Happy Friday to all my wonderful friends! Once again, I am going to go for a Flashback Friday post. I think most of you enjoy reading those over the "fun facts" and they are more fun for me to come up with and write. It works out nicely. 🙂

About a month ago, Peter found this in one of our closets.

It completely motivated me to do some flashbacks of what is written in those leather bound covers. What is it? None other than my personal journal from the almost 2 months I spent backpacking through Europe!

total goofball even back then

It may be cliche, but people do it for a reason. It can't be beat. That was one of the BEST vacations of my life. One of the pluses of getting hit by a car as a pedestrian and having lawsuit money to help pay for college + summer before working full time. 😉 I absolutely cannot wait to go back, but I know that won't be for a long while so the flashbacks will suffice. Time to get packing!

We started our Europe trip in London because we were seeing some of my friend's family for her cousin's high school graduation from a boarding school there.

Since we started the trip around familiar people, it didn't seem REAL that we were in England. Even after hitting up Windsor Castle with her family it wasn't quite real I was in another country.

Maybe seeing the guards helped a little bit. 😉

Eventually, we left her family to start the true backpacking experience and head to our first stay at a hostel. Haha. I think every place we went has an interesting hostel story. This one was sharing a room with a chick that laughed and talked to herself...all.night.long! After checking in first thing that morning, we set out to explore downtown London. We visited Buckingham Palace and showed up just in time to witness the changing of the guard. All that pomp and circumstance was pretty interesting.

We also made sure to walk around for the traditional sight seeing hot spots.

Tower Bridge

London Eye

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

There is something surreal about seeing things you had previously only seen in pictures. I remember both of us watching all of the London episodes of Friends before we left. We ended the first day crashing in our bunk beds. That first day, we walked over 16 miles! You will hurt in places you never knew after doing that suddenly. All of you runners who run that much at once...you're crazy. And I say that with the utmost of admiration. 😉

The next days we continued with the sight seeing to things like Hyde Park and the Tate Modern, as well as (window) shopping in Harrod's and (really) shopping in H&M. This was before they were common here in the States, so that was like heaven. We also got some of the "must-have" shots in London. Like this one for example.

We also took a trip down the Thymes River to head into Greenwich.

The Maritime Museum and Meridian Line are located there, along with a cute little town. I did two things I had never done before in Greenwich.

Stood in Two Timezones at Once

Ate Fish & Chips

The homesickness started kicking in towards the last of our London days. It was more just a surprise missing of people. And for me, the biggest surprise was missing Peter. We had only been dating for a month before I left, but I missed that boy like no other. We say my trip helped solidify our feelings and speed the remainder of our relationship along (engaged 7 months in, married 6 months later, etc). Absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Even with not even an entire week, I had already experienced a more exciting vacation than I could have imagined. And it only got much, much better. Stay tuned for future Flashback Fridays to read on about my trip. 🙂

• Where is the best place you have ever traveled? Mine = Barcelona!!!
• Where are you dying to go? Australia or Greece!

It's Friday!!! Which means time for a fun, lighthearted post. Fun in the way of facts and flashbacks. Let's start with the fun facts. Remember, only one is the truth that you have to pick. 🙂

1. I have a fear of heights.
2. I have a fear of needles.

And now I'm going to rewind....to a Flashback Friday type of post. 🙂 I always enjoy reading the flashback posts from other bloggers out there since I think we all have such interesting things to share. My first flashback is inspired by a very special event of this week, my friend's delivery of her baby girl. It totally  brought nostalgia of my own experience and I think it was perfect timing for this to be my flashback.

Well, it was a Monday morning and I had just reached 38 weeks. I was heading out to the doctor for my normal weekly check up looking a little something like this...

awkard photo of me at 38 weeks

At the office, they did all the normal heartbeat monitoring, pee pee samples, blood pressure checks, etc. Then all things halted when they measured my stomach. Which was reading small, again. They sent me to get an ultrasound to check her growth, again. I will admit that I was a bit exasperated and thinking this was going to be a waste of time. All throughout my pregnancy I had measured small, and not for lack of eating I can assure you. 😉 I had already been put through numerous ultrasounds (racking up the insurance bills) just to be told "oh she is measuring a bit smaller than average, but still well within normal range". I was fully expecting to get the same "diagnosis" this time with a couple hundred dollars tacked on to pay. How ultrasounds are so dang expensive when they last 2 minutes is beyond me. But I digress.

So, I went in to look at another picture like this...

ultrasound...my first one, but you get the idea

...and was shocked when the tech went quiet and dropped her smile. Um, hello?! Could you please tell me what's going on??? They had me clean up and go into the midwife's office to speak with her. The news? "You need to go into the hospital this afternoon to be induced first thing in the morning because your daughter is no longer growing and getting the nutrition she needs inside of you". Insert moment of panic *here*. They assured me she was alright, which is why they weren't doing things right that moment and to go home rest and get things ready before coming in that night. Rest? Are you KIDDING me?! All I have to say is thank goodness that previous Friday we finally finished all of the house remodeling we had been working on for 6+ months. Just finished as in our entire upstairs was gutted for months on end while my husband rebuilt it and we had the carpet installed (the final touch) just a few days before.

Well, we finally headed in to the hospital at around 4:00 that afternoon. They put something up in me to get me started. That sounds wrong on so many levels. Get me started with contractions you dirty people. 😉 Then I settled in with a few favorite things for what would be my last night of peace in a long time.

Friends DVDs

my first encounter with Twilight

Subway Dinner

I was woken up at about 5am the next morning to be induced. BAH! I don't think I have ever hurt like that. I was started on Pitocin (the drug used for induction) at around 6:30am, even though I had already started some mild contractions on my own. They wanted to speed things up. Which...they did! I was in agony. And they kept telling me it would most likely be awhile and could take all day. What?! There's no way. I was finally checked out again, expecting to be told I was a wuss and only dilated a few centimeters. The news? "Oh wow! Do you want an epidural now because if you want it we need to get it in  you. You're already at 7 (out of 10) cm!". Well, no wonder I was in so much pain. I had stretched out a ton in a limited amount of time. Enter epidural man (aka my hero), enter nurse to reduce the pitocin because I was going too fast and the midwife was busy, and enter a blissful hour nap.

It all went so fast there. I will spare you the gory details, but when the nurse came in at 11:15 we only had to wait 10 minutes for Makenzie to be welcomed to the world. The little 6lb 5oz booger shot out in no time and made that part extremely easy on me.

M looking all cute, me looking all exhausted

I am very thankful for my first birthing experience. It was relatively pain free and easy...which just has me knowing that the next one will not be so nice. And she has been the most easy and enjoyable little ray of sunshine since. 🙂

one of my favorite pics done by my good friend Mandy