Blogger has been a faithful friend ever since 2008 when I first started one before moving to Cyprus for a year.
Thanks to Tonio's help, we have streamlined things. Our website and blog are now connected on one site. Yay!!!
So, say good bye to Blogger with me, and come on over to our new home:
We have a "Home" and "Blog" page... click around and enjoy. I am still setting it up, so it will be a few days before it's ready to take off.
Love Linz
January 2020
We made it! I'm getting closer to being caught up. We're in the correct year now. I better keep going... 2020 is slipping by quickly. Haha. Enjoy!
Thankful for this ball of spunk and joy and also thankful for living in a place where going to the beach in January is normal =).
Sunday school amigos.
Daphné's 5th birthday day. Her friend Soraïa got to come over in the morning before school since her mama had to go to work early. It was so fun for Daph to have a buddy the morning of her real birthday.
I brought a little cake to the park after school to celebrate our 5 year-old.
And then, we invited some friends over for a treasure hunt birthday party. The quest was to find the sunken treasure which bore the lost crown of Princess Daphné. A lady at church made his incredible cake. It didn't just look good. It was delicious too!
Here are the girls after finding all the different pieces of the treasure map and taping it together. They discovered the lost crown was down in the garage (under the sea). They were so excited, and each girl got their own treasure bag with their name on it full of goodies. I had a lot of fun planning this day for our big girl.
Selfie with my beauty during her party.
Talking with my brother Tanner. I sure do love him and miss him.
Visits from Tata Christiane are fun for our Daphné Christiane.
This kid is so funny. He wanted to try on ALL his undies. At this point, he's not yet potty trained, but he found the stash of undies. You should have seen him shuffle around the house laughing.
Still fits.
Picked up from school by Papa and Papi - so special.
Chinese festival of lanterns - out little China doll.
We are absolutely humbled and thankful that this beautiful girl is our daughter.
Proud to know how to spell all the names of our family members by heart.
Figured out his suction cup toothbrush end can pick up his water bottle. Pure joy!
Already a voracious reader.
A brisk jaunt to the beach.
Tonio and Pierre go to the pastor's conference in Austria at the castle.
Tonio got to lead worship one of the nights there.
Daphné crusin' with her homegirls.
Tonio's cousin's son sent us a "Flat Stanley" to travel around Nice. He came all the way from Washington state. We sent him back with an "I love Nice" shirt. =)
See you in the next post for February 2020.
Love Linz
November / December 2019
Welcome to the end of 2019, a really remarkable year. I will do an overview at the bottom of this blog post. And for all of you just joining the party, I have been going back to catch up after leaving the blog dormant for 2 years. This is a huge accomplishment - I have now finished 2018 and 2019!!!
Enjoy!
Tonio and I went to Bandol (near Marseille) to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. It is super important for us to celebrate and be intentional about our marriage, so these little getaways each anniversary (that could not happen without the amazing Papi Pierre and Mamie Nancy) are ways for us to reconnect and just enjoy each other without distraction. I sure do love this guy!
Happy Thanksgiving! We invited our favorite Antibes family and our dearest ground floor family up to the 4th floor for a yummy Thanksgiving lunch. I had so much fun with the food and cooked my first turkey.
And since I love crafts and getting people involved, we all decorated 1 or 2 letters of the "Give Thanks" banner. And after we colored them, we had to share something for which we were thankful that started with that letter.
Merry Christmas! Christmas seems to appear so quickly after Thanksgiving. Here we are in our living room hanging out with Tonio's brother and his wife's family who came from the north west coast of France, Britany. We don't get snow on Christmas, but we can almost always count on sun. I'm not complaining at all!
Tonton Seb and Maïna gave the kids these super fun towels. We all thought it was the funniest and cutest thing to see the little Christmas "elves!"
And to wrap up 2019, I give you a family photo in front of the Christmas tree. I'm so thankful for my people.
So, I'd love to give you an overview of our 2019:
Love Linz
September 2019 // My mama and papa come visit us!!! This is picking them up at the airport. I can't believe it's already been a year. I miss them :(.
September 2019 // My friend Joanna visits!!!
September 2019 // I swam a 1km (a little over 1/2 mile) race in the sea with these 2 mama friends, Nicole and Stephanie. It was the craziest, stormy day, but thankfully the water was still warm. We had fun!
September 2019 // We dedicated our little Django bud at church in commitment to raise him in God's truth as we follow Jesus together as a family. He is a gift from God that we are honored to take care of this side of heaven. Django Timothy. And Grandpa Timothy (where Django's middle name comes from) and Grandma Kathy were there. So special!
October 2019 // Just a fun fall picture of our girl.
October 14, 2019 // My beautiful sister gave birth to a third little bundle of joy, Rocky Mae. My niece Rowyn and nephew Rowdy were quite excited to meet their baby sister. AND... As I type this blog, it is only 3 days before Rocky's first birthday. Time sure does fly. I can't wait to meet her and Rowdy and give my Rowyn girl a huge hug AND meet my brother and sister-in-law's sweet 2-year-old daughter, Nova. Living far away can be so hard. If you haven't picked up on it, I'm quite homesick.
October 2019 // The great part of indoor pools - you can swim rain or shine. These 2 munchkins can make me so crazy, yet bring so much joy at the same time. Strange how that happens. God is so amazing how He gives us what we need and knows what we can handle.
My 2 bestest mama friends here in Nice, Ave from Estonia and Maki from Japan. Expatriate mamas unite. We used to see each other once a week when all the littles were little, but now with school and busy lives, we see each other 2 or 3 times a year. Not enough, but when we get time together, it's like no time passed. We keep each other sane by sharing hilarious stories of what our kids do. They both have 2 kids in a similar age range as Daphné and Django.
Stay tuned for November and December 2019. I hope you're enjoying these as much as I'm enjoying typing them.
Love Linz
June 2019 // Last summer kicked off with a fun end-of-the year school party. Here is Daphné with her teacher and her 3 besties, Tanya, Soraïa and Saféya. They performed "How Does a Moment Last Forever?" You can listen to that song here if you'd like.
June 2019 // School's out!!! Tanya and Daphné go for a cruise on Tanya's play Vespa.
June 2019 // I could write a whole blog post on this day. A monumental day for Pierre and Nancy and for our family. Pierre handed over the leadership of Calvary Chapel Nice to Tonio. A crazy change for all of us, but so beautiful because God's hand and peace was (and still is) all over it.
June 2019 // Daphné's ballet school put on a show, and Daphné's group performed the Little Red Riding Hood. Tata Cricri came from Antibes to see the show. I'm wearing Daphné's red cape and hood. You can listen to the song here.
July 2019 // Time to swim in the sea!
July 2019 // A woman at church had Daphné pose for a silly photo shoot.
August 2019 // Our annual trip to Austria for the Calvary Chapel family conference. We have a tradition to take a picture by the lake every year, since this is where Tonio first introduced himself to me 10 years ago in August 2009. I'm so glad he did!
Thanks for spending the summer of 2019 with us in retrospect. I hope are all doing well, staying safe and healthy as we launch into this abnormally unique autumn of 2020.
Love Linz
January to May 2019
January 2019 // Daphné turns 4!!! She invited a group of friends to an indoor play place to celebrate. I wanted to play, but I was too old...haha. This place was incredible!
February 2019 // Snowboarding with my man and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.
February 2019 // Sledding with friends. Daphné was in heaven. Django was not into the puffy snow suit.
March 2019 // I visited my fun friend Denae in Torino, Italy!
April 2019 // We road tripped up to Paris to visit Tonio's bro, Sebastien, and his fam. This photo was taken the day before Notre Dame burned. We could even see the spire in the distance from our walk, the last day of its existence. Crazy.
April 2019 // Petrignani family photo at Seb and Maïna's home.
April 2019 // On our road trip back down to Nice, we stopped to visit Tonio's Uncle and Aunt in a beautiful mountain village in La Savoie.
April 2019 // My stunning friend Leah came to visit us with her daughter, Vera. Here we are in front of the Prince's Palace in Monaco.
May 2019 // Celebrating Tonio's 37th birthday with Pierre, Nancy, Rob and Cricri! We are so thankful for him!
I hope you enjoyed a fly over January, February, March, April and May 2019 with the Petrignani's. Check back later this week for more in 2019 =). Soon, there might even be current content, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Hehe.
Love Linz
