Long Time No See

This isn't going to be one of those posts where I reminisce about 2011 or share my hopes for 2012. You all know what those are anyway. Instead this post will be another random mish-mash of things that have occurred over the past few weeks.

After spending time with family in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia for a week I've gained back almost all the weight I lost in the past 5 weeks. It was a huge bummer but I can't say I'm surprised. It's my own damn fault. Tomorrow it's back on the saddle with the gym and dieting and this time I'm getting serious. I'm going to try an all-natural diet and see how that goes. This means very little processed foods, especially those that are high in sodium. Just because a can of soup or a Lean Cuisine meal is low in WW points doesn't mean it's low in sodium and WW doesn't account for that. I really need to cut back on my sodium intake. Most of the processed foods I eat will be things that are harder to avoid like cereal or maybe a Fiber One bar as a snack. I'm going to start eating more fish and tuna and cutting out almost all red meat. Brandon is on board with this diet so hopefully he can lose a little pudge too. He's gained about 30 pounds over the course of our marriage.

We're starting to waver on our choice to go to sunny Mexico for our first real vacation. Instead we're becoming more and more interested in another adventure...Europe. It would only be Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I don't want to go traipsing about the continent visiting as many countries as I can without truly experiencing any of them. That's just not how we travel. We started thinking about this vacation change because Brandon has been talking so much about moving there when we retire and I'm getting very curious about what the region is like. We planned on taking a trip there in about 7 or 8 years when our child is old enough to enjoy long trips but that seems so far away. There are pros and cons to choosing this trip over Mexico and one of the major cons is the extra cost. But the reason the cost would be more is because we would stay longer, not because things are more expensive there. If we chose to go during the exact time we had planned our Cancun vacation then the cost would actually be a bit lower than the Cancun trip. Everything is still up in the air and we won't make a choice on our trip for another month so we have plenty of time to figure things out. In the meantime though, Brandon has started teaching me a little German. Es ist nicht deine katse!! Yes, I came up with that sentence all on my own :)

Sometimes I find the adoption wait is getting to me a little and other times I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of life without kids. It varies from day to day but as the weeks go by I do find myself getting more and more impatient. When is our child going to get here? That's the million dollar question. So to pass the time we've decided to get back into puzzling. I used to love putting together jigsaw puzzles and I was damn good at it. I'd do puzzles and get them framed and give them away as gifts or hang them as artwork in my house. I have a few Van Gogh puzzles and a Thomas Kinkade right now. The largest puzzle I did was 2,000 pieces and was of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. I gave it to my grandparents. Our next puzzle project is two-fold. I liked one puzzle and Brandon liked another so I bought both. The first puzzle is a 2,000 piece of Hallstatter, Austria, one of the place we'd like to visit when we go to Europe. The second puzzle was my choice, a 4,000 piece of Neuschwanstein Castle, another must-see in Germany. I couldn't resist a good challenge. I just hope it fits on my kitchen table or I'll be stuck doing it on the nursery room floor. I've never had to do a puzzle on the floor before.

So with all this travel talk I must admit that I'm considering a career change to a travel agent. With my organization skills and love for foreign places I think I would be very good at it. Remember my Ireland itinerary? Who wouldn't want me to plan a vacation like that for them! The only problem is that I have no paid experience or any certifications. I'm looking into the certification process and the business itself (I'm not too keen on working for commission only. I don't enjoy pushing sales on hotels I can't personally recommend) So it's not a for-sure thing just yet but so many people have recommended that I become one that it's hard to ignore, especially if the natural talent is there. Brandon said at the very least I could get certified and do it as a hobby for family and friends. Maybe charge a small fee to cover the costs of memberships and software programs and that's it. It sounds like a career I could really enjoy and it's definitely worth checking into but that's all I'm doing right now. I'm not going to quit my day job till I get all the info.

I'd also like to announce that I will no longer be adding anymore blogs to my Parenting section. It's getting just a little too big. Also, I'll only be picking a small number of blogs to move from the Infertility section to the Pregnancy section. I don't want to offend anyone by not following once someone gets pregnant but so many of the infertility blogs I follow get pregnant successfully that I can't be having a huge Pregnancy blog list. The majority of my blogs will be infertility and adoption, as I'd like it to be, and very few Pregnancy and Parenting blogs. I'll also try to keep the Parenting a healthy mix of biological parenting and adopted parenting. I hope everyone understands.

So that's my past two weeks in a nutshell. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and hopefully everyone had some time off from work as well.