Paris, je t'aime

A very, very small part of the gardens at Versailles. 

Man oh man, has life been crazy busy. July was a crazy busy month with 2 weddings, some camping, starting a new full-time job, and visiting more family... it's life and it's great.

I'll never fully catch up posting pictures of our trip. We literally took HUNDREDS of pictures. These are mostly from Versailles, Notre Dame, and the Opera House. 

We went looking for the Phantom and the Hunchback in the same day.

I'm still reliving it just by looking through these... Paris is for lovers, my friends. 

             

 

You'll notice we got really good at taking selfies. #selfienation

Climbing to the top of the Notre Dame calls for duck lips and bug-eyes.

Versailles

We never did find Quasimodo. But we climbed to the very top and saw the bells and gargoyles. 

After a few days in Paris, we went up to Normandy. What an incredible place that was.

We stayed in the darling little town of Bayeux and basically had a private tour for part of the day from Utah Beach in the North, down to Omaha Beach and Pont du Hoc and everywhere in between. It's so humbling to think of what happened in these places 70 years and a week to the day we were there. It meant a lot to us to be able to be there. 

German Batteries - the huge guns are still in there...

American Cemetery

Omaha Beach

Omaha beach

Bayeux

Let's Be Adventurers

Just a lovely afternoon in Battery Park in NYC - stripes were winning that day.

To say the last (almost) 4 months as newlyweds have been an adventure would be an accurate way to describe it. 

Every single leg of the big trip from this last month has been an adventure:

Serious tornado warnings in Nebraska the night of my Jazz gig - so the show was cancelled.

Driving all 2100+ miles myself from Utah to New Jersey.

Driving through Midtown Manhattan on a Friday afternoon in my new car to get to the airport. (Shoot me now.)

A really inconvenient strike on the Paris public transportation system.

Driving back from NJ to UT in TORRENTIAL downpours in the midwest with flash flooding all over the place.

(Just to name a few things...)

But, man oh man, Matt and I were basically on a honeymoon for 3 weeks and it really was like something out of a dream. We were with each other non-stop for 3 straight weeks and not only did we not get sick of each other, we had the time of our lives together and loved every moment realizing we'll probably not have an opportunity like that ever again.

So now were getting back to the daily grind, but the adventure doesn't stop!

There are two wedding in my family next week - there will have been 4 weddings in 4 months just in my immediate family. Crazy! 

Ending this post kind of awkwardly, but oh well. Ha. More details on our France trip coming up!

Scenes from my weekend.

"Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values."

Ralph Ellison