Thanksgiving and Switzerland

Hey everyone! 

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are in full swing of the Christmas spirit! I have yet to decorate but am hoping to get a few shopping trips in over the next week to fill our house with Christmas! I am a little hesitant on what we should get for a tree since Carter is a curious toddler! I just know he will want to get into the tree and the presents. We will see what we come up with! 

Laurie (Tyler’s mom) was able to spend a week with us over Thanksgiving. She showed up with literally an entire suitcase of stuff just for us. It was like Mary Poppins bag and she kept pulling out item after item - peanut butter, candles, toys, shoes, powdered coffee creamer, oatmeal, clothes, Christmas presents... the list goes on and I seriously could not stop laughing. She brought SO MUCH. It was awesome though to have so many things from home and it was so nice of her to bring it all out. 

We wanted to be able to do as much as possible while she was here and try to show her as much of Italy as we could. We took day trips to Milan and Como, showed her around our city, and hit up as many Italian restaurants as we could. She was able to see Ty play in a game and see how we spend Thanksgiving overseas. We had everyone from the team come over to our house (about 16 people + 3 kids), had an abundance of food and spent a fun evening together with everyone. It was a quick week and it went by way too fast but we all had a great time! 

Over the past weekend, Tyler had some time off so we decided it was finally time to go to Switzerland! We are literally 10 minutes from the border and only about 30 minutes from Lugano, Switzerland which is where we decided to go. And oh my goodness. Talk about beautiful!! The lake in Lugano is so big and as you’re driving in, you can see it from above and it really takes your breath away! The mountains and hills surrounding the lake paints the most picturesque image. The city is also beautiful, clean and you can tell people are probably pretty wealthy there (Hermès, Gucci, expensive cars etc). We took a boat tour and got to see the gorgeous scenery and walked around the city center where they were starting to get their Christmas markets going for the season. Lugano is probably on my top 3 cities I have been to and we only spent a few hours there! I could go on about how pretty it was. I am already looking forward to going back and would also love seeing more of Switzerland. 

We always joke about the things Carter will get to tell his friends at school and the things he will bring for show and tell. We laugh at how extravagant his stories will sound. “ I was born in France”...  “Here is a picture of me in front of the Eiffel Tower at 2 months old” ... and from our trip to Lugano he will get to add “my first boat ride was in Switzerland”.  Kid, you have a pretty cool life. 

I can’t believe tomorrow is already December 1st. Each holiday gets more exciting as Carter gets older and starts understanding more. I can’t wait to see how he handles seeing Santa as last year he cried and cried at 9 months old. My guess is that he will have similar feelings this year and throw a fit and run away now that he can move around on his own. LOL. Oh the joys of toddlerhood! 

Enjoy your holiday season! I will try to get another blog post up before the end of the year! 

Halloween in Italy

Hello again! Here is what we have been up to the past few weeks:

We were able to take advantage of a day off from basketball and travel to Lake Como. It is only about a 45 minute drive from us and the weather worked out in our favor and was perfect. Lake Como is absolutely beautiful! (Google it!) I secretly kind of wished we lived there! We took in the gorgeous views, ate lunch right on the lake, grabbed some gelato and ended the day with Carter playing at a playground with the lake and mountains as the backdrop. It really was a perfect day! We are hoping to make it back there once more before the weather gets too chilly. 

On to a completely different topic.... Holidays. Holidays overseas are always difficult. Especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. Up until now, Halloween wasn't really that big of a deal to miss out on. But of course, now with Carter, it's almost as hard as Thanksgiving and Christmas in my opinion! Preparing to head overseas this season, it really did make me sad that Carter was going to miss Halloween in the States. Even though he is young and still doesn't fully understand what it is, I still wanted him to be able to be home and go trick or treating. It makes me sad to miss out on American holidays with our family. Those are the special moments that we miss out on that are the hardest things to handle over here. 

I still wanted to make it special so I got Carter some Halloween goodies to pack up in my suitcase - of course there was already Halloween stuff out at Target in August! I never even thought about taking Carter trick or treating here until Tyler brought it up one day in September right after we got here. The whole team lives in the same apartment complex (which has never happened with previous teams, everyone lived in different locations). So with us all being so close, it would make it super convenient to take Carter trick or treating here. I don't know why I never thought of it but I was so excited to do something for Carter that was Halloween related! 

Once October rolled around, stores started filling with Halloween stuff. I did not realize how much Italy has embraced the Halloween tradition and it is definitely by far the most I have seen while overseas. I was able to grab some cute Halloween goodies/decorations and we were even able to find pumpkins to carve. We found Carter a Batman mask and dressed him up as Batman and he was so stinking cute. He even left the mask on the whole time which Tyler and I could barely believe! He did so great even though I'm sure he must have been thinking "what the heck are these two getting me into" ;) Even though we weren't home, I'd say we had a pretty good Halloween for Carter and I am already looking forward to next year when he understands it even more. 

It might sound silly that I am talking about being sad about missing Halloween in the States, but those are really the moments that matter! Holiday traditions surrounded by family and friends are priceless and I can't wait to have those back again. Thankfully, this year we are going to have a little bit of home with us on both Thanksgiving AND Christmas! This will be the first time ever in the 8 years Tyler has played overseas that we will have family with us on those holidays. Laurie (Tyler's mom) will be with us for Thanksgiving and Erica and Dan (Tyler's sister and her husband) will be with us for Christmas! I am so excited and am so happy we will get to spend the holidays with them. I can't wait for them to experience the holidays overseas. 

I will probably be back with another post after Thanksgiving. Enjoy eating way too much turkey and pie and enjoy the time that you get to spend with family and friends. Don't take it for granted!