Tuesday, we spent dealing with dog-travel related bureaucracy (what we thought was our one last bureaucratic nightmare before leaving) and with my sister and mom. We had an amazing lunch together, followed by a night of packing, pizza eating and chatting with my sister and a lot more packing.  At around 11:00pm, when we were closed to done my mom called to inform us that our flight might be cancelled due to some technical issue that American Airlines was facing. An hour later her news was confirmed. Not only our flight, but another 700 were cancelled. So, after a night of packing and thinking we would get about an hour of sleep, we were able to rest.

So, we now leave tomorrow at 6:30 am. This means we will be leaving my mom’s home at around 2:30 am, to be in the airport by 3:30 am. Below I have included some photos of La Casita before we packed it all up, the awesometacular baby shower and Yaku and Yana happy in their new kennels.

We repeated did this for a couple of days and it worked almost every time! So we decided to put some whale music for her to hear and she has reacted to it every time!! We think that it is probably because whale sounds are such low frequency that the sound travels better through the amniotic fluid. Regardless of the reason, we are delighted to have found a way to communicate with her! Making whales my favorite animals – again.

These past days have been busy. We have been packing, celebrating my dad and Caro’s 10th year anniversary and trying to finish taxes on time! Tomorrow we say goodbye to Zuleta and head to Quito to spend a couple days with my mom and sister before heading out of Ecuador. Saint Augustine here we come! Lots of posts to are on their way!

Below, a clip from Pixar’s “Finding Nemo”, an awesome whale I found online – would love to give someone the credit, but I could not find its source, some photos of my belly, some of the wonderful gifts Mila has received from my mom, sis and grandma and Jax and my long exposure experiment.

We have spent this weekend trying to figure out the logistics of our travels, which is not an easy task. We need to find a temporary furnished home that accepts dogs to stay temporarily while we scout the area for a year-long rental and then move into the new house with nothing else than a bag of clothes and our computers… and figure out from there. That’s the short version, to avoid boring you with all of the logistics.

What we have chosen to do right before Mila’s birth is not an easy task. That said, we’ve weighed many many options carefully and it is without a doubt our best and I don’t think we would have it any other way. The thought of what we have ahead does not scare us, but rather fills our life with the excitement of planning and overcoming difficulties, which as always, bonds us even more. During this whole process, I have felt so fortunate to have the spouse I have, so supportive, understanding and more than anything, having someone who I get along so well with. It feels like as long as we are together, we could take on the world.

While I sit and write these words, Jax is looking at kiteboarding videos and looking for more potential rental solutions. Yesterday, we browsed the local Craigslist for furniture and we were very pleasantly surprised when we found a very active list with more than 100 local postings a day. Our nights have been spent talking and psychologically preparing for Mila, as we play with her in my belly. She now moves constantly and she feels just as active as she looked in the ultrasounds. She also responds to our touch and voices, which has made our love for her become almost infinite even though, we have yet to hold her – which we can hardly wait for.

We have also been in touch with a midwife that we like a lot and although we have yet to meet her face to face, having someone who we know is available for August is such a reassuring check off our list. We have been discussing our birthing plan and I have been re-educating myself on all things birth, which reminds me of how much I love being a woman and how, as soon as we are a little bit more economically stable, I will dedicate myself to empowering other women during childbirth and beyond.

And so, those are some of my thoughts for the day. We will now proceed to enjoy our last two weeks and a half in this amazing country.

Our purpose for this year was not only visiting my family, but also being able to create a sustainable business. We have achieved both these goals and now we move to a historic city in the USA to birth our baby girl, Mila. We will be close to the ocean and it will not be long until we are sailing again, for we both crave it. Great waves will soon surround us and we will be able to improve our surfing. I am so thankful for our life, although not always easy, we are happy with how we’ve keep it unfolding in beautiful ways. Below some photos of our trip down the river.

Today my cousin Nacho came visit with a friend from Colombia, Juana. We have been having a great time with them!

Unfortunately something has had to give as our “all work, all the time” lifestyle combined with the pregnancy – and that thing has been photography/writing. Long story short, we have very few photos from my parents’ trip. Most of the below are from a great weekend trip to Mindo with them and a hike we took with Caye’s family this last weekend.

My pregnancy has progressed beautifully and as of two days ago we are pretty sure we are having a baby girl, Mila, which has us delighted. Our company Invento Media (http://www.inventomedia.com/) is growing, fast, steady and is keeping us very busy and happy. Other than that we have decided on our next home and birthing spot. It will be Saint Augustine, Florida, USA. While researching our next home, we had a number of things in mind. It needed to be near the ocean, have great sailing, surfing, be warm, be socially progressive, have some of the “arts” around, be safe, affordable and be “near” both of our families. Right off the bat we had narrowed down our possibilities a lot by being so picky, so we were very surprised when we found a place that fit all of our specifications so well.

Saint Augustine, is the the oldest continually inhabited city in the United States, it was originally Spanish and is home to Seventeenth century forts and tons of great history. The intercoastal waterway divides Anastasia Island from the mainland and it is known for its great surfing, kite boarding, sailing and beautiful beaches. Best of all, it costs almost exactly the same to fly to there from Wisconsin and from Ecuador and although we wont be really near either family, this is a useful middle ground. We have already heard great things about the local farmers markets, CSA and microbrewery. We have contacted a possible midwife and are looking forward to getting to know the city better. Deciding on a completely unknown place for both of us as a birthing spot was not easy at all – at all. Both of our other two options offered countless benefits, such as having the most incredible midwife receive our baby in Wisconsin, already having a place to live in Ecuador and having lots of family support in both, but having waves, our own clean/modern home and being central to both families won our hearts.

So that is it for today, just some thoughts on our current state. I will be posting more again soon. There are a couple of questions from readers I have not answered, such as why we make the decisions we make and how we got started. I also want to post a meditating post on our company and how it has evolved and finally some traveling plans.

Below some photos from, well… since I stopped posting.

Now, my part of the site is done and I am waiting on two people to finish theirs so the page can go live. So, today I decided to write a little about my feelings, pregnancy and this first trimester before the second trimester takes over my thoughts.

Have these initial months of pregnancy been what I expected? Going back to my earliest memories I wanted to be a mom, with the whole bundle – pregnancy, dipers, baby, breast feeding etc. I always thought that when I was pregnant my life would change and I would feel an intimate connection with my child. Just the thought of the person I love and I creating something that no one else can was as romantic to me as the thought of finding true love.

Well, 14 weeks have passed and that sense of connection and romanticism has yet to grow. This first trimester has been… well let me describe it this way, I have yet to download photos from our holiday vacation in Wisconsin because the thought of even looking at them makes me nauseas. I spent 10 weeks of my life so sick to my stomach, tired, cold, hot, hungry and uncomfortable that I have spent the following 2 unconvincing Jaxon that we should ever have another biological child. That is how bad my “morning” sickness was and somedays, still is.

On the bright side, the thought of this child has made Jaxon and I take our health very seriously. We have always been fit and have tried to eat healthy, but now we are being very intentional about it. We take beautiful 2 hour hikes up and down 600 feet of switch-backs every day, I start and end my days with a muscle toning routine that will help me during labor and keeps me in as much control as I can over my body. I can no longer look at baby photos, for I do not want to create any expectation of how ours might look. People around us are already dreaming of the big blue eyed, tanned, blonde wavy-haired baby that will emerge from what would be the “perfect” mix of Jax and I, but I try not to think about it too much, for me this baby has yet to have a face and however it turns out will be perfect.

We have also decided where we are going after Ecuador and although the baby’s birth place is still undecided we have boiled it down to two options. Baby names are on the table, well just two really – Mila if it is a girl and Luca if it is a boy, unless the baby’s face screams another identity. I am starting to feel M/L move lately, my belly has grown, I can no longer wear my old pants and I have put on 6 pounds.

Below my belly and some baby clothes I found on Pinterest for our soon to be very stylish baby… soon, more photos to come!

Today, we walked in to the ministry and explained our status and our upcoming trip. “Well, now we do have “especies”, so just leave the passport here and we’ll get the Visa taken care of” said the woman behind the desk. “Leave his passport here?”, I said. “Maybe you are missing the part where we are leaving in three days – how long do we need to leave it?”. “Just three weeks” she said nonchalantly… Well, damn….. So, we asked her if we could just FedEx the passport, from the states, to my mom here in Quito, to drop off and get Visa’ed. “That would be just fine of course” said our friendly attendant. Jaxon then asked, “Will her mom be able to pick it up here also?”. “No, of course not. You have to pick it up in person….” Ohhhh…. now we get it… he can send his passport from the US to Ecuador to get a visa, at which point it will be stuck in the ministry until he comes to pick it up, which he will never be able to do – because he will have neither passport or visa to travel back with…. nice.

Okay, so we stand right now, Jax cannot return to Ecuador after this trip. Fingers crossed that the Ecuadorian Consul in Chicago is better than our entire External Affairs Ministry! Theoretically they will be able to give us a provisional visa there, but it will require an entire new application process.

Work is still crazy – the reason why we haven’t been around much. Plus starting to blog again is hard! But I am sure all the amazing photographic opportunities in the States will bring us back to our old selves.

Now, an assortment of photos…

Exciting things:

Our mini business has become a mid-sized one and it is beginning to run smoothly. There is still lots to do, but we are currently in a very good place. My days have been spent designing close to two websites daily and Jaxon is finishing the business organization and doing sales. We have hired Holly as our project manager, she is an amazing girl from California who has lived in Chile for 6 years. Pablo has been upgraded to General Manager. We have a strong marketing team, led by Pablo’s wife Maricela. Jon, who we have now worked with for three years continues to code along side of three other main programmers. The Inventando website is still not done so nothing to show you guys yet, hopefully by Christmas I’ll be able to post it.

In 8 days we are flying to Wisconsin to spend a month there. The blog will be covered with photos of snow, delicious christmas food and wonderful people.

So before I continue to bombard you with more photos, I’ll post some of my most recent work.

This time around, we were sitting in La Casita in the middle of the Andes. Chris, Sue, Jax and I had planned a small evening event. We did not have very high expectations for the food or anything, but wanted to get together. At around 5:00pm Jax and I stepped out of work and started getting ready for our meal. Sue and Chris arrived shortly after, with a big surprise, my brother Antonio. I never though of inviting my family over! But Susana and Chris had and I loved the idea. So we starting preparing the meal and soon after Caro, Manuel and my dad showed up. The house was packed and spirits high. We made, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, squash/ginger soup, green beans, tiramisu and even pumpkin pie. What an amazing dinner and what a joy to have shared it with my family and friends in such a distant place in the world. Pablo and Mary are considering moving to Zuleta before heading to Germany in May, wouldn’t that be awesome!

I have been missing sailing a lot lately and cannot wait until we move aboard again, but the same time could not be happier about our current state. Life has been so generous with us and I actually think that we will leave Ecuador having had fulfilled most of the things we came here for. Plans are constantly changing around here, starting a family is on the table, moving to an island in the Caribbean for a little while has been discussed. Who knows, it is all a mystery to us, for now we will just flow…