Baby Horvath :)

In case you haven't heard the news.. Mat and I are having a baby!  We were as surprised as I'm sure you all are, but we're very excited!

To answer all of your burning questions:

1. I've already returned my wedding dress and ordered a new one because it definitely will not fit come November.

2. Yes we were engaged BEFORE we got pregnant.  We're not having a shotgun wedding :)

3. Yes we are having the baby in England.  Yes using the NHS.  It's not quite as cushy as American healthcare but I'm sure it will be fine.  And no it won't be anything like where Kate Middleton gave birth unless someone wants to give me £6,000 (that's how much it costs for one night in the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington).

4. Yes Baby will be a dual citizen (British and American passports.. should make traveling easier!)

5. No we don't know the sex and we won't be finding out.  We want to be surprised! 

6. I'm 13 full weeks tomorrow.  Our due date is February 4th.  We had our first ultrasound last Thursday and Baby was happy and healthy (but lazy.. slept through the whole thing until the sonographer made me jump up and down to wake him/her up!).

7. We've known for a long time (since mid-June) and it was a painful secret to keep.  I'm not good at keeping secrets AT ALL so I was counting down the days until it was okay to tell everyone!

I think that about covers it!  We've been taking weekly baby bump pictures but there's just nothing to see yet so I won't bore you with the last 6 weeks.  But here's the one we took yesterday.. it looks like it could be a baby bump but I just had a big lunch ;)

Mat when we first found out.  That's his excited/panicked face :)

And one more cute one from yesterday's mini photo shoot! (please note how ridiculously long Mat's arms are.. hopefully Baby gets my normal-sized arms! Haha)

In other exciting news, I got my "Baby on Board" pin for the Tube!  You wear it when you're pregnant and people give you their seats.. it's amazing.  However, I don't think I'm big enough to use mine yet.. people would think I was lying!  So I carry it around just in case the nausea hits on the Tube (and these days the nausea seems to hit all the time!) and I need to sit down.

That's about all the exciting news I have.  And thank goodness for that because between the wedding, the baby, Mat's new job, my new job, finishing my Masters and moving to a new flat I don't think Mat and I could take any more excitement!

Off to be productive now!

Dover

Mat and I had a few days away in Dover last weekend.  The White Cliffs were absolutely beautiful, but the view is marred a bit by the humongous ferry port underneath them!  It was quite nice to be out of the city for a few days.  London is nice but it's nice to get away from the hustle and bustle! We didn't take very many photos, but here are a couple.

High speed train! Only 1 hour and 9 minutes to the coast!

Beach. I love that the beaches are rocks instead of sand because I hate sand. It wasn't really warm enough to swim but there were plenty of people in the sea anyway!

The only picture we took together and it didn't turn out at all :(

Steps up the White Cliffs

So pretty :)

Fountain in the middle of Dover. I like it cause it looks like a dandelion :)

Nothing else to report on my end! Back to dissertation work!

Random London Stuff

We didn't have this commercial in the UK but I heard about it through the grapevine.  I can't actually believe that anyone found anything about this Cheerios commercial offensive, but apparently they did. And I think the children's reactions are so refreshing and perfect. I especially love the little girl in the teal shirt talking about George Washington. So cute!

http://www.dailydot.com/lol/kids-react-cheerios-commercial-race/

Anywho. I'm making serious progress on my dissertation!  I've surpassed the 10,000 word mark, which means I'm in the home stretch (almost).  If you're my friend and have any knowledge of juvenile corrections, research methods, education, post-graduate writing, the English language, etc. and would like to have a crack at proofreading it, please let me know! It could use all the extra eyes it can get!  Fair warning, it's 22 pages single-spaced at the moment and will just get longer over the next few days. But an interesting read I think (obviously I'm a little biased).

I haven't been doing many exciting things lately to write about.  I've been taking some random photos around London but they aren't very exciting..

This is a tiny Mini Cooper that got pulled over or in an accident or something. It was just the most British car I've ever seen! It's hard to see but it even had Union Jacks' on the rearview mirrors.

Old London meets New London

Ginormous cruise ship docked next to the HMS Belfast. I've never seen a cruise ship on the Thames before! They must have opened Tower Bridge (it's a drawbridge) to let it through because it's massive.

Another view.

As I was taking this photo, a guy on a bike asked me if I would take his picture while he jumped off the bridge we were standing on........ luckily he was kidding because I was not up to talking someone down from the ledge of London Bridge!

Finally, I want to say a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Kelsey on her engagement!  I can't wait to hear all about the planning and how stressed out you are :) 

Back to work! I need another 1000 words written today!

Life in June

Apologies for the lack of blogging lately!  Moms and Pops came for a visit, then we moved to a new flat in southeast London, then I went to Cyprus for 9 days!  And the internet was just installed in our new flat today so I haven't been connected to the digital world. 

Our new flat is really cute! Tiny, but really cute. I love it.  It's in a quiet little area and has a front AND rear garden.  

Cyprus was amazing! We were there for the European Universities Volleyball Championship - the best university volleyball teams from countries across Europe come together to play. We went representing GB but only had one British person on our team.  London is a very international city!  

Sadly, us Brits didn't do very well in the tournament but we did have really bad luck with our draw (our first two games were against the Germans and the Russians, both really good teams!)  Here are some pictures!

Before the opening ceremony with the men's team from Sheffield.

Again, before the opening ceremony.

With the Russian team and referees after a hard game!

And the best part, the sunshine and the beach!

Apart from the volleyball, we also ate traditional Cypriot food, listened to Greek music, walked through Nicosia to the border to the Turkish part of Cyprus (but didn't cross it) and had a Hen Party (aka bachelorette party) for me and another girl on the team who's getting married!

Pool at the hotel.

Border to the Turkish part of Cyprus. 

GB men v. Poland.

Hen Party night!

Church in Larnaca.

Day trip to the beach! Not too shabby :)

Finland v. Serbia

Can't go 9 days without eating pizza! Papa Johns in Cyprus :)

Also, I got a real job!  In a nursery that opens in August.  I've been hired as a nursery nurse (aka a teacher in a child care centre) but they said I'll grow out of that quickly and move on to doing curriculum development or something like that. Very exciting! I start the 15th of July.  

That's all for now! Very excited to have internet again so I can FaceTime with my long lost Momma Bear this evening!  WHOOP WHOOP!

Moms and Pops are coming to London!

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Highbury and there are two girls from Minnesota here!  What are the odds? Just reminds you how small the world actually is :)

Life has been insanely busy lately.  I've been frantically dress shopping (with no success) and frantically house hunting (also with no success).  There just are not enough hours in the day for everything to get done!  And I've obviously been completely ignoring my dissertation so that's not going anywhere.

Although I have just taken a break from reading about how to analyse interview data using phenomenological analysis and discourse analytic method.... trust me.. it's just as exciting as it sounds :)

On a happier note, MOMMA AND POPPA KEYS WILL BE HERE TOMORROW! EEEEEEKKKKK I'M SO EXCITED! Hoping Pops doesn't wear his bright white tennies and Budweiser shirt like he kept threatening to do. I'll have to "accidentally" lose him on the tube!

The wedding planning is slowly but surely progressing.

That's all I know. Need to get back to reading!

Just one photo to post.  Mat and I went for drinks at SushiSamba in the Heron Tower the other night with two of his friends who were up from Brighton. The view was incredible!  Here's the Gherkin (or as I like to call it, the Egg Building).

Volleyball and stuff.

Holy cow I didn't actually think it was possible to be this stressed out!  Turns out writing a dissertation, planning a wedding (in less than 6 months), apartment hunting, and being really poor all at the same time can be a bit overwhelming!  But we'll survive :)  Wedding planning is coming along nicely.. it's a good thing I have Momma Keys in America or this would be so much harder!

My dissertation is not coming along so nicely because let's be honest - wedding planning is so much more exciting than dissertation writing!  I suppose it has to be done though.

I've also been playing in the All Nations volleyball tournament.  It started last weekend and ends this weekend.  It's a tournament open to everyone in London.. you enter to play for your home country.  Unfortunately, there weren't enough Americans to make a team this year (come on America.. the Canadians managed to make a team!?).  So I'm on a team called Oceans - which is basically a group of people from countries who didn't fit into other categories.  We also got the ugliest coloured jerseys - orange. Honestly. It's good fun though and I'm happy with my team! GO OCEANS!

My team :)

Pretending to keep score.. we were really just chatting!

Me serving :)

That's all really.  My final thought is that British people really like naming places after body parts.  I thought it was just Queens and Kings (Queen's Head, King's Arms, etc.) but then I found this place in Bank...

Pope's Head Alley.  So weird.

Back to emailing 6 million wedding photographers :)

Sketch

Been a busy busy busy week!  I finally got my ring back and it fits beautifully and is perfect :) 

I also started both of my summer jobs (both just nannying part time) and have been frantically working on my last essay, which is due on Wednesday.  We had our last class last Wednesday - yes my last class of my Masters!  If only that was actually the end of the degree.. we still have that 16,000 word dissertation looming over our heads all summer!

Mat has been working A LOT of hours so we've hardly seen each other this week.  He finally had a day off yesterday so I took a break from my essay writing and we had a day out!  It was the Real Food Festival on the South Bank, which is basically an amazing food market with amazing food stalls.  We ate a lot.

We were especially excited about Barbecoa's stall because we love Barbecoa.  They were doing pulled pork sandwiches and frankfurters with sauerkraut.  Both amazing! We also bought some Scotch eggs (Mat bought a Black Pudding one - sick), sausages,  and chocolate.

Then we found this sign :)

Then we came home, caught up on some TV, I forced Mat to do some wedding planning (he's sick of it already!), and then we went out for a fancy dinner to celebrate our engagement!

So dapper :)

We went to a restaurant called Sketch near Regent Street. We ate in the Gallery part of the restaurant.  It was amazing.  The restaurant has a sort of mismatched theme.. every piece of cutlery is different, every glass is different, every napkin is different, even the light fixtures are all different!  The result was a vintagey lovely restaurant with amazing food!

These were the bathrooms.  They were all little pods with toilets inside. And they had staff dressed as maids who cleaned the pods as soon as you came out.  And there was a person playing a harmonica on the stairs leading up to the toilets.  Honestly... just google it and look at pictures. Sketch London. If you're ever in London you should go!

Right, off to the library to put the finishing touches on my essay!