The End

For those of you who don't know, here's the story of Here We Go Again: I started it in 2011 as a way to keep in touch with family and friends back home when Ryan and I first moved to Cortina, Italy. I never thought I would write a blog, ever but at the time, it seemed to make sense. It was a good way to document everything, too.

When the blog first started, it was a private blog and couldn't even be found on search engines. The following year, I made it a little more accessible and the year after, it actually started to gain readership from around the world and people who I didn't know! I went from writing about what we were doing each day to writing recipes, travel advice, interviews, collaborating with a few small businesses and sharing pictures from our vacations, summers and every day lives. I'm so proud of the work that I put in to the blog and where it went and the contacts that I made through it and the people I met.

Now though, I feel like this is a great and natural place to end. I'm doing some freelance writing and that takes up all of whatever work time I have, which will be even less in a few months, once baby #2 comes along! I'm so happy to have this blog to look back on all of our adventures. And I'm so thankful to all of my readers, wherever you are, for your emails and comments and interest.

I get a lot of emails from readers asking about expat life or travels in Italy and Scotland and I'm still happy to answer any and all questions, so please don't hesitate to send me an email! (My email can be found in the contact section).

For now though.....a few of my favorite posts throughout the years:

How to Recycle in Italy....
"This is Italy"
How to Have Thanksgiving in Italy
Favorite Travel Destinations
Our entire Tour of Italy....
On reverse culture shock

It's crazy to me to think that when I started this blog, Ryan and I weren't even engaged yet. Since then we've gotten married, moved from Italy to Scotland, had our first child and are expecting our second and have had a million other adventures in between. Looking back on all of the posts throughout the years, I feel so lucky.

Thank you, thank you, thank you and this is THE END.

2017

Happy 2017! We have some exciting news to start the new year which is that we're expecting another baby in June! We're so excited although we know it will be another big.change. But we're ready! (I think).

That being said, I've spent the last few weeks thinking about my timing and priorities and after a lot of thought, I've decided to say The End to Here We Go Again. At first I felt badly about it because it seems like just a few months ago, I was having this same debate and I decided to keep going, only to change my mind a few weeks later. But! I did change my mind and I feel like this is a natural ending to my blog. I'll be doing one more post in a few days to wrap everything up but in the meantime, I wanted to say thank you so much for reading. I've been writing this blog in some form for almost six years now and while it's been fun for me, it's definitely time for me to focus on other opportunities and....raising two children who will only be 15 months apart. Yikes! Anyway, stay tuned for the last post of Here We Go Again, coming soon!

Merry Almost Christmas!

Christmas is getting close now! This year will be extra special because it's Everett's first Christmas and we're so excited. He loves to sit in front of our tree and shake the branches and play with the ribbons on the presents. We have family coming in to town to celebrate with us and we couldn't be happier.

2016 has been such an exciting year for us, full of lots of changes and adjustments and lots of laughs and more love than we thought possible. Hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Years and thanks so much for reading this past year. xo

The Lake District

A few weeks ago, Ryan had two days off, so we headed down to England to the Lake District.

It was beautiful and one of my favorite trips that we've taken since we've been in Scotland. Here are a few pictures, if you'd like to see....

Happy Thanksgiving

So now we're coming up on our seventh Thanksgiving away from home! We had one in Canada, four in Italy and almost two now, in Scotland. Being away from home on Thanksgiving is the worst but it also creates hysterical stories that we'll always remember from our years abroad. My favorite was from our first year in Italy....

As a disclaimer, I will say that I was not in charge of the turkey! There are no frozen turkeys in Italy and actually, they're quite hard to find in general, at least in Cortina, where we lived. That year, the turkey ended up having to be special ordered from a local butcher. When that was going on, the pounds to kilo ratio got mixed up and a few days later, a 40 pound turkey was delivered to the door. It then had to be taken back to the butcher to be sawed in half so that it could fit in two different ovens for cooking, which took several days.

Lesson learned and in subsequent years, I would end up driving to Austria to buy frozen, normal sized turkeys. Thanksgiving is a little bit easier now that we're in Scotland, but of course, every year there are always fun stories that we'll remember for many years to come. Although, I should mention that I'm in charge of the turkey this year so hopefully no fun stories come of it.... Happy almost Thanksgiving! xo

PS - How to have Thanksgiving in Italy and Ryan's famous green bean casserole.

The Expat Refrigerator

I was writing an article the other day and I mentioned that we had been living abroad for six years now. SIX! I can't believe it. There are a lot of great things about life abroad, but for me, food has always been one of the best. I love cooking (and eating) and I love trying local dishes and poking around the grocery store to see what you can find and what you can't. For fun, the other day I made a list of things that are always in our fridge or pantry now that we live in Scotland, compared to what we always had on hand in Italy, and what we usually keep at home in the US.

What We Have:
Tea. Lots of it.
Cheddar cheese. Again, lots of it. This is something we were missing in Italy and we're still overcompensating.
Curry packs. Curry is huge in the UK and you can buy all sorts of different kinds.
Tunnock's Wafers. You guys. These things are amazing. They're the perfect sweet and they've been around forever. I always see old ladies buying them in the grocery store.
The best salted butter.

What We're Missing:
Really good dill pickles. Can't find them anywhere.

What We Had:
Dried pasta (obviously) in about ten different shapes on any given day.
Stravecchio cheese. My favorite cheese, from the deli counter.
Espresso.
Half empty jars of pesto.
Fennel.

What We Missed:
Cheddar cheese, cumin and canned pumpkin.

What We Have:
Green chilies! We live in Colorado...
A variety of hot sauces. Favorites include Cholula, Sriracha and our local favorite from the Yampa Valley Sauce Company, Habacado.

What We Miss:
That Stravecchio cheese and Tunnock's wafers!

The Jacobite Steam Train

My parents have been visiting for the past ten days and while they were here, we planned a little side trip...