Okay, so I think we have some things that we need to talk about and catch up on together.
I'm sure a lot of you guys will already know this, but Avery and I just got back from our trip to Europe.
We went to the Netherlands for four days, which is where I'm originally from.
And then we went to Portugal for four days after that.
And on our trip, Avery and I actually got engaged.
So we are gonna be getting married and I'm so excited.
It's just been like the most unbelievable two weeks of my life at this point.
It's crazy that it's already been two weeks, but it's kind of been a funny week too, because obviously you're coming back from being on vacation for a week and trying to get back into real life.
And I think because we had two separate parts of the trip, our trip felt even longer.
We were really only gone for like eight days, but I swear it felt like two weeks.
And I also think like this massive life update has to do with that.
And so not only are you like coming back from being on vacation, but you're also coming into your old life as a new couple and as kind of like a new person.
I know that sounds really deep, but like what do you expect from me, right?
But it's been funny coming back to our life here and feeling so different.
And I almost have this feeling this week of like did i even do before?
Like who was i even before i left on this trip?
You know what i mean.
But it's also just been amazing and we waited to share the news with our friends and some of our family until we actually got back into the states, because we just knew there was going to be an influx of like messages and phone calls and whatnot and we kind of wanted to have like a day or two when we came back to share the news with everyone, and so That's just been so nice.
And now I get to share this with you guys, obviously, which is a huge deal.
And I was thinking about this earlier.
Actually, like a lot of you guys have been around for so long and have known me through all the years, like all the ups and downs me growing up, you know, as a person, as a model, moving into different apartments, eventually meeting Avery and us moving in together and now us getting engaged and so it feels really special for me to share that with you guys and obviously I'm like super excited to take you along on this journey of us being engaged and getting married.
I thought it would be fun to kind of walk you guys through our trip today and share some more of the proposal story details and also share some of the things that we did in Portugal, because The Netherlands was a lot of seeing family and catching up with family.
Even though we did do some biking and saw some new parts of the country that I had never been to before.
Portugal was really the place where we discovered a lot and where I have quite a few recommendations.
So I'm going to put all that in the description box and also just want to share some of the clips that we got while we were there.
Our first part of the trip was the Netherlands.
And for anybody who doesn't know, I'm actually originally from there.
I was born there and then I lived there for seven years and then we moved to Canada.
And then when my parents got divorced, my dad decided that he wanted to move back there.
And so he's been living there now for two years.
So we decided to visit him there.
And I also have other family members that I'm pretty close with, that i talk to on a regular basis, but just haven't seen in a long time before.
I forget my brother reuben, the one who got married.
He also came with his wife and then her parents also came, so that was kind of our like main travel group.
Those four days there were really just about catching up with family and meeting people.
Like avery met a lot of people for the first time.
He met some of my grandparents.
He met like my childhood best friends from there.
He met my mom's little sister who I'm really close with.
So it was just a really cool trip.
And obviously it was cool for me too, because I hadn't seen these people in a long time.
And then watching Avery experience all this and yeah, we just had a lot of great conversations and I'm super glad that I got to do that with him.
Anyway, I'm going to try and keep this quick because I could probably talk about this for an hour.
We ended up staying in The Hague while we were there, which is where my dad lives now, and you guys will see this later on in the video.
I grew up more in the northern part of the country, in a place called Volendam, and so Staying in The Hague was very cool, because it's quite a historical part of the country.
It's also the political capital of the country.
That first day we actually got to see a lot of The Hague.
We rented bikes.
We biked through the whole city.
My dad and his girlfriend now live by a little part of The Hague, by the harbor, which is really cool.
So we just biked a ton that day and we also just like got settled.
The next day was actually the day that we got engaged.
Now, What I knew about Saturday, or what I knew what the plans were, is that we were going to go to Amsterdam for the day, meet up with some of my extended family, and we actually had a boat tour booked to go through the canals and then we're going to do dinner there and just like spend the whole day in the city.
But before that we were actually going to stop at this tulip festival because my sister-in-law's mom really wanted to go there.
Or at least that's what I was told.
In reality, we were going there because Avery was going to propose.
At this point.
I don't know yet, but I think I'm going to use some of the pictures for the thumbnail.
If not, that will definitely be on Instagram by the time this video goes up.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you guys with the details, but the way that this morning went leading up to the proposal is kind of funny, because
I slept through my alarm that morning, which you guys know like that doesn't happen to me.
I am the kind of person that like wakes up before my alarm.
I'm very organized.
I always give myself ample time to get ready.
So obviously the day that it matters the most, like I have barely any time to do my hair.
I have no time to do my makeup.
I'm just wearing like a very simple practical outfit, which is a whole other story, because my family had been trying to get us all to dress up and they kind of explained it as in like oh, let's dress up and take some family photos.
I remember saying to Avery, I was like, all my clothes are nice.
I'm not going to dress up for this because in my mind I was like, if we're spending the whole day in Amsterdam, I want to wear something that's comfortable.
I want to wear something that's practical.
I get cold pretty easily.
I want to wear something that's warm.
They tried to convince me to wear a dress.
No one was going to convince me to wear a dress.
Anyway, we get to the tool fields.
I have no idea that anything's going to happen.
I'm not thinking anything.
I will probably talk more about this in another video, but I literally...
I had no idea that he was going to propose.
I had no clue.
And so I am just focusing on my extended family that's arriving.
To be honest, when we were in the car, I kind of forgot that we were going there.
I was like, why aren't we in Amsterdam?
And then I remembered that we were going to go to these tulips.
Like just totally everything's going over my head, right?
So at one point he pulls me aside and he's like, do you want to just go for a little walk, the two of us? and i remember thinking that's so sweet because up until that point like i've been doing a lot of speaking in dutch and also a lot of translating for him because some of my family members don't speak english and so i was like oh he just wants to like go for a little walk the two of us so we walk into this row of tulips and he says to me that he has something for me as soon as he said that i knew what was going to happen And that's when he proposed.
And it was just so sweet.
And so like, if you see my face in some of these pictures, I don't think I've ever been that surprised in my whole life.
Truly just the most unexpected thing ever.
And also, There's so much going on.
Like my family is there.
And then there's a photographer which I didn't even realize until like three or four minutes into it.
She's walking up, she's like, hi.
And I just couldn't believe it.
And I couldn't believe that it was happening.
So we ended up actually taking some extra photos with a photographer there, which I'm so happy about.
Like before all this happened, I had thought like, do I even want a photographer there?
Do I want it to just be really private?
And now that we have the pictures, I'm so happy that he thought of organizing that and he thought to book someone and really just capture like, not just the proposal, which is obviously incredible, but also like those raw emotions that come up after something so major happens.
And I just, I think they're gonna be some of the most special pictures of my entire life.
Obviously, the rest of the day we were just on a high and that boat cruise, or that boat tour that my dad organized, was actually a private boat tour through all the canals and they had food delivered and they had wine on the boat and everything and it was all just so organized.
And I'm gonna try not to cry like thinking back to it, but I just couldn't believe how much time and energy went into planning that day for us, and that everyone wanted to be there and wanted to celebrate us and just wanted to make that happen for us is like I don't know, really just makes you feel so loved and appreciated.
We spent the rest of the day in Amsterdam.
We had an amazing dinner.
We actually ended up going out for a while with my family, and then Avery booked us a hotel in Amsterdam too.
So we stayed there overnight, which was so nice, because we had this insane, amazing day together with all of my family.
And it would have been hard to travel like an hour and some back to my dad's place and not really have that one-on-one time to kind of like digest the day.
I don't know if that's the right word, but just regroup together and like think about everything that happened and like talk everything through and just kind of like enjoy that moment together.
And I have to say this, even though I don't think he's ever going to watch this video, but he just did such a great job with planning everything and like I'll have to tell you guys the story of getting the ring in another video, because that's it's gonna take me too much time to explain this but like the process of getting all of that organized and communicating with my family and then, like I don't even know what to say, he just he planned everything so well and, to be honest with you, like I don't know what expectations I had, but he did an insane, insane job and it was just so special.
After that, we really only had one more day left, which was the Monday, and that was the day that we saw my grandparents, and then we also went back to my hometown, which was so much fun because Avery's never been there.
You guys will see in some of the clips, but it's just a very cute town and we're right by the water, so there's this really fun harbor that you can walk through and there's all these little stores And we actually took photos in like the old fashioned Dutch clothing with the clogs and everything.
It was also really fun because we made everyone try the typical Dutch food.
Avery hadn't really tried that.
And Leah, like my sister-in-law and her parents had never really tried that.
So in Volendam, we had them try smoked eel on a sandwich, which is one of my favorite things.
And they tried herring.
And then they also tried like, we have these...
They're not very healthy, but we have these like croquettes and this other like sausage called frikandel, and we have.
What else do we order?
Like one night we just ordered straight up just garbage food, but it's like typical Dutch food that is so good and it's just so nostalgic for us.
And there's nothing more fun than watching people who have never seen these things before try them for the first time.
Anyway, that's kind of the recap of our Netherlands portion of the trip.
Tuesday we flew to Portugal, which we were all so excited about because this was going to be the actual vacation portion of our trip.
I had never been to portugal before, but my brother and his wife had been to this exact place that we were going to and they raved about it, so i was really excited about it.
Everything that i mentioned in regards to portugal i will put in the description box so you guys can check it out, because this was Definitely one of my favorite vacations I've ever been on.
Portugal is just a really special place and it's hard to put your finger on it.
And I think that's why I've had a hard time describing it to other people or describing why it was such a special vacation for me.
But there's something about the way that they live life over there that makes everything so easy.
And I'll explain this a little bit more as I talk about the things that we did.
But basically we stayed in this like boutique.
I should have probably thought about this before I explained it.
It's just this set of like boutique villas.
And so there's eight small individual villas and each couple rented one.
This was really nice because everybody had their own space, but we were literally next door to each other.
And so we would like have wine one night and just sit outside someone else's villa, and then there was a shared pool obviously, but you would also just like go back to your own villa and like take a nap and have your own bathroom and all that nice stuff.
Every villa also had their own kitchen, so it was super nice.
Again, i'll link all of this.
It's called villa belaya and it's in this area called albufera, which is, it's all in the algarve, so our whole trip was in the algarve.
My favorite part of this whole trip is again how easy everything was like.
We didn't plan out anything about this trip other than our dinner reservations.
We kind of booked those like a couple days in advance, and i'll put those restaurants down in the description box too, but everything we did was kind of go with the flow.
One of the things that avery really wanted to do was surf, and so the night before we he looked up some of the best places to surf, like kind of near our area, and we would wake up early and we would drive there and we would spend a couple hours there.
He was surfing and then we would get back in the car and drive to the next place.
And so I really loved how we didn't have to over plan or over manage our trip.
We could kind of just wake up and see what we felt like and figure it out from there.
And I feel like life just isn't really like that anymore.
And I don't know if that's because I live in a big city and because life is just different over here, but it was so nice to be in a place where you could kind of just look on the map and pick a beach and drive there.
And there's literally no parking spots.
Like people are parking on the side of the road.
People are parking like off the road and nobody cares.
And everybody takes care of the beach.
Everybody brings their own stuff.
Also just the country and the surroundings themselves are so beautiful.
Like the day that Avery went surfing, we just mapped out a surf shop.
We're like, we'll drive there and see if they're open, see if they can rent boards.
We ended up being able to do that.
They were super nice.
But you cross the road from the surf shop, you walk down this cliff and you get to the bottom.
You're on the beach and you're just surrounded by these cliffs and you almost can't believe that it's real.
It's just so beautiful and the water is blue and you're surrounded by these people who get up every day at like 5 am to go surfing.
They also have a ton of these lookout points where you kind of drive upwards and you park your car and you walk like you're kind of like on top of the cliff and you look down and you see these beaches And a lot of the times they have like a little hotel built into the cliff.
They also have these cenotes where you can kind of look into them from up top.
But you can also sign up for a boat tour where they actually take you inside.
That looked very cool.
Another thing that I really loved and we did this in a couple of different places is they have these old towns.
So we went to old town albufera, and they're almost like a plaza of sorts, where they have all of these little shops and restaurants.
These are also oftentimes situated by the water, and so some of them you can drive through.
Most of them you have to park your car and then you can walk through them because the streets are very narrow.
But there are these little like authentic plazas and authentic little towns where you just have all of these cute little stores and restaurants, and a lot of them actually look out onto the water.
So you'll climb up, you'll get to the restaurant.
And then, as soon as you're in the restaurant, you're basically like on top of the cliff looking down at the water.
And then obviously the food was amazing.
The drinks were amazing.
I think I had Aperol spritzes every day.
We also had this other cocktail that my sister-in-law was obsessed with, which is a port and tonic.
Portugal's known for their port, so i guess they're really popular there.
I almost feel like the food goes without saying.
It's just super high quality.
Their, their fish is incredible down there and um, they also have this thing on pretty much every menu.
I think it's called couvert, where you basically get a bread basket and a couple of different spreads, and one of the common spreads that they give you is this sardine paste.
Oh my god.
Um, It is so good and I am trying really hard to see if I can get it here.
I would love to just add that to my charcuterie boards or even just put it on crackers or bread or something.
It was so good.
But that's pretty much everything we got up to in Portugal.
We got so lucky with the weather.
We had sunny, warm weather every single day.
It's funny because Avery and I are actually going back to Portugal later this year for a wedding.
We're going to go to Lisbon this time, but I'm already...
Excited to go back.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this little catch up vlog and getting to hear about our trip and obviously, sharing the big news with you guys.
I'm excited to take you along on this new journey as a couple and also my journey as a bride.
Anyway, I love you guys.
Next week we'll be back on our regular scheduled programming vlogging ride.
So I will see you then.
