Friday, November 3, 2017

We sold it all.

WE did it. We said goodbye (sold it all) to all of our stuff and houses in Minnesota and came down to Guatemala with 6 suitcases that contained our life. I guess not really our life, just our stuff.

Last family photo at Minneapolis house.
We were in Minnesota for 5 months. It was good to be there and to be able to reconnect with many people that we miss on a daily basis while living in Guatemala.  Charlie changed a lot over the months in Minnesota. He grew a lot of hair and developed a ton of comprehension. He seems to understand everything we say at this point.

Fun with friends

Townhouse patio


Minneapolis Pride Festival

Splash pad


Park fun

Loving the REAL bathtub 
Driving to the cabin...always during nap time



Construction observation 
Lots of bike rides!


Outside dinners

Garden fun


Brandon turns 40

Bjorn and Charlie

Owen and Charlie

Cousins
Oh and yes, I became pregnant early on in our time in Minnesota. This came as a complete surprise to both Brandon and I. We really thought that we would be a 1-child family as we had a really difficult time conceiving Charlie.  This baby is a boy and we are expecting his arrival sometime in early to mid February.  My mom will be here again for the birth (not at the actual birth this time but taking care of Charlie) and to help out after the birth which is really amazing of her!



We have been back for about 7 weeks. We moved back into the home that we had lived in before. We love the location and the garden. I decided that comfort during this pregnancy is important to me and so Brandon is working with his friend Cruz to build a sectional couch for our patio. This will expand our living space. I also brought another chair down from Ikea. The furniture situation is much better this pregnancy than it was with my first!





It’s kind of funny how life can just pick back up. We do have our routine back with our sitter coming to take care of Charlie so we can go and do the things that need to get done without a child. Like taking the boat and lugging all of your groceries home on foot. This is much easier without Charlie. It is also really nice that we have a community of friends here now. There actually were people that were excited for our return!

So even though we don’t have 9-5pm jobs, we keep very busy.  Brandon hasn’t given up on finding remote work and in the meantime we are working together on creating our small business. Tesoros de Atitlan is in full swing over here. Meetings with artisans, working on developing our logo, meetings with exporters, and overall developing Tesoros as a brand is exciting and has been taking up our time. We plan/hope to have a collection complete by May 2018! 

I plan to keep this blog alive. My posts really slowed down after Charlie’s birth but it is really fun for Brandon and I to look back at the documentation of our first year here. I want to keep it going so that we have an artifact of the months leading up to the arrival of our second son and the months there after. I also want you all to know that we are alive and well (and when we aren’t doing so well too).



Next visitor is my dad!! He arrives 12/19/17 and will be spending Christmas here with us. We hope he is ready for his 5am wake up calls from Charlie!



XOXO,


Katie, Brandon, and Charlie