Dad's Day

Happy Father's Day! Too bad my dad has to work today, but tomorrow night we are going to celebrate both Father's Day and my parents 35th wedding anniversary by going out to eat and a movie. Can you imagine that, 35 years of marriage?! And since I'm living with the parents for the time being, I figure that I may as well crash their romantic evening too. Living with them again after such a long time of not, is weird and comforting at the same time. First, it is just temporary until my hubby arrives in about 2 months, but second is such a money saver for us at this point. We are hoping to buy a house in the not too distant future, and if I had to pay a big rent on an apartment, our saving money would be even harder. In fact, Yann is currently moving out of our apartment in Ventabren, France and he is going to move into his parents place too, in North France! We are in quite a funny situation for the next couple months, but c'est la vie!

I appreciate so much, my parents letting me stay with them. I was feeling like I was imposing on them when I first arrived in the States; after all I am married, 27 years old, and pregnant! I felt like maybe I should bite the bullet and look for an apartment until Yann got here. But after looking at some expensive, tiny places, I decided I should stick around here. It's a much better deal here at their house: I've got a cool swimming pool in the backyard, my dog can stay with no extra pet deposit, I have access to a mac-daddy kitchen with a Sub-Zero fridge and a big gas stove, monthly utilities are included, and cable and internet are abundant! What more could you want? Well, for one thing, more storage would help. I've maxed out my closet in my bedroom, and now my craft work space is creeping into the dining room. I have a growing 'rat pile' of baby things that I've slowly begun collecting. A disassembled baby swing, a stroller in a huge box, the crib bedding, some cute baby clothes I found on sale... oh my, I do look forward to getting our own place at some point soon!

Anyways, I want to give a shout out to my dad and my grandpa today! Love you guys!! My dad is seriously the greatest papa ever and I can never thank him enough for all that he has done for me. We have been through some hard times as a family, but he always pulls through for my mom and I and is our solid rock. I am so happy that I will be able to give him the greatest gift this year of becoming a grandfather. I cannot wait to see him holding his grandaughter for the first time! He will be an excellent grandpa, just like he is a father. And to my grandpa, Art, who I now get to live only one mile away from, instead of being separated by the Atlantic ocean, I am happy to be your neighbor again! I bring dinner to my grandpa, who is homebound, with my mom about every other night. It's so good to have this time with him, because I've lived far away for so many years now. He is 93 years old and still very mentally sharp; he's such a great guy and I'm so blessed he is a part of my life. So, Happy Grandfather's Day to you grandps!







Also, in crafting news, I have only one quilting class left! The four weeks went by so fast. It's crazy; when I am on a sewing machine hours can pass and it will only feel like a few minutes has gone by! The 3 hours class goes by very quickly, but I will have an adorable lap quilt for the baby finished by this Thursday. Can't wait to show you my first little quilt. I have really learned a lot of technique and about measuring & cutting fabric from my teacher. She is a major perfectionist, which is required in quitling. I am more of a 'wing it' type person, so her instruction is very good for me; she makes me rip out a lot of my seams! My sewing machine is in the shop broken, which is a whole 'notha sad story in itself, and so I have to figure out another craft to keep my hands busy. I found a great knitting for babies book and so this is my next undertaking...learn to knit, while my my sewing machine is in the shop! Knitting in Florida..why??? Well, maybe this winter will be cold here and I can find a chilly day or two to put a hand knit sweater on my sweet little baby girl.

So, today I used my mom's old Bernina machine to sew up these market tote bags. I have been going nuts with the amount of plastic bags in the United States!! In France, everyone has to bring their own bags to the grocery stores. There is no such thing as a free plastic bag! If you forgot your bags at home, you can purchase thick plastic bags at the grocery store, but then they are expensive. This forces you to keep a bunch a eco-friendly, re-useable bags in your trunk and grab them before you go into the store in France. It's such a simple, small act to bring your own bag there, but I have made a lifetime resolution to never use the plastic bags at the store. They are a nightmare to store at home and are just a nuisance overall. I made these for my mom, because she always forgets to bring her own bags and I had to do something about that!





See you later this week!

bump alert!

So, one week after arriving and besides missing my husband, I am very happy to be here! Already, I've had a full schedule which is a nice shift of gears from my tranquil French lifestyle. I had my first quilting class, in which we are putting together a baby quilt...how fitting! And I picked out all greens and yellows; you'd think since we're having a girl I'd be going for all the girly pinks. But, I think once you see the cuteness of this fabric I picked out, you'll understand. Plus, a girl can't have all pink stuff, right? Way too cliche for this future mama!

Also, I attended the first orientation meeting at our local birthing center. Very interesting and informative and I brought my parents along to get the scoop too. As they are both coming from a medical background, I think they learned a lot and had their eyes opened to the many alternative options to normal hospital birth. I will be hopefully doing all my prenatal visits there as well as my child birth education classes. And if all goes well with this pregnancy and it looks normal and healthy, I think I'm going to try to deliver here at home. The house I grew up in! How amazing would that be?! I'm really hoping it work out, because hospitals scare me! You go there if you are sick and pregnancy is not a sickness, right?

Anyways, I included a picture of my belly dated from today, as requested by Annie. It is me at about 18 weeks and the belly has started to pop. In fact, I had to make a run to Target today to grab some maternity clothes and some skirts with elastic waistbands. Oh, Elastic, I can already see that you and I will be becoming very close friends over the next 5 months! I was just going nuts searching through the closet, trying on everything to see if anything fit me still and nothing was comfortable. So, now I have a few more stretchy things to get me through the next month or two.





Have a great weekend and see you soon!

So, do you like my new title?

It's fitting, eh? The Back Home Blog. Though maybe not so terribly creative, but it does convey the simple fact that I am back at home here in the ol' US of A! The ol' red, white, and blue...oh wait; France's flag is red, white, and blue also. But you get what I'm saying here, right? Well, it feels totally awesome to be back, aside from the crazy feeling that I'm still moving when I'm actually standing perfectly still. (Thanks jet lag!) I tell ya, I did puddle up a little bit when I got off that plane in Washington D.C. and walked though to the customs line, where there was this big sign hanging that read "Welcome Home to the United States". Maybe they knew I was coming and wanted to give me a warm welcome message. There were some uniformed troops there guarding and I wanted to run up to them and thank them and give them all a bear hug. Big, strong American soldiers in their camo and with their cool buzzcut hair. I am very thankful for them and to be back here. Look at me; all patriotic now! What also adds to my new found patriotism is the fact that I love our new president!


The plane rides, all FOUR of them, were good overall. I decided to try to save a few bucks by buying a heavily discounted ticket on Orbitz. Hence, why I had so many connections. My first mistake was buying a ticket that departed from Paris. We live, like 8 hours away from Paris by car and my flight left very early in the morning, so we had to drive all the way up from Provence the day before and get a hotel room by the Charles de Gaule Airport. Apparently, my sweet husband must have been also trying to save a buck, because, bless his heart, our hotel room was not a pretty sight. I asked him if he was trying to romance me on our last night together for 3 months. Ha, ha. We spent the first 10 minutes in the room picking out little black hairs from under the pillows on the bed. yuck. But hey, we survived the night unharmed and he dropped me off the next morning at the airport for my flight on Aer Lingus. yeah, I said Lingus. I was a bit skeptical at first, maybe the name did it, but after taking the commuter plane to Dublin and boarding the Airbus 330 over to Washington I felt better about it. It was a brand new plane, it had little tv screens in the back of each seat, and I had the 4 middle seats to myself. Let me inject here, that I have become an increasingly worried flyer. I think it happened sometime this last year with all the flying back and forth to Europe and being on a flight that had major turbulence. I used to adore the whole process of air travel and dealing with airports, but those days are over. Especially, just right after the Air France crash in Brazil, I was just creeped out the whole time. I couldn't really relax enough to sleep and every time I dozed off we would hit a little bump and I would wake up with a start!


I was so happy to finally be on the ground in Tampa and I met my parents outside of baggage claim, and it hit me how absolutely exhausted I was. I was literally staggering to their car. Maybe it was all the stress of flying, plus the no sleep, plus the pregnancy factor. And when I got inside the car and saw that they had brought my dog, Rascal, I burst into tears. I guess it was just pretty emotional to be home and seeing that little ball of fur so happy to see me, just made me cry!

So, now I'm pretty well recovered and my parents took me out last night to celebrate at Ruth Chris's Steakhouse and I ordered a giant steak. Girl needs some iron and protein! My mom and I also had to return some things at the mall and we hit up the Gymboree store. (My first time in one.) And so we bought the baby some cute little outfits, but I told myself: No more buying! Because I imagine these little shopping sprees for the baby can get pricey. It's just so fun to buy cute clothes for your future baby girl, with her future grandma! And the sales were major anyways; in France those same clothes would have been double or perhaps even triple the price they were here.

So, my next post will probably be about the introduction class I will be attending on Monday at the Sarasota Rosemary Birthing Center. Looking very forward to that!

The sex revealed...

It's a girl!!! Yeah! :)