Where to Begin...

I'm not really the "bloggy" type & not sure where to begin, so I guess I'll just catch up the last few years and start at, well, the beginning!

A little more than 5 years ago, Steve & I met at around 3 AM over a central line in the ICU (ah, the romance!) It took a few months for us to start dating, but once we did, we never slowed down and on a birthday trip to Italy he proposed during a gondola ride in Venice! Next week we will be celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary!!

During the last few years, we've had a great time enjoying our families, our puppy dogs Maggie & Macy and generally just being together! We have a mutual love, or perhaps obsession, with travel and if you ask what we've done the last few years, the best answer I have is that we've just travelled!!! Together we have visited some of the most incredible places I'd ever imagined!

Before we were married, we visited Nevis, Hawaii, the Caribbean on a cruise with my family and went to England for me to meet Steve's family.  For our honeymoon, we relaxed in Aitutaki, swam with sharks in Bora Bora and shopped along Rodeo Drive!

Steve introduced ME (the most non-athletic girl ever) to snow skiing, which I quickly fell in love with, followed by my mom & dad!

We've sailed through the BVI on a romantic catamaran with just the two of us, then again with Steve's daughter, Kimmie, & her soon to be husband, Clay. We have spent time in Anguilla, Virgin Gorda, Peter Island, Turks & Caicos, Canouan Island, Puerto Morelos, St Lucia and our favorite beach spot, Barbuda.

For years, Steve's mum vacationed in a little lake town in Italy called Malcesine most summers, and we've been lucky enough to meet her there a couple of times. Steve is originally from near London, so we like to go to England when we can to visit his mum, sister and brother, all still there. It's also a handy spot to start (or finish) trips to other parts of Europe, so I've become obsessed with Paris and all things Parisian, been to Prague for the Christmas markets and have fallen in love with an entire country during time in Italy! We were even able to convince my parents and grandparents to come with us in the summer of 2008 for about 2 weeks traveling through Italy, visiting Paris and ending up in London with the Sperrings!  No matter where we are, we've always had fun together, even though we were once dropped off at an "airport hotel" in Barbados around midnight because our flight to the Grenadines was cancelled, spent last Valentine's Day at another "airport hotel" in Antigua for another cancelled flight, between the two of us, have lost our luggage 6 times (or maybe more), gotten food poisoning in Vail, and last but not least, while shopping for a rain coat and umbrella in the pouring rain in Dublin (lost luggage) Steve slipped and broke his elbow on the first of 10 days in Europe!! And being the good nurse that I am, I spent the whole week telling him he was fine and it was just a bruise...but that's not important now, practically ancient history!!

Soooo, that basically covers the last 5 years, which have been quite an adventure for us! Of course during this time, we've only been asked about a thousand times when we were going to stop traveling and have a baby (only about 990 of those were my mom). Our answer was always that we had one more city to explore or one more beach to lay on, etc etc. Actually, though, we weren't really traveling instead of having a baby, but rather because we didn't have one. We both knew from before we ever said "I do" that for us, a family together was a must. Steve already has 3 children, but we both wanted our own family together, which, not to give TMI, required my sweet, wonderful, incredible husband to go back under the knife for a vasectomy reversal shortly after our wedding, 4 years ago. During this time that has passed, along with the traveling, we've taken ovulation tests, false pregnancy tests, consulted with a fertility specialist and finally, in the fall of last year, began the necessary steps to do IVF, which isn't really a secret to those who know us well, as our doctor told us "I'm not saying it's impossible to have a baby without it, but it is a one in a million chance." We had everything lined up and prepared to actually begin the treatments in January, and hopefully be expecting a few months later, honestly so that I could get in one more ski trip and also not be miserably huge for Kimmie's wedding in May (that's the biggest day of her life, which we wanted nothing to interfere with!)! So, that was our plan. The week before our ski trip was planned in January, in true Sperring fashion, I came down with something, was sure it was the flu, and spent the whole week feeling absolutely awful with body aches, low grade fever, stomach cramps and nausea. The day before the trip, I had no choice but to run a few last minute errands picking up things that we needed, and that's when I realized that something was a bit "off"! So, along with my always & tampax I assumed I'd be needing any minute, I picked up a little box of those magical sticks that you pee on and your whole world either changes or it doesn't (and of course went through the "self checkout" lane, didn't want to be the crazy chic buying tampons and a pregnancy test together). When I got back home again, Steve was already off work and was busy packing away, so I told him my thoughts, which worried him that my hopes were up, but we both figured if I were going to spend the next week throwing myself down the side of Vail mountain, it couldn't hurt just to check...and surprise, surprise, this time that little stick actually did change our world and today, as I write this, I'm 16 weeks along and couldn't possibly be happier!

Some may wonder why do I chose to tell all of this, but, it's because it's our story and you can't imagine how wonderfully excited we are about the next chapters without knowing the previous ones, too. And even though we've had to wait longer than we thought we would, and basically nothing has gone according to our "plan", I wouldn't change one day of our last five years together, they have been truly fabulous! So, as I said before, this is the beginning of our story that's been filled with love, happiness, fun, and what we thought was adventure, but I have a feeling the real adventure will begin in about 24 more weeks!!