2008- Flying to London

Jumping right into things, Chelsie and I decided to start our trip in London, England. I have always wanted to see London, and she had been there before when she was about 13 I think. We would then stop in Bath and Brighton before we headed to Paris.

The towns of Bath and Brighton were chosen for two reasons:

a.) They are said to be incredibly beautiful.

b.) We love Jane Austen, and she lived in Bath for a period of time.

Chelsie and I spent the better part of a year planning this trip. We found a great travel agent, and we made our itinerary. Chelsie did most of the hard work, figuring out where to go, how to get there and so forth. I basically okay-ed everything, seeing as I had no idea about any of it. Chels was organized though, so I had a lot of faith in her skills.

I don't think my parents believed me when I told them of my plan. The summer of 2007, I was working at an out of school care center as a summer student, and returning to school in the fall. I had decided to put away half of each pay cheque every month into a savings account that I would use for the trip. I probably saved over $4000.00, if I remember right, just in that summer alone. My parents have never travelled abroad, so I was entering new territory.

This was the plan, graduate from school with a BA in Psychology, work for a few months, and then leave for my trip. After I came home? Anything was possible.

I graduated, (very exciting, yes, yes it was), and found a job at a bakery in Riverbend. I sort of just wanted any job and didn't really care what it payed. I was also working part time with kids with autism, juggling the two jobs until I would leave.

Time to leave.

I had no clue how to pack, what to bring, what not to bring. I packed like I was going to be camping for 3 weeks. Seriously, the clothes I brought...what was I thinking. Worn hoodies and Nike's, it was like I would be hiking in the bush, not travelling in civilized cities for crying out loud.

I also brought the most boring books on the history of the planet to read on the plane. Was I thinking they would suddenly get interesting on the plane? I sort of left the ipod to the last minute too, and didn't really put a lot of music on it that I would have liked, not realizing how often I would be listening to it as Chelsie and I covered miles by train and plane. My preparation in these areas was just stunning now that I look back.

Chelsie came to my house in the morning, and Kenton was to drive us to the Calgary airport for our afternoon flight. I had said goodbye to my dad the night before because he was going to already be at work the next day when I left. Chelsie's mom had brought her over. We all chatted for a few minutes, and after saying our goodbyes, our moms tear up. The realization that we were actually leaving for real, was setting in. Their daughters were flying across the ocean, by themselves...two girls...roaming around in foreign places. Oh dear.

 Our wonderful travel agent helped us get the cheapest flights possible, but you pay in another way for those. I didn't know what "red eye" flights meant until that departing flight.

Um yes, I was very sad to leave Kenton. We were dating at the time, and a month was like...FOREVER to be apart. In Chelsie's words, "You handled it better than I thought you would!" Thanks Chels.

By the way, I journalled most of our trip, and that is what I am referring to as I write this. Thank goodness, just reading it all now shows me how much I forgot.

-The Flight-

This was my first time on a plane, ever. I can honestly say now, after being on a few more flights since this trip, that I do not prefer air travel. This may be foreshadowing for a story later on...

It's about an 8 hour flight to London, Heathrow Airport, and the tv screens on the headrest in front of our seats don't work. Awesome. An 8 hour ride with no movies...just Top Gear resetting itself every 15 min and playing over and over and over...By the end of the flight the screens do work again, but I fail to realize that I can plug in my own earphones and hear what is being played. I watch Harry Potter 5, in silence. Why am I so smart?

It's basically impossible for me to catch a nap on this flight. When we arrive in London, it will be 6am their time. I am too excited to think about how tired I will be once we get there. I can't even believe this is happening now. Almost a year of saving up, planning, discussing, fretting, and being giddy, and we were finally doing it!

We have arrived to London, and we are exhausted, but sort of running on the adrenaline of arriving and needing to figure out how to now get to the city.

We are in Heathrow, meaning we still have a short journey ahead of us to actually get into the city. We get our bags, and I have realized I have slightly overpacked. To give you perspective, Chelsie is carrying what looks like the size of an elementary school kid's backpack, and I look like I am about to climb Mount Everest. I borrowed the backpack from my friend Lindsay who took it on her YWAM. It was big. Too big. And she gave me a cover for it so that none of the strings or things got ripped off in the shuffle. Chelsie thinks I am crazy by this point, and I ditch the backpack cover, the first of many things I will be leaving behind throughout this trip.

We wander around and figure out that we are to take a bus. This bus leaves in about 2 min and we have no clue where it is leaving from in this foreign place of people rushing about. Running through the airport (yeah picture me right now, lugging this bag as big as me, trying to run and not cause us to miss a bus that won't come around again for a long time), we make it to our bus before it decides it has everyone it wants. It is a beautiful morning, the sun is coming up and dew is shining on the trees across the street. Seeing how nice it is out, I kind of forget how tired I am for a moment . The countryside of England is also something you just have to see in person once in your life. It is amazing! The ride is about half an hour to our true destination...

...

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Stories of a trip- Europe 2008

I have been meaning to write a small series of posts sharing my trip to Europe in 2008. It's now 2011, but some good stories are timeless, and I will be avoiding the "had to be there" moments if possible. I went with my friend, Chelsie. Some of you know her as the hair and make-up girl at our wedding.

Since going on this 3.5 week trip in May 2008, I can't shake the memories that flood back to me every Spring. Not to mention, some of the stories are too good not to tell, and as much as I tried to relay them to all who cared at the time, it was impossible to tell everything all at once, with pictures included.

I still have a good handful of pictures from this trip, but some are missing, and you will find out why. I am also missing all of Chelsie's photos that I intended to have fill in the gaps in mine...but a believe it had barely been a year after the trip and her computer crashed, losing all of her photos. We were bummed to say the least. Still am!

So like I said, these posts will happen in a sort of series, and may be sporadic depending on how much time I actually have to write each one.

Our travels included 3 major cities, London, Paris and Rome. We also payed some smaller places a visit in between.

I will still be posting some of our real life things in between all of these travel posts, but I hope you enjoy a little something different now and then to read!

Wren reads.

Wrennie has a special spot on the shelf for her books. Her books actually take up 3 or 4 squares on the shelf to tell you the truth. 

We are on night 3 of our "sleep training"...aka. "crying it out". It's...going? Last night it took an hour for her to fall asleep. Tonight, who knows, she is still crying. I blog to stay sane, even though the computer is in the room next to hers, by the vent, so I can hear it all. All the chokes, gags, sobs, screams, etc.
I tell you all this because you might be a parent like us needing some really detailed accounts of what it is like, and know you are not alone. It took a long-distance friend of ours to give us a step by step and detailed run down of what they did with their kids. I guess that was our final push to actually do this, we needed to know exactly how someone else did it.

We now have more of a routine for her,
bathtime, play in the living room, change diaper, bottle and stories in her room, and then to the crib for cries.

Okay, so she only cried for half an hour tonight. Yes! Did she puke? I don't know, I only checked on her once...and after I left, who knows what happened in there. Oh well, she still wakes up in the middle of the night for a bottle, and we are slowly weaning that one, we just don't want to do everything at once. We will clean her then, poor stinky barf baby.

Well now that she is asleep, off I go to do something in my free evening time :)

Catching up with Wren.

Life is busy as usual, and with me working part time, two of those shifts in the evening, a lot of my time to blog has disappeared. Wren also likes to dominate the computer with Sesame Street watching. Let me just say that loading her videos and trying to load blog photos makes both her and I unhappy, as neither really gets what they want.

Speaking of not getting what you want...

Wren has been feeding herself for a while now, but recently she has decided she needs to have her turn with the spoon. I know, so many of my latest photos are her in the highchair with food in her hair. A walking child is not still...not even for a photo. Here at least I can catch her. But today was funny, as yogurt was flung...across her face!

Some spoon banging happening.

Independence can be a messy thing. She was having one of those hair days where it looks like we plunked a toupee on the top of her head.

We have been so housebound, probably just like everyone else. So much snow, but also too cold to go out for a walk with the sled. Wren really likes sled walks, I think. She just sort of sits there and doesn't smile the entire time.

I have been keeping busy in my downtime by trying to knit some legwarmers. At this rate, they may be ready by March. The other day I was showering while Wren watched Sesame Street in the other room, and she came into the bathroom and showed me my knitting....thankfully nothing unwound itself as any knitter knows how hard it can be to fix big knitting mistakes without ripping out your whole project and starting over!

I finally tried to take some more nice photos of Wren. She doesn't hold still, ever. So a million pictures later, I came out with a few cute ones.

This face...oh this face... :)

If I have talked to you lately, you most likely know that Wren's nights have not been progressing as we had once hoped they would for her age...
She is now completely over any sickness, but her sleep has taken an even bigger turn for the worst. She is waking up twice a night, usually midnight and 4:30am. In the past, we would just give her the bottle, and within maybe 15 min she would be back asleep. But now a pattern has started and she always wakes up and is now taking over an hour to get back to sleep if we are lucky. An HOUR.

After a week of sleep from  h- e-double hockey sticks, Wren decided to end an exhausting week with the worst night of all. Last night she was up from 2am until 4:30am...I think...or was it 5? I don't even know. After an hour of me trying to pat her bum to sleep without success, we tried another bottle (I know, you probably are picking out everything we are doing wrong right about now, I know I am in hindsight).

After that didn't work, we let her cry. 10 min in, she barfs. We clean it up. Let cry again. Another 10, more barf. Clean up. Let cry. Let cry. Let cry. I can't even tell you how long it took.
I think Kenton went back in and tried again to let her fall asleep with the bottle, but I don't think she wanted it. So he left, she cried two more sobs, and that was all. She woke up at 6:30am, I rocked her back to sleep and we heard Wren at 7:30 again but she wasn't quite awake and Kenton got ready for work and I heard Wren again at 8am. I was so tired that I heard her crying in my dream so I didn't go to her right away until I groggily realized it was time to get up now.

That was bad. Really bad. Like, she must be popping the rest of her teeth all at once for this to make any sense.

We have always rocked her to sleep with a bottle. We tried to let her cry before, and it sort of worked, but then she figured out barfing got us back in the room with the lights on. Even at nap time she gags herself until she barfs if I leave the room! It's awful!

So now we are in the let-cry days. We tried the "no cry sleep solution"...but let me tell you, that has not proven to be any better either. If anything, it has made everything ten times worse. And I can't lie, I know I definitely feel like we failed somewhere, and it's very frustrating. It's like I want someone to just come and tell me exactly what to do to fix it.

We are going to keep at the crying though, because it is our last option, so we will see how that goes.

If you have helpful suggestions or went through the same thing, feel free to send me a message or email, I would love to hear them. Especially if you experienced the barfing problem with your baby!
I know our doctor said it's a behaviour she does to get her way. So we are doing our best to ignore any gagging and barfing. (Um yes, we clean up the barf, but then move on quickly without making a big deal of it.)

We do a lot of laundry these days, that is for sure.

On another note...sorry it's not more positive either! Kenton's Grandma Jeske is in the hospital at the moment. She will probably not be with us much longer, maybe not past this week. This turn of events has happened quickly, more quickly than our family has expected.
We went to go visit her, and she seemed to notice Wrennie and smile when she saw her. Grandma Jeske has had Alzheimer's for several years, and it's the only way I have known her, and it has progressed quickly over those years. This may be a hard week for us coming up, as we are not sure what is going to happen.
It is sad, however, Kenton's Grandpa Jeske passed away over 10 years ago now from cancer, and it is comforting to know she will finally be going home to him.

I am glad she was able to see a great-grandchild in her lifetime too. Even in the short time I have known her, there are memories I have to smile at when I think of them.

One of my favourites was when I was about 8 or 9 months pregnant with Wrennie and I was shopping with Grandma J and Judy at the mall, and we sat down for some ice cream. Grandma's Alzheimer's was quite far along and she often couldn't find the words she meant to say. So I had a few bags to carry, and as we were getting up to go, Grandma looked around me and said,
"Oh! Let me help you carry...um...carry...the...the...the baby!" Then she laughed as she probably realized what she had said didn't make sense, but it was quite funny!

I think one word that would describe Grandma J is Lovely. Everything about her that I know has always been warming and loving, and just lovely. I will say more on her another time. This post is growing longer and longer as I go.

Oh here is this silly face again. She's doing "the hulk". Her specialty.

I could also use some warmer weather just like everyone else. We have a baby sled to get out and use already!

I can't wait for summer.

Happy New Year

Wren is wishing YOU a Happy New Year :)