Catching Up

For those of you reading this new blog, we thought we’d catch you up a bit on the chronology of things in our lives. Depending on when you last caught up with us, we left DC in September 2005 to move to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where I was working with American Red Cross on the Tsunami Recovery Program. We loved Colombo, and spent 3 great years there. We adopted our female boxer puppy named Portia in early 2006, and in December 2007, Steve and I finally tied the knot on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. We’d been together since 2001 when we first met in DC. In August 2008 we moved to Phuket (pronounced “poo-ket”), in Southern Thailand, where I continued working for ARC’s tsunami recovery program. One morning in the spring of 2009, we rescued a tiny puppy that was hit by a truck on the street in front of our house, and as we nursed little Bentley back to health, he slowly became endeared to the 3 of us and is now a full-fledged member of our family. It didn’t take long for Portia to scoot over and make room for him on her doggie bed! Fast forward to spring of 2010…..now in early May I’m 8 months pregnant with our first child, a boy, and we’ve packed up our house in Thailand and moved back to the US, just 5 months early from when my contract in Thailand would have been up anyway. We’ve finished 5 good years of tsunami recovery, plus close-out, and for all the countries, we’re wrapping up on a good note. So Steve and I headed back to the US to deliver the baby, living with my parents in Lansdale, PA- a suburb outside of Philadelphia. The arrangement is that I’ll continue working but from home in May and June until the baby comes (due date is June 25th!), then take 12 weeks maternity leave, and then depending on the timing, return to work remotely for the month of September. And after that? We have no idea. Back on the job market and hopefully back overseas somewhere, family in tow.