We cannot believe that we have already been in France for over a year! It is an adventure that we have thoroughly enjoyed so far and are so glad we decided to take on. We have felt so welcomed during our first year here and have found everyone so friendly. We continue to work on our french, but it has been harder than anticipated as so many locals are excited to practice their english with us! Starting our family while living in another country will certainly be the biggest piece of our adventure yet, and is something we couldn't be more excited about! Baby Racz was a hard secret to keep for the first few months, but easier being in France as no one saw Luca refusing a glass of wine at dinner (lol). During the first trimester we got the hang of the medical system here, which has been a breeze. We have found English speaking doctors that are wonderful and feel very comfortable navigating everything, which is such a relief! Luca was very lucky to have an easy first trimester, dealing with some expected fatigue but by some miracle, no nausea!!! During this this time Luca's family came to visit and baby Racz was along for travels to Italy, Switzerland and more of France. It was so nice to have family here for our first Thanksgiving abroad. We then started off the second trimester by heading back to the USA for the first time over New Years! We forgot how wide roads are and how spacious everything is!!! We had a wonderful time visiting family and friends over the course of a few weeks before heading back to France. As for baby, we've had monthly check ups with a midwife and all has been very healthy so far! In the coming weeks we will start partaking in weekly appointments and classes. We are lucking out by being our midwife’s only English speaking patients at the moment, so we are getting all birthing and parenting prep classes private! We recently had our second trimester anatomy scan and all was good at this appointment too. Waiting until week 24 to find out the baby's gender was not easy, but is standard practice here in France, so we embraced it and kept the surprise... we are so happy to be having a baby girl and to finally be able to start looking at all the cute French baby fashion!!! As we move toward the third trimester we look forward to Jason's family coming to visit and bringing baby along for even more adventures. We will share updates here through the end of our pregnancy and after baby is born. For now we can tell you that she is very active and kicking mom and dad regularly which we are loving! We cannot wait to meet her!!! Until then we're giving all the snuggles to Riley & Murphy before they have to share them... it will probably come as no surprise to some of you that Murphy seems overjoyed and is loving on mom extra, and Riley... well she's seeming a little extra sassy lately, but is getting plenty of love none the less. We, and baby, are so lucky to have you in our lives as our support system as move forward into this next chapter. XO, Luca & Jason

The last couple months have been busy, busy! We are almost done putting the nursery together, which we can't wait to bring our girl home to -- mama to be spends a lot of time daydreaming and reading in this room in anticipation :) The last few weeks Jason's parents were in Europe with us and baby girl Racz continued on her travels. Girl has been to more countries than either of us had been to by the time we were graduated from college!!! We can't wait to share stories with her in the future and hope to spend another couple years in France taking her on all our adventures. In month 7 we visited lots of new places in France and revisited a few too -- Paris, Metz, Corny, Colmar, Lyon, Carcassone, Monaco, Cannes, and Antibes! We also traveled to Barcelona, Spain and visited the small but beautiful country of Andorra. I hung in there on the travels but hitting month 8 am certainly ready to slow down a little, nest, rest and just enjoy this time before baby girl arrives! We can't wait for our family's next visits and travels with baby in tow. As for the French healthcare -- it continues to be fabulous. I feel spoiled! In the last couple months I have had weekly classes learning everything baby, postpartum, delivery etc... which have been very helpful! We also had our third trimester ultrasound where we learned baby girl is turned head down and ready for her debut and continuing to do great otherwise. She also continues to be a very active little lady!!! In addition to feeling great about the healthcare, I have even been prescribed things like custom compression garments and vitamin doses that are completely free of charge. Over the next month we wrap up classes, do our hospital visits, meet with the delivery team and doctors and based on how things are going still have yet to learn what our month 9 schedule will look like! Our due date based on USA calendar (40 weeks pregnant) is June 27th and French due date remains July 4th (41 weeks pregnant measurement). Over the next couple weeks Luca will be working on finishing up the nursery and getting everything together for hospital bags just in case while Jason will travel to the UK, Spain and anywhere else critical for work to squeeze in before it's time to be on baby watch! As for the pups, Murphy continues to be very loving and protective of mom these days, and even Riley seems to have warmed up and has started to come near and cuddle the bump... we are a little surprised by her change of heart in the best way! So long as this lil girl continues to hang on until her due date we'll provide another update next month pre-baby, and a few updates post birth. xoxo, the racz family