June is going to be a fantastic month...I am sooooo looking forward to it. It begins by celebrating Autumn’s first birthday on June 7th! Her great-grandparents are coming in town to help us celebrate and to see us one more time before we head across the pond. We’re throwing her a birthday bash on June 12th and I am still debating whether it’s going to just be family...or if we should just go crazy and invite friends too. I better decide soon because I am running out of time. After her party, I celebrate my “unofficial” last day at work on June 15th (unofficial because I will be coming back on July 5th & 6th to wrap everything up and say all my good-byes). After that Jacob and I head off to the Riviera Maya Mexico to relax and celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. Oh my...I just can’t even believe it’s been that long! We arrive home late on the 20th and then head off again to Brussels for our apartment hunting on June 24th. It’s going to be a lot of travel, but I’m so looking forward to it! The only thing that will be hard is being away from Autumn during these trips. I know she’ll be in great care though with the grandparents...both sets get to spend some quality time with her as we travel the globe :o)
With the apartment hunting trip and my last day of work quickly approaching again, it is almost starting to feel real again (I’m a little nervous to say that out loud, but hopefully it really will happen as planned this time!). They did make the announcement at Jacob’s work, so that definitely made us a little more confident. We are still in the throes of trying to sell our house. Even with the guarantee of the company buying it, selling your house just plain stinks. We’ve lowered the price four times already and are getting really close to having absolutely no more negotiating ability. We were having a ton of showings and LOTS of “almost” offers, but no one ever seemed to pull the trigger...but things have slowed down a lot recenty...so we’re still doing all we can and just praying we can walk away too unscathed. The company does make up some of our loss, but unfortunately it is not anywhere close to being enough to cover it all...and it's even less if they have to buy the house. All we can hope for is that in two years when we return the market is still bad so we can get a bargain price on our next home!
We have also been continuing the French lessons. And they are just plain hard. It cracks me up, our tutor Sally always starts off the lesson by asking us each some questions in French…to try and master the art of conversation. She say something like “Maureen, avez-vous faim?” (that means are you hungry) And I’ll stare at her blankly for awhile, try repeating what she says, then likely glance at Jacob and shoot him the “can you help me” look...then try to start picking apart her sentence guessing what she is asking. And trying to figure out the easiest possible way to respond. I usually try just a “Oui” or “Non”, but of course she never lets me off the hook that easy. Haha...we’ll have to try practicing some of what we’ve learned on our trip. Hopefully it will come easier for me over there than it has so far. :o)
June better hurry up...because as you can tell we have lots of fun things planned and I can hardly stand the wait!! :o) I'm trying to just enjoy it all though because our days here in Missouri will soon be coming to a close...
