Well…I was hoping today would be better, and it is, in some ways.  I had a nice lunch with a good friend today, got my shower fixed…all good things!  Then, as I was walking back from lunch, I got a phone call from my mom…and in a heartbeat it goes to crap again!

The first word out of my mom’s mouth, “Don’t worry, everything is ok.”  Ummm…don’t start a conversation like that!!  Apparently, yesterday my mom and dad were out running errands…no big deal.  They get home in the afternoon, come inside, and then dad suddenly couldn’t walk.  Like, was too unstable to even take a step.  Then, he starting slurring his words and was wasn’t making any sense when he was talking.  Mom called up the doctor and he told her to hang up, and call 911 immediately, because he thought Dad was having a stroke.  Mom calls my sister, my sister calls 911 while my mom is dealing with my dad, and the next thing you know, there are EMTs and First Responders at the door.  They rushed my dad to the ER and started running test after test. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t a stroke.  All the tests came back normal, he’s in “good health” (as good as can be with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and a slew of other issues wrong…including a newly diagnosed upper respiratory infection and early stage Pneumonia), and they sorted out that it was the codeine that was in some cough syrup that dad had taken earlier, which caused all the problems. 

Ok…good!  Dad doesn’t have brain damage, all is happy.  Mom takes dad home, had to call my brother’s ex-wife’s husband to come help her get my dad out of the car (thank God he was available to come help), got dad inside, and he immediately wanted to take a shower.  Ok…on top of the fact that he’s hallucinating out of his mind, it takes my mom over an hour to even get him INTO the shower!  So…shower…check.  During said shower, dad vomits on himself, and feels like crap.  Mom manages to clean him up and get him into bed so he can rest.  When I talked to her this morning, she had been up since 3:00am, had done several loads of laundry from dad getting sick more, and dad was still sleeping (he hadn’t been able to get to sleep until the morning).  Mom needed to go to the pharmacy to get his prescription for antibiotics, but she’s nervous to leave him alone, since the doctor told him it could be up to three days for the codeine to fully work itself out of his system.

I swear, what else!  I feel so bad for my dad, because mom said that getting sick in the shower freaked him out and he started crying.  I also feel bad for my mom, because everything has turned 180 degrees over the past two years for her and dad…and she’s stressed out beyond belief.  I’m scared to go home because I know what I’ll see…my dad slowly getting worse and worse (even though this is unrelated to his Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s).  It just all around sucks, and it makes me want to cry. 

So…today is better in the respect that I’m no longer wanting to rip out my colleagues’ throats, but crappy in the sense that my dad is sick and I’m stuck here.  Ugh…what else is going to happen!

 

I hope you all are doing well, wherever you are!

XOXOXO,
K.

I am so fed up with some people today!  Work has got me stressed out, senior staff is in the office today, and I am exhausted.  Ugh…I just need to go home and relax, but we have a team dinner at some fancy schmancy restaurant that I have to attend, which will be fine (and tasty), but I’m just not in the mood!  Plus, since Jamie’s not here, I’m driving home, which means I can’t drink.   BOO!

Might hopefully have some news soon on the work front.  Not having a job lined up for when we get home has been wearing on me daily.  I’m stressed out about it, even though Jamie tells me I have no reason to be (I don’t need to work if I don’t want, but I feel bad not working)…I just hate the uncertainty of it all.  

Basically, it’s a blah day.  I’m sure tomorrow will be better, but today sort of sucks.

 

Hope you all are doing well!

 

XOXOXO,
K.

Well…I just dropped $8500 on two plane tickets home!  It’s real…we’re leaving, and now we have a fixed move date!  March 27th, we’re going home…which is 26 days away!  We had my last expat get together yesterday, up in Amsterdam.  I’m so lucky to have met such a fabulous group of women, they’ve been so important to me, and I’ve made such incredible friendships.  They’ll be hard to leave, for sure…but I know that we’ll have visits and such, so it’s ok. 

Jamie left today to head back to the US and deal with work and move things.  He takes possession of the house on Thursday, and then we’ll start the process of a deep clean, hiring painters to paint, hiring a handy-man to make minor repairs to a few things, and getting our belongings out of storage (what little we have in storage).  He has quite a list of things to accomplish, and so do I.  While he’s gone, I’ll finish up getting the apartment ready to turn back in, go through an inspection, get the cat ready for the flight/return to the US, and anything else that needs done here.  We’re going with a “divide and conquer” plan, and hopefully it’ll all come together. 

Emeals?  I keep seeing a few of you posting about this service, and I got interested.  It looked pretty good!   The paleo, vegetarian, and clean eating ones looked like more of what we’d eat, but then I got to looking at the plans and I realized this is exactly what we already do every week.  I’m going to talk to Jamie about it, because it could definitely save us some time each week in meal planning, and I’d love to get some new recipes! 

In other news, I finally finished the baby blanket for my friend’s baby girl, Ellowynn.  It turned out so well, I was really proud!  Here is the finished product (with and without baby).  The blanket without Elly in the photo is before I added another three rows of white border, so it’s slightly bigger, but you get the idea.

Finished product, sans border!

 

It passes the Elly sleep test!  Score!

 

Now I have time to work on the other baby blanket for Nicola, as well as fix the crochet purse for my favorite little 4-year-old, Arya (a coworker’s daughter).  But, for tonight, I’ll be making a brief trip to IKEA to pick up some blankets for the apartment (we loaned out two to a friend, and their twin daughters got sick on them, so we just pitched them), and then back to the apartment to make some cookies for work tomorrow!  Our VP and Senior Staff are in the office tomorrow, so I’d like to have some home baked goods for everyone (plus, it gives me a chance to empty out my baking cabinet, since we can’t take the stuff with us).

That’s about it for now!  I’ll be spending the next few days pouring over paint colors for the house, and trying to decide on some basic furnishings to get in place before we move in for real.  I hope that you all have a lovely week!

XOXOXO,
K.

Holy crap, I just looked at the calendar and realized that we have LESS than 5 weeks left here in the Netherlands!  Jamie closes on the house on the 28th (1 week!) and I am making list upon list of things that need finished up here, done there, and bought.  Meanwhile, during all this craziness, my stomach acid has decided to come back with a vengence, and I am considering an IV drip of 100% Nexium to calm my soon to be ulcer ridden stomach.  Ugh, I hate acid reflux…and it gets really bad when I’m super stressed out (which is now, in case you were wondering).

On the car…still no decision being made, but I think we’ll go with a Hyundai of some sort.  I appreciate all your feedback on the cars…what would I do without all you lovelies!?  I’m torn between the Hyundai Elantra GT and the Hyundai Tucson…two very different cars, but I like them both.  I’m basically telling Jamie to just buy whatever and I’ll deal with it…better than having to make the decision myself.

Meanwhile, we’re still working on the actual booking of our flights back home.  I always knew that one-way tickets were more expensive, but good lord…5 times more expensive?!  We’re looking at $4k a flight, per person, just to get home.  That isn’t business or anything, that’s straight up economy!  Ridiculous!!  Everyone says to just book a return flight, but I’ve read that you can be charged the fare difference if the airline finds out you didn’t use the return trip.  Or, if you have frequent flier miles with them, they can dock your miles.  Since our company is paying for these tickets (thank goodness), we’re not going to bother testing the theory, and are just going to charge it on our card and get reimbursed.  Oh well…at least we are putting it on our United card and get miles out of it! 

Had my last orthopedic appointment yesterday.  Luckily, it appears that the meniscus tear has healed on it’s own (thank God), and I no longer need surgery.  YES!  I celebrated by going to the gym today (ok, I’ve been going 5 days a week for the past few weeks, but whatever), and now my knee is killing me.  Oy…Aleve is my bff, and my liver can be damned.

 

I think that’s it for now!  I’ll do my best to update on the move.  I also nearly finished the baby blanket for my friend’s baby (who is now 4 months old…whoops!).  Need to do a border, then it’s finished!!!  Just in time for Sunday’s get together with all the expat ladies…my last one!  *TEARS*  I’ll post photos once I’m totally finished with it…in a day or so!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

 

XOXOXO,
K.

 

Another bit of the saga that is the repatriation back home.  It never ends, I swear…especially when you sell off everything when you moved, and now to replace them all once you go home.  Now that we have the house, the next logical step is cars.  Initially, we’re going to have one car, since we both work at the same place and would commute together.  Once it becomes clear we need a second car, we’ll definitely get one…but I’m hoping we can go awhile before that happens.  We’ll see though…I get the feeling that as soon as it becomes even the smallest inconvenience, we’ll get the second car.

Jamie has been doing tons of research on cars…for us, once we have kids, fuel economy, safety ratings, warranty, etc.  I’m glad he really enjoys the research bit, because it would do my head in.  I told him to go home, close on the house, and buy whatever he wanted, because it really didn’t matter to me.  Cars just aren’t my thing…if it runs, gets me from Point A to Point B, and has an aux jack for my iPhone, then I really just don’t care beyond that. 

Here are some of the front runners for cars (Jamie has been on a Hyundai kick lately…and really, a 10 year Power Train warranty and 5 year bumper-to-bumper is pretty awesome).

Honda CR-V

 

Honda Civic

 

 

 

Toyota Prius

 

 

Hyundai Tucson

 

Hyundai Elantra GT

 

So, these are in no particular order or anything (and definitely not the colors we’d pick), but these are some of the cars we’re considering.  Do any of you have any experience with any of these??  Good/bad/indifferent?  What do you think?

 

Hope you all had a good weekend!

XOXOXO,
K.

Ugh…it has begun.  The dreaded process of moving our shit from one continent to another has started…this morning.  I hate moving.  I don’t hate the actual part of being in another place, I love that bit.  It’s the physical process of moving my junk from point A to point B that I detest.  And it’s ridiculous that I’m complaining, because we even have movers that do it for us!  But still, we need to separate, and make lists, and piles, and on and on and on.  We’re attempting to get all the stuff that goes on the boat shipment out of one room, so that Lily can be locked in there on the day the movers are here for our boat shipment stuff (which is basically all of the furniture, some clothes, kitchen stuff, etc.).  On top of that, we have to make sure that all our storage units (bookshelves, cabinets, wardrobes, etc.) don’t have things in them that we’d like to keep around until the air shipment or until we move home, because the storage furniture is moved first, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.  The hardest part of this was finding room for the stuff that we want to keep here a bit longer (mainly clothing for for the next 6 weeks).  I’ve been moving stuff our of our dresser, replacing those things with towels and other crap that goes home, and trying to find room for the clothes that are in the wardrobe that I need here.  It’s just a lot of moving and shuffling of things around, but it’s tiring and seems never ending.  We’ve been at it a full day…I’m already over it.  The movers come on Friday, thankfully…so at least it’s in small spurts!

In other news…honestly, not much.  This move has consumed our lives (as it does every time we do this).  Luckily, it’s only a week here or a week there…not 24/7 for months on end (the actual move, not the planning…the planning takes much longer), so I can deal with it.  Jamie went to the grocery store while I took a nap…god, I love that man!  And now I’m back awake and trying to get a bit more finished up before he gets home.  I’m staring into the face of another crazy week at work, and hoping that it goes quickly!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

XOXOXO,
K.

Valentine’s day was perfect yesterday.  Jamie and I had agreed not to exchange gifts (we never give each other anything large anyways, but with the house and car purchases, we decided that gifts were unnecessary), but I did tell him that I wanted a card from him for the holiday.  I’m always pretty upfront about what I want, so I expected him to follow through.  Yet again, Jamie never fails to disappoint!  He gave me two dozen roses (multi-colored, my favorite) and a giant card with a super sweet message written on the inside.  Then, we spent the evening watching “NCIS” and feasting on sushi…perfection!  He never fails to tell me how proud he is of me, and how he’s so happy with our life together.  Sigh…I really don’t give him enough credit, he’s pretty damn amazing. 

This weekend is going to be less than enjoyable, however.  The movers come to pick up the stuff for our boat shipment next Friday, so this weekend we’re going to walk around splitting things up into different rooms, then placing stickers on everything to identify whether it’s “SEA,” “AIR,” or “STAY.”  Since we’re in a furnished apartment, a lot of the stuff stays, but we did bring a fair amount of our own as well.  Plus, we have things we need to sell that we can’t use in the US (namely appliances:  crockpot, grill, fridge).  We don’t really want to take that stuff back with us, because it’s useless in the US and will only take up room, so we’re trying to unload it here.  Hopefully we can sell it for some extra cash, but we’ll see.

After that, it’s another month until the movers come back for our air shipment.  Once that has been packed and moved, it will be four days until we move home!  Time is moving so quickly!  I have a get-together with all my expat friends later this month, and I know it’ll be bittersweet.  We’ll have an amazing time, because we always do, but it’ll be so sad that this will be the last time that I’m seeing some of them!  Three years has really flown by!

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

XOXOXO,
K.

I got my proofs back last night from my boudoir shoot, and WOW!  Ashley took some amazing photos…I didn’t even recognize myself!  I looked HOT!  I can’t wait to have the book made to give to Jamie for our anniversary.  Hopefully he loves it.  Ashley is moving back to the States about a month before we are, and I can’t wait until I’m pregnant so we can do a maternity shoot and then a baby shoot!  She’s so fabulous with a camera…I would highly recommend her to anyone. 

If you’re interested in seeing some of her photos, here’s her FB page.  Mine aren’t on there yet, since Jamie “likes” the page, and I don’t want them showing up on his feed.  Plus, I’d like to get his opinion before posting photos of myself in next to nothing all over the web.  However, the shoot that Jamie and I did as a couple are probably on there somewhere, I believe! 

I’m so pleased with the photos!  I am so excited to give these to Jamie…hopefully he loves them!

 

XOXOXO,
K.

For Jamie’s anniversary present, I decided to do a boudoir shoot and give him a book of photos.  One of my good friends here started her own photography business, and she takes amazing photos, so it was totally a win/win!  We did the shoot last Friday, and I’m so excited/nervous to see the photos!  I’m excited because I know she’s amazing and they’ll be good, but also nervous because I’m at the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and don’t always feel very “sexy.”   Oh well, hopefully she’s a pro with angles!  I was thinking of giving Jamie a teaser shot for V-day, because they should be ready by then, but not sure if that would ruin the anniversary surprise.  Decisions, decisions.

As for Valentine’s day, this year we decided not to exchange gifts.  We sort of bought each other a house and all that, plus our anniversary trip to Hawaii, so we’re dropping some serious cash this year.  Jamie asked me if I would mind if we didn’t do gifts, which of course I didn’t mind at all (honestly, finding something different, unique and special for him is like finding a needle in a haystack…exhausting.  Hell, I was HAPPY I didn’t have to hunt him down a gift!).  But, I had already bought him a card, and was going to write him a nice note and all that jazz.  Honestly, I am SO incredibly thankful that he “gets me,” because this is how our conversation went down:

Jamie:  Do we mind if we not exchange gifts for Valentine’s Day this year?  We sort of already spent a lot on the house, on Hawaii, etc.

Me:  Dude, I don’t care, that’s totally fine with me.  HOWEVER, I have already bought you a card, and I expect one in return. Write something sweet and nice!

Jamie:  Duly noted.  

 

I asked him later if he minded that I was so upfront with him about what I expected out of the holidays.  He came back and said that he was glad he was with someone who would rather be open and honest with expectations, instead of expecting him to read my mind about what I wanted.  This way, he knows.  Thank god he gets me, because I think some men would be less than thrilled with that little verbal exchange.  And for that, he’ll get sex…because he gets me.

How was your weekend, my favorite readers?

 

XOXOXO,
K.

Today was day two back at the gym.  Oy, it was hard, but it felt so good!  I forgot just how much I love working out and being at the gym.  I also started training for a 5K that I signed Jamie and myself up for in May (right before we leave for Hawaii).  I really want to run the full thing.  A lot of people would scoff at 3.1 miles being considered “long,” but I ‘ve always been a sprinter, never a distance runner…running any sort of mileage for me is tough!  But…it’ll be great to start training for it, and it’ll help get me in shape for my time at the beach in Hawaii!  I am so freaking excited for Hawaii!  At that point, our house will have been taken care of, the cars bought, the furniture in place…that part of the stress will be finished.  It’ll be 10 glorious day of relaxation, scuba diving, and spending time together…BLISS!

The only thing we have left to do for the Hawaii trip is rent an apartment.  We’ll be on two different islands (the Big Island and Oahu), so we’ll need two places.  I’ve started searching on VRBO for places that I like, and they have plenty, so I’m not worried.  We already booked the tickets months ago (god bless you, airline miles!), and everything else is just sort of “played by ear.”  I want to do another Luau, and TONS of scuba diving (and maybe even another certification while we’re there), and lots of lazing around on the beach with a fruity drink in my hand.  And swim with dolphins…that’s a must too!

We also got our email regarding the 2014 Winter Olympics, and how tickets applications begin in a few months!  I’m so torn!  Ugh, I’d really like to go!  I’ve never been to Russia, and I’ve wanted to go for quite some time, but on the other hand, it’ll go through our vacation time for the year (well, mine at least, because I only get 10 days plus Winter shutdown between Christmas and New Years).  The main drag on the time is the flight.  To fly from Chicago O’Hare to Sochi (where the games are being held) is a 2 day flight (due to time changes), and at least 20+ hours in travel time.  Ummm…oy.  And that’s not even counting the expense!  United doesn’t fly to Sochi, so we couldn’t use miles (though we might be able to use miles for part of the trip…from Chicago to Moscow, maybe), and tickets are looking to be around $2k+ per person.  If we were living in Europe, it would be nothing for us to just jump on over there (sure, it’s still an 8+ hour flight, and expensive, but nowhere near as much as it is coming from the US), but I’m just not sure if I can justify that time and expense.  Plus, hopefully, by that time I’ll be pregant, and I’m not sure I want to spend several days flying somewhere while dealing with being pregnant.

Plus, we’ve also been talking about doing some exploring of South America, so I know if we drop that sort of cash and time on a trip to Russia, that will be our big trip of the year (and the money spent could easily account for two big trips somewhere else…or a hell of a lot of weekend trips around the US).  I’ve been dying to go to Costa Rica, and I’d love to go to Columbia a well.  So, who knows.  It’ll be a decision, for sure…a once in a lifetime trip to see the Olympics in Russia (and, I’ll admit, the Olympics were pretty damn spectacular in London, so I’d like to do it again), or other, equally as awesome trips to South America.  Luckily, we have a few months before our application for tickets is due, so we can talk and decide later.

So, that’s about it for now.  Trying to sort our travel plans for this year (and potentially next), while trying to coordinate a transatlantic relocation and new jobs.  I love all the excitement this is generating, but it’s also stressful!  Hopefully I’ll keep my head above water over the new few months!

Hope you all are doing well!

XOXOXO,
K.