Home sweet home...

I made it! A while ago I posted that I was going to be away from home 8 of 9 weekends, or 9 of 10 or something equally ridiculous, and now, I am finally home for the next three weekends. YAY! Of course, everything has been awesome, but at the same time exhausting. It's hard to have this much fun... Let's see. Last I posted was right before Steph came to visit and Anika's wedding. What an awesome time we had! Having Steph stay with me all week made me realize how much I missed her and how much a part of my Vienna life she was/is. We had a great time, ran around town to some of our old favorite places, but mostly it was awesome because we actually got to just sit around and talk. WAY too late though, and probably with too much wine. It was so fun to come home and have her here, with some wine and snacks ready. What's not to love about that?! Next up was Anika's wedding, which was also amazing! We rented a car and headed out right after a half day of work. We had three days of fun times and fortunately sunny weather for the wedding. I had to laugh because the song that just got everyone up and dancing was I've had the time of my life... from Dirty Dancing. Really?! Steph and I also started some sort of tunnel dance and decided that it was clearly the "American tradition" um, there were I think three Americans even there. Oh, and by far the coolest guy there was Thomas's tax guy and his girlfriend or wife, by the end of the night we were all trying to figure out how we could be friends with them... I went to a cupcake making class with the GGI group and then headed off to the US of A for the conference in Whitefish, MT. I had a weekend at my sister's house and made the most of it for sure! My mom picked me up and we managed to make it to Ella and Gavin's soccer games, which were conveniently at the same time and at fields that were right next to each other. I got there in time to see both kids score goals, which was cool. Gavin's air pump and slide after scoring was worth flying thousands of miles for, how cute is he! Ella's team was really good and playing with Dane on the sidelines was super fun. It was great to see the kids and just hang out, went to dinner at a cool place on the water, which was really fun, then came home and hung out with the family. Seemed so short though! The conference was really good, I loved Whitefish, in fact, I would LOVE to live there. Claudia came and met me for a few of the nights and that was just great too! I really do have the best friends a person could ask for. We had so much fun catching up and it was SO nice of her to drive all the way from Helena. I flew back for another couple nights at my sister's. I was able to experience FNL, which was awesome. Even homecoming... and they won. I did not want to get on the plane and come back to Vienna. I love being home, I miss it like crazy! Kristin was trying to convince me to take next year off and it does seem like a good idea! It's just that whole money and job thing... I had a quick week back at work, it really flew by and then it was off to Amsterdam. I met up with Heather and her boyfriend for the weekend. Heather and I ran the Amsterdam Marathon, I wasn't expecting to run very well as I've been slacking on my training, and have in fact quit the trainer until December, but it was an awesome marathon. The weather and course were perfect and I felt good and ran my PR, 3:46. The course was flat and fast and went through the city with lots of spectators, but then when you went out along the water, there weren't as many spectators, but it was gorgeous, so it didn't matter. The rest of the weekend was spent eating, drinking and walking. Very fun. Next up... Helsinki. I met Mel there after staying at a very interesting hotel, I was definitely not cool enough to belong there... oh well. Helsinki was an ok city, we had fun, the people are definitely friendlier than the Viennese and the shopping was good, but basically, just another city. There were lots of cool parks and we did go to a super cute coffee shop, which was fun. We decided to go to Tallin for a few days, and really, I fell in LOVE with it! We, of course, were ripped off by our taxi driver, I hate taking taxis, I become agitated at the thought of getting into one. But... I managed to get over that pretty fast as it was the cutest city I've been too in a long time. It was the cobblestone streets, tons of cute shops, restaurants, squares and most importantly, nice people! We wandered around a bit, I was laughing because Mel didn't want to see too much as we had to leave something to do for the next day... It was tough, but I convinced her to go to a wine tasting I saw at a wine shop, where we ended up meeting some really nice people. They were giving ups tips on where to go, what to do and where to eat. One guy even dropped off a photo book that he had made for us the next day at our hotel. The wine and people were awesome! We wandered our way around the town, one highlight was finding delicious nachos, which may not seem like a big deal, but to us it was for sure! I went on a few great runs while I was in Helsinki and Tallin, there were lots of parks and gorgeous fall leaves/colors. Now, I'm back in Vienna for a few weeks and am happy to report that the weather here is sunny and blue skies! Not expecting that at all, but happy about it. Not super excited about going back to work tomorrow, but I guess it must be done... Oh, I'm back to not sleeping. No idea why. It's making me crazy, but it did get me booking and planning all my upcoming trips and races. I booked a trip to Salzburg for the Christmas Markets while my mom is here, signed up for the 50km race in Paris in March and booked the flight and hotel, confirmed my entry to the St. Polten Half Ironman in May and booked the hotel rooms and started obsessing about Ironman in Whistler... July 27, 2014. I really want to do it, but am waiting to see if I end up finding a job somewhere else, as they could require new hires to be there early. We'll see!