June 24th!

In honor of June 24th (which is a day to celebrate!), I want to thank all of you for your never-ending prayers, support, love, and encouragement one year ago today. I would not have made it through last summer without you all and Brent definitely needed those prayers. I have to specifically thank Chris & Kelly Reynolds for sitting with me at the hospital that day – I am not sure I would have stayed sane without them by my side – I love you guys! Looking back, I can say I have started to see why God planned it all out like that - our wedding day was perfect and it wasn't 100° outside. :-) Plus what Brent and I went through made us so much stronger as a couple - and we really sought out our dream to live in Europe...and here we are! So thank you for loving us and being there for us on June 24th, 2009 – and might I add I am very glad it’s 2010 and last summer is behind us!

Now on to 2010 and our current adventures!

There hasn’t been too much excitement in Breda. Brent is currently working with a client which is a big American fashion corporation – without saying their name, I'll just say they own a few big brands, one being a large clothing company with well-know underwear/bra ads. He informed me yesterday there are very racy pictures all over the office of half-naked men and women…very large pictures too, like floor to ceiling. It sounds like an interesting work environment. He is working somewhat long hours, but he’s usually back to the hotel by 19:30, so that’s good.

On Tuesday evening, we had to drive back down to Brussels to finalize our apartment plans. We did finally pick out an apartment! We can afford it, but it is slightly out of our original price range, so click on the ads on my blog please...I think I get like 0.50¢ for click. ;-) The reality is I will need to find some sort of job and work at least once/week, which is fine because I will be bored in a few more weeks anyway. So far I have posted ads for babysitting and pet sitting – I have no idea how to go about getting a nursing job here. Since I do not speak French or Dutch, my job opportunities are quite limited. We do however love the apartment we picked out! It’s in a great location – there is a metro stop right out the front door of the apartment building and it’s only about 5 kilometers from Brent’s office. It also comes with an oven, dishwasher, washing machine (no dryers here, only clotheslines), parking spot, small storage cellar, and cool view of Montgomery circle. We’ll be on the 2nd floor (which they call the 1st floor as the ground floor is zero.) The walls are all painted yellow, so it makes Brussels seem a bit brighter as well. The deciding factor for the apartment is that we can walk everywhere due to the great location and it really is a beautiful apartment. I wish it was about €200/month cheaper, but we had to make a decision and the apartments that were cheaper were a bit…cramped. We’re happy with our decision and we’re very confident God will provide me with some sort of odd job to make up the difference. If not, rest assured we’re still in excellent shape with our budget – Brent’s a finance nerd after all! I think it’s also important to mention that as we were standing outside the building taking a picture of the exterior of the building, we noticed there’s a cardiology group in the ground floor of our building – there are 3 cardiologists with offices directly below our apartment. Who knows if any of them will end up being Brent’s cardiologist, but it is still kind of ironic. I’ve certainly never lived in an apartment with a large medical office on the ground floor!

So Tuesday night, we headed back up to Breda. I have spent a lot of time the past few days emailing back and forth with our apartment agent and still tying up loose ends in the USA. Whenever Brent gets home and asks me what I’ve done all day, I always wonder where my days go. I feel like there are always things to be done though – important things like watching the Bachelorette online. ;-) Although, I do sleep until 9:00 – and while I occasional feel lazy, I spent 3.5 years in San Diego getting up at 5:30 – so I figure it’s ok for now as I’m just catching up on years of lost sleep. :-) We have found that in the Netherlands, there are a lot more TV options – there’s the Discovery channel, National Geographic, and Animal Planet in English (with Dutch subtitles) in addition to BBC channels. There are about 6 English-speaking channels here! Sometimes I think it’s nice not having the TV on all the time, other times we’re bored and enjoy watching an old episode of the Deadliest Catch or Monkey Island. It’s truly amazing what you’ll watch on TV when your options are so limited. If only Netflix would get with the program and stream movies online outside of the USA!

So today we are celebrating the fact that Brent is one-year post heart surgery by going out to dinner. Tomorrow after Brent finishes work, we are headed up to Amsterdam for the weekend and we will be meeting up with some of my swim team friends from high school as well! One friend lives there, the other is visiting. I am so excited to go to Amsterdam – and it’s only an hour drive from Breda too! So in honor of June 24th (or whatever day you are reading this), I hope you all celebrate life and remember to always thank God for your health…and maybe throw in a prayer that God will continue to watch over Brent’s heart for many, many years to come! ;-)