Life is Good :0)

I have been MIA from my blog since before the wedding and I apologize! Life has been crazy busy. We got married in June, then were gone for 2 and 1/2 weeks for our honeymoon. When we returned, we enjoyed the last month and a half of summer with our amazing friends and family.

The summer of 2010 was absolutely amazing. My bridal shower, the bachelorette party bus to Mohegan Sun, our wedding, Chrissy's infamous pool party, our bbq and pool party and campfire, river tubing at the Farmington River, day trip to Block Island with Katie and Alex, living it up in VIP at Shrine with some of our best friends, and more of our friend's weddings. 2010 is definitely a year to remember and was just what we needed before making one of the biggest changes in our lives.

The last week of August, I got a phone call for an interview down in Florida. My husband and I have been talking about moving to Florida ever since we started getting serious and we knew as soon as the wedding was over we'd be looking to move. I booked plane tickets and flew out for my interview 2 days after the call. I was offered the job at the end of the interview and was on cloud nine on my way back to the airport to fly home. I couldn't believe it was finally happening! We moved 3 weeks later and started our new lives together in a much more desirable climate.

A month later, we flew back home for another wedding. We had a blast and it was great to see a bunch of our friends that we already missed so much. Upon returning home from the wedding weekend, I started to feel really ill a few days later. At first I thought I had low blood sugar, then I thought it was a bad virus. But after a few weeks of feeling ill with no signs of feeling better I started to get scared that something was seriously wrong. My doctor had no answers and was perplexed as to what was bothering me. I finally self diagnosed myself after hours of research online and reading forums of people who have been experiencing the same miserableness I have. I'm 99.9% sure I was suffereing from labyrinthititis. The symptoms were debilitating to say the least and here's a list of what I went through for almost 2 months straight:

-I felt seasick.. which led to me feeling nauseous when it would hit


-I also felt really disoriented a lot which was kind of like being drunk without the good feelings that come with drinking

-I had a very stiff neck and upper back and severe pain in the back of the lower part of my head

-I went through periods of exhaustion, but also had a hard time sleeping through the night

-Sometimes you just don't feel a part of reality, it's like you know you're there, but you feel like it's a dream and you're not really there

-Near the end was when I started to become really sensitive to noise and my ears started to hurt

-I was very sensitive to different lightings. I felt the most sick going into stores (like Target or the grocery store... the mall was completely off limits or else I think I would have passed out) and in my boss' office because of the way the light came in through the blinds and it was always hot in there.

-I also felt sick when I had to talk to someone and maintain eye contact

I'm thankful I was able to come to work, but I looked like a zombie and struggled to get through most days. It's such a scary feeling, but around Thanksgiving weekend I decided to cut out caffeine which was advice I found on one of the forums I had been reading about my virus. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I've been addicted to caffeine for several years and couldn't live without my morning coffee, and my diet cokes, unsweetened iced teas, etc.. but once I cut out the caffeine, I noticed a big difference. I've had 2 maybe 3 slight attacks since I cut out the caffeine. And one of the mini-attacks happened on a day I brought an iced tea to work so I know caffeine was a huge culprit in my feeling so crummy. I still feel off sometimes and feel a little sick at times, but I have come a long way since October and November and couldn't be more thankful for the progress I've made. Life was put on hold for several months because I could barely leave the house to go to work or to go grocery shopping. My amazing husband was understanding throughout the whole thing since it put his life on hold too.

My biggest fear is having to fly up to Omaha for training for my job next month. I just hope that the flights don't trigger my symptoms where I feel ill on the plane or throughout my training days away from home or even worse bring back everything I had been dealing with for so long. I hope I'll stay on the road to recovery and never be that miserable and helpless again.

Now onto bigger and more exciting news, my husband and I bought a house! Aside from the much more desirable weather, we moved to Florida because the real estate prices are worlds away from real estate prices in Connecticut. My husband and I can't imagine why people choose to live somewhere with miserably long winters and ridiculously high real estate and taxes.

We decided to have a brand new house built in a development close to where we've been living down here. The house is going to be our "forever house" and is going to be huge! We're still blown away at how far your money goes down here, because if we bought the same house in Connecticut, it would easily be three times the price it is down here. We're just so thankful for our lives have come together, we're now married, living where we've always wanted to live, and we're building our dream home. Ahhhh life is good :0)

And I'll leave you all with a hilarious clip from our wedding of my husband and his good friend Brian rapping to Warren G's Regulators. We finally edited our wedding video down to just the song and uploaded it to youtube. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tteJqDisP8U