Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our home to yours! We have been very fortunate to be able to finally move into our home in downtown Charleston just before Christmas, and have been working non-stop trying to get settled in by Christmas and before baby arrives in a quick month!

Please accept our digital version of a Christmas card this year – y’all know how much I love sending out paper holiday cards but with the renovation, move, and prep for the holidays and creating a space for baby, they may be coming to you about a month late this year! C’est la vie.

A Look Back on 2020

As I’ve said before, this year was the Year of Change for us, with a pregnancy, a big move, and being unsettled from early July to mid December. The feeling of unsettledness was starting to wear on me heavily – as the baby in my belly kept getting larger and larger – and to be finally able to cook, sleep, and spend evenings sitting by the fire in our home is the best feeling.

Our Last Few Months as Stuttgart Residents in the Spring

Looking back on 2020, the spring actually held a lot of great memories for us in Stuttgart. The pandemic and stay-at-home orders enabled us to walk our beloved Karlshöhe every day and see nature come to life before our eyes. We also started a weekly Friday afternoon picnic on the hill and grew to love them so much, it became our go-to for socially distanced hang outs with friends. We also became expert at the art of the picnic, if I do say so myself!

We also got really good at making quarantine dates at home dining al fresco on our rooftop. Oh how I miss this rooftop!!! David also mastered the homemade pizza and we ate lots of them! Our rooftop dinners and lunches seriously became my favorite.

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Finding Out We Were Pregnant!

Then by late May, we found out we were expecting our first baby!! We actually found out Saturday morning of the Memorial holiday weekend. I thought I might be and couldn’t sleep in any longer, so at 05:00am I took a test… there was a faint second line meaning… pregnant!!! That day I felt like I was walking on a happy cloud all day. We ran into some friends at the Saturday market in town and I remember just being in a smiley cloud talking to them!

I had actually planned a wine walk through the Untertürkheim vineyards with stops at my favorite wine Besens for the next day with a group of 10 of our friends, but now that we had just found out (the day before!) we were expecting, I didn’t know if I should go – we went anyway and had a great time with everyone of course, but I was like 3.5 weeks pregnant at the time and sipped on water or traubensaft (grapejuice) all day while everyone else had wine. Our immediate friend group definitely had some suspicions already! Gosh that first trimester was so hard for me balancing social life and the early stages of pregnancy! 🙂

The next day, that Monday, was my birthday and I re-took a pregnancy test just to be sure.. two lines indeed! I think this picture from my birthday sums up our feelings of pure joy that weekend, celebrating just us two!

Before we did cake and presents, David took a few pictures of me and I couldn’t contain my emotions during the pictures – so much happiness was spilling out of me! These aren’t exactly the most flattering, but they capture the moment so well and I love them. 🙂

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Our Last Trip in July before Our Big Move

We decided to spend 10 days in a new-to-us Grecian island as our last hurrah in Europe before catching our one way flight to Charleston. We decided on Skiathos, an island in the Aegean with a bit more remote beaches than we were used to in Mykonos.

We rented a vespa for the trip and each day drove down rocky dirt paths to a new remote beach. The island has breathtaking beauty and it was pure relaxation for us, before the stresses of home renovation.

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On the way home from Skiathos, we spent a day in Athens and another day in Paris. I wish we had planned a few more days in Paris to relax and revisit all of our favorites, but we still had the best afternoon and overnight. We of course hung out in Saint Medard and Rue Mouffetard, and then headed to Atelier Choux to get a little something for our baby. We then bought a book for him at Shakespeare and Co, and found another French book on the history of the 5th arr. and Rue Mouffetard. It was a successful afternoon, followed by dinner alfresco and of course visiting our bridge before calling it a night. It was so special to be able to be back in Paris with not only David but our unborn baby as well. (See my Paris Guide here!)

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Move to Charleston, Finally Telling Our Families We’re Pregnant, and Home Reno Start!

We moved back to Charleston the end of July, and four days later started our home renovation on 3 August while we stayed in rental places for 4+months. We had about 30 minutes to capture the house ‘before’ pictures before demo started at 08:00 that morning! We also *finally* were able to tell our parents and families that we are pregnant (at 13 weeks), and it was so sweet telling them in person!

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We took a lot of walks South of Broad and to Waterfront Park, as it became a much-needed stress reliever during the renovation. We were expecting our old house to have some surprises, but ironically everything inside the house was pretty straight forward and in great shape considering it’s age. We just had some unforeseen exterior problems – within two weeks of construction start, our five year old HVAC was completely ripped apart for copper, and then a portion of our 100 year old exterior perimeter wall FELL TO THE GROUND! Insurance claims ended up being a huuuuuuuuge fiasco due to incompetence, and my poor husband spent countless hours and multiple months sorting it all out.

I talked more about the renovation here and here, so won’t go into much more detail except that I am SO HAPPY to have a home now!

Home Sweet Home at Last

By mid-December we were finally able to move in to our downtown Charleston home. We put the offer on the house back in Feburary 2019 so it has literally been almost 2 years in the making. I had started getting to my wits end of bouncing around rentals, packing and unpacking, and not knowing where anything was anymore. Not to mention I spent weeks 10-33 of my first pregnancy HOMELESS!!! That was basically from the beginning of my 3rd month through my 7th month unsettled… even without a full length mirror! Glad to be over that. 🙂

As soon as our furniture arrived we set up for Christmas, and there has been a lot of boxes to go through but we are so happy getting settled in our home and creating a nursery for baby!

WHAT. A. YEAR.

I am exhausted rehashing this crazy year, so thank you for sticking through it if you made it this far!! Here’s to being more settled in 2021 and lots of baby snuggles as we become a family of 3!!!

xx