In late September last year, we have moved to our home country, after 4 wonderful years in the land of the free. It's been a great experience and the people we had a chance to meet were definitely the best part of the years. That and all the places and parks we had a change to visit :-) But times are changing and since we were expecting family, we decided to stay a little bit closer to our families and give them a chance to see our baby more often and not just over the internet.
We moved to Brno, the second biggest city in Czech, about 350,000 people altogether. both me and Gabriela went to college here and worked here before moving to USA in 2011. I kept the same job I got in the USA, since our company (Liferay) is international and offered me to continue working with them even after moving to Czech. After all, we have offices in Spain, Germany, Hungary, UK and several people working from various places in Europe from home office, so I'm not the first to work remotely.
Gabriela was already 5 months pregnant, so she already stayed at home and started to prepare our home for the arrival of our firstborn. Although we moved to Brno, we rented an apartment on the very edge of the city (in Medlanky), since we wanted to have a possibility to just walk out into the woods, where are no cars or noise of the city. We were lucky to snatch one of the few apartments available in the area, it's in high demand right now.
Time flew, we were making sure to have all paperwork in order, I went to a company's conference DevCon in October, then we were looking for a car and in early November, our boxes from USA finally arrived and we were able to live a little bit more comfortable. And warmer, since all our winter clothing was in the boxes and it already started to get chilly in Czech :-)
December came and with it my trip to LA, to our company HQ, for a end-year retreat of our department. All was the same, only the flights were little bit longer than the past few years. Gabriela was already 8 months pregnant, so unfortunately she could not join me, which also meant no extra traveling around southwest like we did during my retreat before. But next year... Well most likely nothing as well, since Karolina will be only about 11 months old :-)
The weekend before Christmas was great, since we finally found a barn where we could ride. It's a very long story how we got the address of the place, but I'll try to keep it short: our friend from Urbana has parents in Colorado, who own horses. And they sold horses to the Czech couple about 10 years ago. And then last year our friend with his family was taking a sabatical and went to Czech (Prague) and while here, their parents told them they sold the horses to some Czech people and if they would not want to go and visit them, and see how the horses are doing :-)
They went and when they got back to Urbana in August, right before we left in September, we had our last Czechs + Slovaks BBQ on Homer Lake and they mentioned how wonderful time they had at the horse place. And that it is near Blansko, which is only about 30 minuted from where we live now, in Brno. So then when we were back in Czech and were looking for some wester riding barn (and not finding any really), we remembered and they gave us the contact for the place - Penzion Strakateho u Kone ("Paint Horse Guest House").
And the owners there as such a great people we even could not have hoped for better. We fell in love with their place, the horses are wonderful (I took a ride while Gabriela took a nap in the hotel room :-) We talked with the owners a lot and we will be riding with them regularly. First just me, then hopefully soon Gabriela as well and Karolina shortly afterwards :-)
Christmas was a nice time, we spent it with our families. We even got our car few days before Christmas, which was a very nice and unexpected surprise. But then in January, we started to get a little bit worried. It was not months away, not even many weeks away, but just 20 or so days. I we did not feel ready at all, but what could we do, too late to change our minds now :-)
And then we went on 15th for a checkup, which one more weeks to go, but then one thing led to another and 2:30pm, our baby girl Karolina (Caroline) was born. 18 inches and 6.4 pounds of pure beauty.
All went well, both Gabriela and Karolina were healthy, so after 4 days in hospital, we all went home and the real fun began. Suddenly there were no nurses to help you calm the baby down, help you change its clothes or show you how to bathe the baby. Just the baby and two amateurs googling how healthy poop should look like :-)
Enjoy the pictures (we left all the poopy ones out, don't worry).
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| First batch of photos |
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| And the second one, full of Karolina :-) |
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