France: Round 2

Hello, everyone!

Here we are, already well into another basketball season. Year 6... where has the time gone!? As most of you know by now, Tyler signed with a team in France for the second year in a row. While he is with a different team than last year and a completely different part of the country, it is still in the same league he was playing in last season. It is nice that he is familiar with the league and will know what to expect. It is also nice for me too since it feels like it takes me more than half the season to remember all the teams and players in the league and I can know what to expect as well. I am super proud of Tyler staying in French ProA. It is a highly competitive and respectable league in Europe and I am so excited to see him continue to grow.

I have been back in France for a month already now. Life is back to busy basketball schedules and living in a country where we don't understand a dang word around us. Just living our normal everyday life over here ;)

My first month here has flown by but it has been good. Tyler's team is off to an awesome start to their season and Tyler is playing great. I can't believe October is coming to an end here quickly and we will be getting into the holidays and then the New Year. We always say once Christmas rolls around the countdown to home starts. It will be here before we know it!

The highlight so far since I have been here is finding out the gender of the baby. As most of you saw via my Facebook, we are having a sweet little BOY! I haven't stopped smiling since. I had a great experience meeting my doctor and he speaks English well. I was a little nervous going into the appointment because it was just a little intimidating not knowing what to expect here in France. 

At the time of my first doctor's visit here, I was 17 weeks pregnant. I knew that if he did an ultrasound, we might be able to find out the gender of the baby but we weren't trying to get our hopes up. We didn't even know what the doctor would want to do during the first visit and weren't sure if it was still too early to find out if it was a girl or boy. I was happy when he told me he wanted to do an ultrasound to see the baby. I wanted to see baby too :)

He went through and showed us everything - the head, arms, hands, heart, stomach, legs, feet, the heart rate - he pointed everything out to us and let us see it in detail. He was really thorough with everything and I appreciated that he didn't rush through it. It is truly amazing to see everything and how they grow in such a short amount of time. And of course, he showed us the gender. I am not going to lie, since the day we found out I was pregnant I thought we were going to be having a girl. When he told/showed us that it was a boy, I could not stop laughing! I just couldn't believe it! Then again, I should have expected to be wrong about it ;) We are both so excited and can't wait to meet our little guy! My heart is full of so much love for my baby boy already!

Forgive me if I ramble on a lot this year in my blog about the pregnancy. Although the basketball aspect of our lives over here is going to be the same for us just like every other season, this is a huge new thing for us. Life over here doesn't just revolve around basketball anymore and we are both enjoying this journey. We still have lots to learn but so excited for this new chapter in life. We are truly blessed!

I will continue to keep everyone updated as the season goes on and exciting things come up to share! 

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

The Shortest, Longest Season

Hi Friends and Family.

I feel like my blog is really slacking compared to last season.

I feel like this has been the longest season and shortest season all rolled into one.

Basically the main reason I haven't had as much to share this season is because we don't have as much free time as in the past. The level that Tyler is playing at this season requires him to constantly be at practice and always has something going on to fill up the majority of his time. Sometimes I think people forget that this is NOT A VACATION for us - Living in Europe is our LIFE! While we are very fortunate to be able to visit fabulous European cities when Tyler has the time off, that is not a normal day-to-day thing for us and we only take advantage of that when we have the time to do so. 

I feel like this is the longest season because Tyler is gone so much. It definitely gets tough being by myself for several hours a day, day after day, week after week, and have no friends or family to spend my time with while Tyler is away. Don't worry, I am not sitting here crying. I find things to do to fill my time but it does get a little lonely!

I feel like it is the shortest season because I can not believe it is the end of March and we are so close to summer. I was able to go home for 3 weeks at the end of January/beginning of February and that helped so much. It was a huge refresher to be able to go home to the States. It was also nice to have Tyler's mom visit us in January and Erica and Dan (Tyler's sister and her husband) just visited us this past week. Time flies by much faster when we have people here.

Tyler's schedule has started to lighten up a bit and we are hoping with warmer weather just around the corner, we can take a couple of trips. We were able to visit Biarritz, France and Bordeaux while Erica and Dan were here and that was fun to experience with them. 

Hopefully now that the season is winding down and we have a little more free time, I will have a more exciting blog post to share before the end of the season. 

Until then, here are some pictures from the past few months!

Biarritz, France

Bordeaux, France

The Holidays and Paris

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had a great holiday season! December was another busy month for us. Tyler had six games in a three week span. It was a really good month for his team though. They won several big games even beating the number one team in the league. It was a great game to be at - the arena sold out, the atmosphere was so much fun and Tyler played amazing. You can go on my Facebook wall and see a highlight video from the game. It is a really cool video but I apologize for the uncensored lyrics... They really don't care about that kind of stuff in Europe!! :o) (I shared it publicly on my Facebook just before I posted this... so even if we aren't friends via Facebook you can still go to my profile and see it!)

Christmas was quiet for us but that's ok. We enjoyed watching every Christmas movie we could think of, eating way more than we should have and, most importantly, getting to Skype with our family. Christmas is one of the hardest times to be away from home but being able to Skype with family makes it easier. Technology is pretty amazing!

Tyler had six days off after Christmas and as most of you know already, we went to Paris. I kind of delayed writing this post because right after we got back, the tragic events in Paris happened. We left 36 hours before it happened and I just thank God that he was protecting us and we were able to leave. The grocery store that was held up was less than a mile down the same street our hotel was on. Tyler and I took a long walk the first day we got there, just to take in everything, and we were right in the area of the grocery store. It is crazy to think just days before we were right there.

Although is extremely sad what took place, I am so thankful that we were able to go. Our trip to Paris is definitely one of the most amazing things Tyler and I have ever experienced in the eight years we have known each other. Truly unforgettable.

We arrived around lunchtime on New Years Eve and decided it would be best for us to figure out the metro system rather than paying an arm and a leg to get to our hotel by taxi. We would be taking the trains during our visit to get around the city anyways so we figured we might as well just start learning it right away. After purchasing our metro passes and getting directions on which trains to take to our hotel, Tyler and I headed to the train platform. The train came within in a couple of minutes and as I am walking into the train, the alarm goes off to notify that the doors are closing. When we traveled in Italy by train, the alram would go off for at least 5 seconds before the doors closed. Well that isn't the case in France! Those doors snapped shut leaving Tyler on the platform and me on the train. I started frantically pushing the button on the door trying to open it back up. But it would not open and I am panicking watching him as we start to roll away. The reason I was panicking: I have no cell service on my phone in France. I only use my phone through Wi-Fi. I am always with Tyler and when he is away, I am just sitting in our apartment using Wi-Fi to iMessage and Facetime him. So here I am..on this train in Paris.. no phone.. and I've lost Tyler. People were looking at me like I was crazy and my mind was racing trying to figure out what I was going to do. Luckily the train stopped after about two minutes (and I would later learn that all of the trains stop that frequently in Paris as well as trains running through the same route every 3-5 minutes) and I got off. I saw a girl about my age and asked her to use her cell phone. Thankfully she was super kind and let me use it and I was able to call Tyler and let him know where I was. The next train showed up 5 minutes later and he was on it. Needless to say, our trip started off really exciting and I made sure to hold Tyler's hand/arm the rest of the trip when boarding the metro!

We checked in to our hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around the area of our hotel. We had talked about going to the Eiffel Tower to ring in the New Year. How cool of a story would that be to say we were at the Eiffel Tower at midnight on New Years?! Well, we decided we didn't want to deal with all the crowds and drunk people. Haha. We are getting old ;) There were tons of restaurants around our hotel so we figured we would find a nice restaurant and a get a bottle of champagne and ring in the New Year on more of a low key note. Well, it got even more casual. Instead of finding a nice restaurant, we ended up finding a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. When we saw it we both were just like "YEP. We are eating here!" We miss the variety of food we get back home and neither of us had eaten at a Mexican restaurant in months. The food actually ended up being really good and Tyler and I just sat and laughed and talked for a couple of hours. We grabbed some champagne and rang in the New Year. Not only are we old but we are simple. And I love that about us! 

Over the next several days we saw all the main sights in Paris that we could think of. We, of course, went to the Eiffel Tower first. You think you know what you are going to expect when you see it since you have seen pictures of it your entire life. But when you actually see it in person it is a completely different feeling. It's kind of overwhelming actually being able to see something that everyone in the world says they would love to see. And even though you know its huge, it is even bigger than you can imagine! Seeing this massive tower was such an incredible experience. We went back and saw it several times but the first day we saw it the weather was incredible. It was a beautiful day and just perfect. And if you didn't already see my Facebook status, I got to play a part in a proposal! An American couple must have heard Tyler and I talking as we were walking through the park in front of the Eiffel Tower because the guy was like "Hey, could you take a picture for us?" and I said "Sure, no problem!" As I was backing up trying to get the Eiffel Tower to fit in the frame, I immediately knew what was happening. I could see on the camera screen that the guy was fidgeting in his coat pocket and I am thinking "OH MY GOSH THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!" But he must not have trusted that I was going to snap a million pictures because he told his girlfriend to hold on and ran over to me and told me he was going to propose. I was like "DUH I GOT IT" ...Haha no, I didn't say that, I was nice :)... So I got to take all these pictures for this couple getting engaged in front of the Eiffel Tower that they will have for the rest of their lives. I seriously felt so lucky I got to take the pictures for them! What a romantic proposal! I wish I would have gotten their names so I could creep on the picutres via social media :) 

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower by night <3

We went to the Lourve Museum and Tyler and I didn't realize how big it was! Neither of us are really into art but we walked around for a couple hours appreciating everything we saw (and we only saw a sliver of it!) Everything was truly beautiful. The Monna Lisa is in the Louvre so of course we had to see it. But it is honestly a little bit of a disappointment. So many people are just crowded around it that you cant even take the time to look at it. We worked our way up for just long enough to snap a few pictures and then get out of the way for the other people pushing their way forward. It is still pretty cool to say that we got to see it though!

The Louvre

We did so much in Paris. We walked along the Champs-Elysees several times and went in many of the stores, got macaroons from the famous Laduree and saw the Arc de Triomphe. We saw a couple of churches - the Notre Dame and the Sacre-Coeur. We bought a lock and wrote our initials on it to be locked on the Love Lock Bridge. Went to the Galeries Lafayette. And ate/drank all the American things we could find: Hard Rock Cafe, Pizza Hut, Chiptole (insert angels singing), Starbucks (four times), and even found a great Sushi spot since we haven't found one here. Needless to say we ate REALLY healthy in Paris. And you would think we would have tried to find the best French restaurants while we were there but NOPE. These Americans took advantage of anything Americanized that we could find!!

Macarons from Laduree

Arc de Triomphe 

Notre Dame

Love Bridge

Galeries Lafayette 

The last night we were there, we took a boat and dinner tour that lasted 2 and a half hours. Its basically this huge boat with glass ceilings and windows and it takes you around to see all the sights and you have this fabulous meal. It was so fancy and romantic! It was definitely one of the main highlights from the trip. We truly did have a great French meal and it was cool to go around and see how everything looked at night. It will be something I never forget. 

Boat Tour

I absolutely loved Paris and it is 1000 times better than I could ever explain. I think if any of you ever have the opportunity to go, you should definitely do it! It was such an incredible experience and I am so thankful we got to go!

I can't believe January is already half over. These next months are really going to fly by! Laurie (Tyler's mom) is coming out in just a few days to visit us! And then I am traveling back with her to the States where I will be home for three weeks! I CAN'T WAIT! By the time I am back in France it will already be mid-February and there will only be a few months left in the season! It will be time to start making summer plans soon!!! :)

Have a fabulous weekend, everyone!