The grass isn't always greener (only the mucus)

There is a story in my family that when my mom was pretty far along into labor with my sister my dad said, "Think of the boys in Vietnam, Kath." Obviously not exactly what you want to hear at that time, but I think that shows where I get my tendancy for thinking of someone in a worse situation.

When I have a coughing fit I think of all the people with cystic fibrosis. At least I know there is an end in sight, whereas they have to live with that coughing for life.

It is 2:34am and I woke up shivering, even though our apartment is perfectly warm. My first thought as I was shaking in bed was, "Think of all the men that died in the Battle of the Bulge. They were outside in sub-zero conditions fighting. Yeah, you are shivering, but you are under a warm blanket."

I tell all of this to Kyle and he just shakes his head. Poor thing, but at least he doesn't have a wife that complains alot!

Dusty Days

Whew, we have had a busy Christmas, but I feel great about everything we have gotten done. With the baby coming in about a month and Kyle having a few days off in a row, we took this time to do lots of projects around the apartment.

Thursday we had a nice Christmas morning just the two of us. I feel odd saying this, but we actually didn't get each other any gifts. We have been trying so hard to clean out the apartment to make room for the baby that the thought of bringing anything else in and having to find a place for it was just not appealing. That afternoon we headed to our friends Richard and Michelle's for lunch. We know them from church and our other friends Katie and Stephen were there too. What started out as lunch lasted for over six hours as we played Wii, hung out, played some Christmas trivia and enjoyed each others company.

L-R, Nicole, Katie, Stephen, Michelle, me, Kyle and Gabrielle, with Richard taking the photo.

That night we headed over to another church friends house to watch Wall-E. The beauty of being an expat is that no one has their family around so you end up feeling much closer to each other than just a normal 'friend' relationship. Over the course of the holiday we ended up spending time with several different friends and each of them I feel close enough to that I could call them in a pinch and they would drop everything to help me out. Throughout our four years in Brussels we have really developed a wonderful support group and I feel so lucky to have so many great friends here.

Friday we went to Paola and Mat Heim's for Christmas tea complete with mince meat pies and cakes from Marks and Spencer topped with clotted creme.

Saturday we re-arranged our rooms to make room for the baby. Kyle and I are now going to stay in what used to be the guest room. In our old bedroom, we have pushed the bed into the corner and managed to sqeeze in the crib, changing table and glider on the other side of the room. I'll post photos once it all looks finished. Right now, we have everything in place but are at the awful stage of having to find homes for lots of little, random things, so it all still looks pretty messy.

I absolutely love our apartment, but the one thing I will not miss about it is the dust. I have never seen dust accumulate like it does here. Someone pointed out that since we only have wall radiators, the air never get circulated so the dust never gets moved around. To compound the problem, we only have hardwood floors and no carpets to absorb the dust. And then to top it off, we live in the city where there is just a lot of dirt and grime all around. All this creates the Perfect Storm for Dust. As Kyle and were moving everything around, we vacuumed every possible thing and area that we could. And yet, one day after doing all that, this is what the top of our desk looks like...

A combination of stirring up all that dust and being around a friend who later found out she has bronchitis has left me sick. Since I am pregnant, I can't really take anything so I have just been laying around feeling pretty miserable. I have a few homeopathic things I can take which have actually helped more than I thought they would. Belgians really don't like to give out anti-biotics unless you are on your death bed so I doubt I would be taking anything much stronger even if I wasn't pregnant. As much as it would be nice to kick this thing quickly, I also appreciate the fact that in the four years I have been here I have never taken an anti-biotic. I think sometimes they can be a bit overprescribed so I am glad to have given my body some time to fight things on its own.

Kyle has been taking great care of me while I've been so sick. I was watching a silly romantic comedy movie earlier today that was only showing love as wine and roses with long walks in the park and not a problem in the world. As I looked at myself wear a hat, scarf, huge pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and glasses, with a tissue sticking out of my pocket I thought about 'for better or worse, in sickness and in health' and how Kyle is definitely sticking to those vows right now.

And since I have just given you such an awful mental image of me, I'll try to leave you with a better one where I at least have makeup and lipstick on...

Merry Christmas!

This will be our third out of five Christmas spent here in Belgium. Although being just the two of us on Christmas day feels a bit like any other weekend it is also nice not to be running around in the last minute Christmas rush. We will definitely miss seeing our families but since they all live so close together in Georiga, sometimes it can feel like we are driving around all day and stuffing our faces rather than just relaxing at Christmas.

Tomorrow we are going to a British friends house for a "proper Christmas roast." I'm not even quite sure what that means, but it sounds good. We are headed to another friend's house for tea on Boxing Day. I have lived here four years and I still needed to get her to translate what day and time that meant (apparently it is December 26 at 5ish for a light supper).

This weekend we went to Strasbourg, France and Trier, Germany for their Christmas markets. We have decided that hands down, if you want a good Christmas market, go to Germany. They really know how to do those things right. Strasbourg was a pretty city filled with split timbered houses, while Trier was a much smaller town but well kept. We hit the 'perfect storm' of the Trier Christmas market -- it was the weekend before Christmas and it was a Sunday (so everything else was closed and it was the only thing open). The gluvine was flowing, all the booths were covered in greenery, bands were playing Christmas carols and there was plenty of good food. We went back Monday and as Kyle perfectly summarized, "This feels like we are in the hangover of the Christmas market" -- the greenery was down, no music was being played, everyone seemed tired and worn out. All this to say, we are glad we went on Sunday and we are just trying to forget about Monday. Our strategy for eating in Trier was to split everything and eat every hour and a half. By doing this we were able to taste sausages, fried potato cakes with apple sauce, mini-pancakes with powdered sugar, and a brick oven style pizza. It was all delicious!

The French version of what I should call my kitchen.

Kyle in Strasbourg.

Our church recently showed a very interesting video that I really liked. I think it is great to give presents when you have found something that you know the person would really like, but I hate it when you are standing in the store just thinking, "What can I get this person? Maybe bath soaps, a candle or some other generic thing so that I can just check it off my list?"


As we were driving through France I heard this song and have now decided that it will be "our" Christmas song. The words are perfect and express exactly what I feel with getting to spend Christmas with Kyle, as well as every other day of my life. After four plus years of marriage and almost eight years of being together, I still pinch myself and wonder how I got so lucky to find such a wonderful person to share my life with.

Merry Christmas!!!

Blogging is like exercise (or I guess pretty much anything in life) -- if you make it a habit, you keep up with it, but when you take time off, it is sooo hard to get going again. I still have all these thoughts of blogs I want to write, but I just can't bring myself to sit in front of the computer and actually do it. Since writing a long blog keeps making me delay writing anything at all, I'll just do a brief re-cap of what has been happening since I last blogged...

--Election Night, see the post below for photos

--I went to the US Ambassador's residence for an AWCB coffee. It is always fun to use napkins with the United States crest in gold on them.

--I went to two bookclub meetings (Mistress of the Sun and My Name Is Red). I really like the girls in my bookclub and we always have a lot of fun together.

--We celebrated our four year anniversary of moving to Belgium on November 13. I feel so old when I tell people we have been here for four years. In expat time that is an eternity. I can't quite decide what has been the best experience of my life, but so far doing Arch Society, going to Australia/NZ, and moving here are in my top three.

--I went on a tour of the Presles Chateau through the Women's Club.

--We had a spend the night party with our friends Katie and Stephen. They live an hour away from here and had something on both Saturday and Sunday in Brussels so they stayed with us to avoid having to do the drive twice. It was funny to hang out in our pajamas all together but we had a great time.

--I've still been going to my French classes twice a week. I have also started meeting with a girl my same age who is trying to improve her English. We speak in English for awhile and then switch to French and each correct the other along the way. I have realized that almost all the problems I have with the french language she has the same ones with English.

--We went to the Essen Christmas Beer Festival. I always love seeing true Belgians enjoying their beer.

--I went to the Modave Chateau with the Women's Club. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas and really got me in the mood for the season.

And the biggest news of all is that I am pregnant! Over time, after hearing from lots of friends about their experiences of birth both here and in the States, I decided that I wanted to have a baby in Belgium. I'll write a post soon about all the positives of giving birth here, but for now, the details are as follows:

-I am due February 3, 2009 so I am in my eighth month.

-We aren't finding out the sex, so it will be a surprise.

-We have a list of names for both a boy and a girl but we haven't decided on anything yet.

-I have felt great throughout the whole pregnancy. Only now am I really starting to feel and act pregnant -- I waddle and seem to groan every time I get up off the couch. This is giving me great sympathy for older people that have bad aches and pains!

-My doctor speaks perfect English. She is wonderful and we both really like her. She is Belgian but her mother and brother live in California. This is especially nice for us because she understands certain things and ways about Americans and can explain to me when and why she does something different to how I have heard it is done in the States.

-The thing I am most worried about is speaking french in the hospital. Yes, my doctor speaks perfect English, but she will only be there for the very end of the birth. Up until that point and after the delivery I will be with a nurse. Everyone assures me that there are plenty of people that speak English in the hospitals but I am still worried about it. Kyle and I just sat down with a woman to get a tutorial of 'hospital French' for such words as blood, needle, crib, diaper etc. Now we will just have to see if my brain remembers all of it in between contractions.

-We have attended a wonderful childbirth class through the Brussels Childbirth Trust. There were seven other couples from all different nationalities there. Over eight sessions we learned all about labor, delivery, infant CPR, breastfeeding, and life with the baby. We had so much fun in these classes and are really looking forward to going through this process with all the other couples. Six of the eight couples all live in our same neighborhood so I definitely think we will be getting together once all the babies arrive.

It has been interesting to learn about how birth is handled in different countries. Everyone's nationalities from left to right -- Malaysian, German, British, British, German, German, Polish, Polish, American, American, Swedish, Swedish and the two Australians, a German and a Dutch person were missing from this photo.

I don't love the side ways shot so I haven't taken one in awhile, but here is the most recent view. (The skinny woman on the left is our teacher).

And since I know I will look awful after the baby is born, you can just imagine me looking like this instead...

And I guess in a few more years I'll look like this...

Whew, well now I don't feel so bad for not blogging -- I forgot how many things how many things had been keeping me busy in the last few months. We are off to Strasbourg, France and Trier, Germany for the Christmas markets and then plan on spending a quiet Christmas here in Brussels setting up the crib and changing table. Merry Christmas!