Happy New Year from the Hendersons!

It has been a great year for us.  The year was dominated by one major event...the birth of our son Wyatt.  Shawna worked through 9 months of pregnancy and 22 hours of labor to surprise us with a baby boy.  His name is Wyatt and we've become very attached to him.  His birth was a miraculous and triumphant entry into the world.  If you've never seen the miracle of birth first-hand, it looked something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwSKkKrUzUk#t=2m06.  Incidentally, that is one of his favorite songs (but he still cries when his mom sings it to him).

Wyatt's first concert - The Avett Brothers!

Over the past 8 months, Wyatt has experienced many firsts in his life.  In fact, pretty much everything he does is a first.  Among them are live music, swimming, hiking, paddle boating, disc golf, dressing like a Lego man, crawling, tasting anything and everything he can get his mouth around, and assisted standing and walking.  He is a wild little man and we can see that we are going to have our hands full for the next 18 years or so.  Some of his favorite things to do are sing songs with mom and dad, jump up and down, and pull adults' hair from the roots while riding on their shoulders.

Shawna has made a graceful transition from managing 20+ wild children in the classroom to managing one wild child in our home.  After nine years of teaching, she was ready to become a stay at home mom for the foreseeable future.  She and Wyatt go to weekly library classes, where there are stories, songs, bubbles, toys, and a big parachute.  They attend a post-natal yoga class, where Wyatt has awed the instructor with his downward dog pose.  And throughout all this, Shawna has managed to keep up with her photography skills and had several photographs exhibited in a local art show, though the subject of her photographs has recently shifted from nature-centric to baby-centric.  Shawna has also learned how to make 80% of items we used to buy from a store, including cleaning supplies, diapers, baby wipes, Halloween costumes, baby carriers, etc.  If Shawna keeps up at this rate, we will probably be living off the grid in a remote log cabin soon.

Wyatt's first swim (and dunk!)

As for myself, it has been an excellent year.  The whole family is happy that I've finished my Software Engineering Master's degree and have more free time at home.  I even found time to try my hand at homebrewing, though I'm hoping the second batch goes better that the first.  Getting to know Wyatt has provided for the most fun and busy 8 months of my life.  Though since he was born, I quickly found that I am no longer man of the house.  Seriously though, Shawna is an amazing wife and I don't know how she cares for myself and Wyatt at the same time.  I was worried that Wyatt would not bond with me as quickly as his mom, due to my lack of mammary glands, but that was not the case.  He quickly showed that he knew when he was with daddy, as he always makes an extra effort to pee or defecate while I'm changing him, and he even managed to spit up on my face when I kissed him once.  He makes fonder gestures towards his mom, like crying when she leaves the room, but there are still times that he wants daddy to hold him.

Brotherly fun in the bath

The next biggest event for us this year has been the flooding of our house on the night before Halloween.  Due to some shoddy craftsmanship, water was able to flow unhindered into our house (animals too, as we think that this is how a snake got into our house several months ago, ask Shawna for the details of that encounter).  It was a frightening and surreal experience to have 2 inches of standing water in the house and little hope of insurance covering it, but we have pulled through and our house is back in good working order again.  Fortunately, Wyatt was unfazed by this incident.  It didn't bother Bozeman much either, but Casy was rather unnerved when we took her with us to our friends' house for the night.  She stayed in her crate all night, but the next morning, she was covered in cat litter and made a mess of the car on the way home.

Bozeman and Casy have handled the introduction of a new sibling like champs.  They quickly took to Wyatt and consider themselves to be his protectors, always wanting to know where he is and what he is doing.  Casy has managed to avoid most of Wyatt's attempted tail pulls.  Bozeman takes any time when Wyatt gets too close as an opportunity to lick his face with reckless abandon.  Wyatt doesn't seem to mind Bozeman's germs though, as he will gladly put Bozeman's toys in his mouth, and Bozeman does the same with Wyatt's toys.  Over all, nobody can deny that it has been a great year, and we look forward to what 2014 has to offer.  Happy New Year to all our friends and family!

Love,
Marty, Shawna, Wyatt, Bozeman, and Casy

24 Weeks Ago

Well, we have not written in a really long time. I'm now 26 weeks pregnant, but haven't written about the pregnancy at all, so I thought that would be a great place to start.

When Marty and I got back from Europe we were pretty sure I was pregnant. I should say I think Marty was a little more sure than I was when we eventually found out for sure. In Ireland I told him, “We have to be pregnant, my stomach has never felt this way!” When we got home I decided to take an early pregnancy test and it came back negative. I was so upset because I knew I was pregnant but I had to believe the stick. I waited another week before taking another test just in case it was wrong. I woke up early Sunday morning before Marty got up and I noticed a faint second pink line. I thought can this really be. So, I Google imaged what a positive test looked like. I decided to take a picture of the test and wake Marty up. I then woke Marty up and showed him the picture I took and asked, “Can you see two pink lines?” He said, “Is this your pregnancy test?” That is when he told me that he knew I was pregnant because he was researching symptoms of pregnancy the night before. 

Positive

 We were so excited! We then kept the secret for about a week before telling our parents. We decided to Skype them and tell them the good news. We knew that it was early to tell family but we thought we would rather want them to know and be able to support us if needed. They were so excited. This will be Marty’s parents first grand-baby and my parents second (my brother has a little boy).

Excited Daddy

Excited Mommy

Marty painting the baby room.

All men need a nail gun!

We have been pretty busy since then. We have prepared most of the baby room, installed laminate flooring, Marty recently started his next-to-last semester of grad school, and we have been organizing like crazy. Since I found out I was pregnant five months ago I feel like we have so much to do.

Concluding Sentiments

Our trip is at an end now, but it has been an experience we will never forget.  It has been an amazing journey as we've traveled through roughly 25 cities and 12 countries in the past 8 weeks.  It has truly been a chance to see the history of modern civilization and enjoy the culture of so many diverse people.

Some of the amazing things we've seen on our trip include:
Stone age burial chambers and ring forts in Ireland
Ruins of the Roman empire and foundations of western civilization in Rome
Medieval castles throughout Great Britain and Ireland
The Sistine chapel and a chronicle of ancient art in the Vatican
Incredible Gothic churches built to display the glory of God
Renaissance art that pulled Europe out of the dark ages
Palace of Versailles where so many kings have reigned and historical documents have been signed
The seat of the Austro-Hungarian empire in Vienna
The depths of human depravity in concentration camps and the global history of genocideRebuilt architecture of cities destroyed in World War II bombings
Nuclear bunkers from the cold war
The streets of communist protests and oppression in Prague
The struggle for independence and the rise and fall of empires
The instruments and performance halls of musical geniuses
Beautiful mountain views and local cheeses in Switzerland
The Dutch attitude toward tolerance and the beer culture of Munich
Delicious local cuisines in twelve different countries
National pride everywhere that we go
The incredible efforts taken to preserve the past and keep local traditions alive
And the preparation for the 2012 Olympic games in London

It felt very fitting to end our trip during the Olympics, as they represent the decision to compete in sports rather than in war.  We were fortunate to see much of the games from hotels or pubs during the last week of our trip and are watching the closing ceremonies as I type this post.  We look forward to sharing more of our trip with everyone, and we plan to continue using this blog for exciting events in our life.


Thanks for reading!
Marty and Shawna

Journey Home

After 2 long flights and a very long drive we have made it home.  We flew to San Francisco to pick up our pets Bozeman and Casy, who were staying with grandma and grandpa.  It was a happy reunion but Bozeboy got a bit too excited and strained his back.  He's doing better now.

Look at this weary traveler.  I think she is tired after travelling thousands of miles all over Europe, but she is beautiful even when she is sleeping.  Shawna has been an amazing traveler and the best partner I could have to travel Europe.  Whether she is waking me up in the morning, grabbing money that I dropped out of the money belt, or telling me not to stick my head out the train window, she is always looking out for me.  I'm sure I wouldn't have made it back without her.

Marty

When Marty and I first starting dating we talked about traveling as one of our life goals that we shared. As I look back on the past four years of my life with an amazing man I am so blessed. We have discovered and learned so many things about each other and others on this trip to Europe. I love Marty and am thankful for him everyday. Throughout our trip he comforted me when I was stressed, navigated us around Europe by trains, buses, planes, cars, bikes, and our feet (most of this navigating was only done using paper maps since we didn't have a phone plan), carried my camera bag a lot, quizzed me on the many languages we were learning, encouraged me to be myself even though I felt like I had to put my guard up, and made me laugh and smile everyday.  

 

Trains

Before our trip, we debated whether or not to get a Eurail pass, but in the end we decided to get one and it was an excellent decision.  On the trains we were able to research the next city we were traveling to, sleep (which Shawna did on just about every train), take in the views, reflect on our experiences, and play Carcassonne with picnic lunches.

We had great experiences on almost all of our inter-country trains.  I thought at the beginning of our trip it would be fun to rank each of the metro train systems in cities that have a metro, but I got lazy.  I think I could sum up our sentiments though by saying that Lausanne's metro was super-fast, Berlin's trains were expansive and well organized, Rome's stations were surprisingly upscale, London's Underground was awesome all around, and Paris' metro smelled like pee and poo.

Here is our very well worn Eurail Pass.  This thing has been through a long journey in my money belt.  Our Eurail pass allowed us to travel 15 different days within a 2 month period and also entitled us to first class accomodations on all the trains that had first class cars.

We took this colorfully decorated train into Slovenia.  I think some countries just let people graffiti their trains to spice up the ride a little bit.

Shawna lounging in the retro-feeling Slovenian rail car.

This was our second (and much improved) sleeper car that we took.  It carried us comfortably from Krakow to Prague.  There was even a personal sink under the desk in the corner.  Our only regret was that it arrived too soon, interrupting our sleep.

This little cup was made available to us in the sleeper car.  I'm not quite sure what the top of it means when it says "for your morning toilet", but we just used it to brush our teeth.

This was our meal on our train out of Paris.  Being France, we thought that the train food might be really good, but this was actually the most disgusting meal of our entire trip.  The chicken was freezing cold, the biscuit was rock hard, and I don't even want to know what that stuff in the lower left corner is.  The only thing worth consuming was the wine and brownie.

Nice view out the back of our panorama train in Switzerland

It was a bittersweet moment when we took our final train ride.  It's a fine way to travel around and makes me wish that Amtrak was more expansive and more affordable.

Funny Sights across Europe

It may not be immediately clear what marvel of modern engineering in Amsterdam is, so I will tell you it is a pee deflector.  It is designed to deflect urine back at your knees if you pee on it and intended to reduce public urination on buildings.  In the 1980s, these deflectors were even given an electric charge for a nasty surprise to those that tried to outwit the pee deflector.

Who could forget the ridiculously expensive hotel Adlon, where Michael Jackson dangled baby Blanket from the balcony.

We saw a lot of interesting bathrooms and toilets in all the countries we visited, or I guess I should call them water closets.  If you need a toilet in Europe, you need to look for the WC sign.  Some I didn't feel right posting pictures of here, but these two are pretty good.  The first is a particularly organic approach to freshening the bathroom.  The second is a toilet from a train we rode, in which the waste is dumped directly on the track beneath you.  You can see a bit of the track beneath.  This is surprisingly common on the trains that we took throughout Europe.

I wasn't really sure what to make of this warning in a train WC.  It seems to be a warning to all of you who would be tempted to flush an apple core or soda cup down the toilet.

We saw a lot of funny signs around Europe, here are just a few examples.  It took me a while to figure out what the green sign below means, it feels like some sort of puzzle you have to decode, but it really just points to the exit.  They never use the word exit in their signs, but I prefer the ones that simply say "Way Out".

I'm glad they give us the warning before crossing the road.  It really is hard to remember, though not as hard as it is to drive in Ireland.

There are many different ways to communicate the same message, but I like the way they do it in Ireland

Bolshevik crossing lights - there was actually a court battle over whether these crossing lights in east Berlin should be changed, but the people had grown attached to them so they stayed.

I loved this advertisement for the Museum of Communism.