Back in the saddle!

My vacation is over and I am back in the swing of things. Actually more like hurtling forward! I have spent much of my time away thinking about how I am going to move forward and formulating goals. But before I 'talk shop' I am going to tell you a bit about my "vacation".

I had ups and downs while away. The extreme high of traveling is always such a pleasure. I can't tell you how much I love experiencing new places and cultures. I soak in everything about a place while I am there. The hard part was (no shocker here) traveling with little ones. My poor boys slept in a hundred different places and for you parents out there I know you understand how valuable a schedule is for a child's peace of mind. So that was really the main stress of our trip. We went to so many places and they did well considering they had to adapt to a 9 hour time difference and tons of new places to stay and people to meet. My husband and I have decided though, that we will not be taking a large trip with them like that for at LEAST a couple of years. It is just too hard on them while they are this small.

The really wonderful thing is that they got to spend so much time with their vanaema (grandma), see their vana-vanaema (great-grandmother) and uncles and cousins. Plus they got some good playtime in with friends. My husband only speaks Estonian with them so there was no language barrier for the boys with friends and family. Now I have to work on my Estonian language skills because a lot of my husband's family do not speak English. I hate not being able to communicate with them and it will just help out a lot because we visit as much as possible.

One other horrible really quite horrible thing that happened to me is that my camera died in Gdansk. This was at the BEGINNING of my trip :( Me traveling without a camera is like taking away a limb. No joke....I was in agony visiting new places without being able to document it. I took some pictures in Germany but we made such a beautiful drive through Poland, Lithuania and Latvia that I am sad to not be able to show them here. (I have lots and lots of pictures of Estonia from previous trips that I will have to share in a future post.) Here are two of the last pictures I got before the camera totally went belly up. The first is a view from our hotel room in Gdansk. You can see how the camera is already dying.

Next is of a cute little place we stayed at in Lithuania.

It's killing me not be able to show more pictures. Everywhere we went was amazing. Another down-side to the trip is that my youngest got sick when we were in Denmark so I caught really only a peek of the country. We looked around Copenhagen a tiny bit, Roskilde (saw the very cool Viking ship museum here....BEAUTIFUL town), and Helsingor, which is the site of Hamlet's castle. Luckily we are going back in April for our friend's birthday (without kids) so we'll really get to look around then. I am very, very excited about this because the little time I spent there was like a tease....

So when we got back I needed some serious time to decompress. I didn't even go into my workshop until something like 5 days had passed. And when I did I worked at a snail's pace...just kind of flexing and stretching my artistic muscles.

Below is a picture of what I have made in the last few days.

I'll be putting these up in the shop tomorrow. If I get time...possibly tonight. I am so excited to dig more into my new amber, and I can't wait to finally get my shop reopened. I don't want to close it for that long again for a long, long time!

I also got some GORGEOUS Bisbee turquoise that just came in yesterday. I am surrounded by beautiful stones. What a way to maintain some serious inspiration!

It is sooo good to be back. :)