun to have surgery for this poor babykins. 

And for those of you who have pleaded for a pic, this is how preggers I am at the moment… please ignore the tired and unkempt look I’m sporting 🙂

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Unabashedly and Blissfully Ecstatic

Do you ever just have one of those days or moments? When everything is just absolutely perfect and you are so happy that you literally have to stop and stand still and absorb it all? I had that yesterday.

Sidenote: I try really hard to be appreciative of everything I have while at the same time trying not to sound like I’m showing off. Strangely, it’s a tough balance because so many people focus on the negative or what they don’t have or what could be better, and here I am prancing around so happy about something as insignificant as a new follower on Twitter. Oh well, I’ll have to focus on the pitfalls of frenvy in another post.

So yesterday wasn’t extraordinarily life changing like the moment you get married or anything. It was just a great regular day in regular life. The night before, Florian and I had whimsically decided to book tickets to Dubai next month! I’ve been d-y-i-n-g from all the gray skies this winter and when you Google “warm places in Europe in March” the only response is the Canary Islands. We looked into going there but it was too expensive so our next obvious (and less expensive???) choice was… Dubai!  Amazing!

Neither of us have ever been but everyone we know who has been there just loves it. I was especially happy because the original conversation started when I asked Florian if he wanted to spend Easter weekend in Geneva. So, yeah, a week in Dubai is much cooler than a weekend in Geneva! After booking part of the trip in this exotic desert oasis resort (yes, the picture below is an actual picture of the place), my excitement levels couldn’t get any higher.

Then add to that happiness. Before I had known Florian could be so spontaneously cool, I had begged a friend to come to Spain with me in April (remember, I will do whatever it takes to break free from the gray skies here!). And thankfully Ashley has the same travel mindset as I do – have some fun in the sun, tour some cool city spots, roam around to get a feel for the culture, eat some delicious local foods and then crash in your 2- or 3-star crappy hotel that doesn’t need to be fabulous because you spend the whole day outside of the hotel. And thanks to some advice from friends on FB and this cool book my friend April bought for me, we made the decision to hit up San Sebastian.

On top of being SO so so excited about these upcoming trips, we got a call in the morning that our house was going to start being built in the next two weeks! Talk about a sigh of relief from our end. WHEW!! The housebuilders had been delayed since December and we weren’t 100% sure what was going on. They said paperwork delays, we suspected not enough homebuyers had actually bought the houses to make the project begin. This is a development of 13 houses and here in Switzy they could just decide not to build at all if they thought too many would remain empty and they wouldn’t make money. That news was a BIG weight off our shoulders. This is my dream house and I don’t know if I ever could ever have found something I would love as much as I love this house!! Next to Florian and Bella, this house is the love of my life!

Other things added to my happiness, but these were the things that just made me stupidly grin from ear to ear all day yesterday. AND, as if God knew how to put a cherry on top of that, it was warm and partially sunny yesterday. As the sun peeked out in the afternoon, I left Florian’s office (see, I do work!) and took Bella for a two-hour walk in the woods without my winter jacket. Normally I have to wear Under Armour cold gear under a fleece with a goose down jacket and a hat and scarf and gloves. Yeah, ok, it’s going back down to freezing and cloudy this weekend, but who cares. I had my day of glory!

Hope you all had a happy day, too!