Week 23 - The French Open!

This week continued to be a grind at work.  In early and taking the last bus home at 11:55 pm.  It is starting to wear on the whole team.  But we're getting close, only 2 weeks left to the trade show.  So many people are excited about what we're doing, but I'm still a little nervous until we start signing up real customers.  This is truly a start-up in every sense of the word.  We're shooting for the stars on this one!

The weather was rainy at the start of the week, but we got our first look at summer on the weekend.  The temps are in the low 80s, but without any kid of air conditioning, we're all worried that it will get hotter.  80's are not too bad, but I bet 90's would have us spending a lot of time driving in an air conditioned car!

Big news this week was that Emilee can now hear again.  After two weeks of being deaf again 24x7, she was super excited to get her cochlear implant working again.  We were a little worried because the cable didn't do the job.  It ended up being the coil, which is the piece that holds the magnet.  The ringing in her head has gone down and she is used to the computer again.  Although it took a couple days for her brain to get used to sound again.  It is nice to see her happy again!

Ashton is in 7th heaven here now that it is springtime.  He's been catching bugs, butterflies and aphids to feed his lady bug larva.  One of the larva went to pupa stayed and actually came out of it.  He also had a caterpillar that made a cocoon.  He absolutely loves bugs.  His latest thing is watching youtube on different caterpillars and bugs from around the world.  Kim says our other kids liked bugs too, but I think Ashton loves them more than the rest!

Jake and Emilee are both done with school now.  Spencer has one more final on Monday.  I'm impressed that they were able to adapt to a totally new style of school.  It definitely has its pros and cons.  Ashton continues going to school until July 15th.  The Luxembourgers go until August.  They have one month off and then go back.  It is like year-round school.  They break it up with lots of bank holidays.  He has this whole week off for another Catholic holiday for something to do with Pentecost.

Jacob's braces broke off this week, but we were able to find an orthodontist here that fixed them for 30 euros.  Not bad!

The big news this week was the French open.  The plan was to drive to Paris at 5:00 am, get there by 9:00, enter at 10:00 for first matches at 11:00.

At 3:30 Saturday morning I heard Kim's phone getting text messages.  After a couple times, I had her check it and it was Jacob.  He wasn't feeling well.  So we went upstairs to check him out.  He had stomach cramps that had kept him up since about 12:00.  As we were looking up on the Internet what he could possibly have, I started to feel sick.  My stomach felt horrible, so I stood up and went to the boys dresser.  Still feeling bad I went over to the foot of Jacob's bed.  That was the last thing I remember until I saw Kim's face over me shaking me!

I passed out cold!  They said I went to the foot of the bed and then slowly slumped over and fell back to the floor.  They shook me for about 5 seconds before I came to.  We have no idea what caused it.  It has never happened before.  Kim thinks it is from sheer exhaustion from working too hard  Who knows!

Nevertheless, we were all pretty worried about driving to Paris.  Spencer looked up on the Internet what to do if someone passes out while driving.  With that knowledge we set out for Paris at 5:22 am!

The drive over was uneventful.  We got into Paris and found a place to park out car.  It was a short 15 minute walk to Rolland Garros.  On the way we passed the St. Germain soccer stadium and got the best croissant of our lives at a little bakery.

Once on the grounds, we explored and watched some players warming up on the courts.  Clay looks really fun to play on!  The first match was the Legend's final for the women.  Navratilova and Clijsters vs. Dechy and Testud.  It was pretty amazing to see Navratilova play.  She is still super competitive.  She was always positive with Clijsters, but you could tell she does not like losing.  Several choice words came out of her mouth when they made mistakes.  We were on the first row, right behind the bench.  It was awesome to be that close.  The match was really good and they barely won in the final set tie breaker.

It rained a little bit, but not bad.  Then the sun came out and started to cook us.  The next match was the McEnroe brothers vs. Pat Cash and Haarhuis.  McEnroe looked older than 55, but he and his brother still played really well.  It was amazing to again be so close to these guys.  They seem larger than life, but when you get close they are just people.  The match was not as good from a tennis perspective as the women's, but it was funnier.  All of them made funny comments and talked more.  Tennis is very interesting to watch because you hear everything.  Most of what they say you can hear.  It goes super silent during the serve and then the crowd chants something, claps, etc.  It was actually really fun.

After the McEnroe's won, we ran off to get some food before the main event.  We had some really good ham and cheese sandwiches and went to center court.  Jake and Emilee had awesome seats at one end of the court.  Spencer and I were tucked in a corner.  Sharapova vs. Halep in the finals was pretty dang exciting.  The crowd was bigger and louder than the previous two matches.


The match didn't disappoint and it wasn't clear who was going to win until the end.  Sharapova did her famous grunting the entire match.  She has a lot of routines that she goes through to get focused.  She walks away, pauses, walks to the court, then when returning serve hits her left leg a couple times.  Every time she sat down she would get the ice towels on her legs and neck.  She was like a robot!  At that level of tennis the difference between winning and losing is so small.  You can tell they've been coached to do things the same way every time.

The only negative thing the whole day was this 9-10 year old girl and her dad that sat right behind Spencer and I.  She would yell "Aller Maria" about 3-4 times in between every point really loud.  Her dad would mock the umpire by saying "merci, si vous plait".  It got REALLY annoying.  We gave them some pretty evil stares, but it didn't help.

Sharapova pulled it out in the end and was able to prevail.  She immediately jumped into the stands to her give hugs to her coaches.  You can tell it is a huge emotional and physical effort to get to that point in your career.  It takes a ton of preparation and then some luck to win a Grand Slam.  I'm sure she was glad that Serena was not playing!

The final match of the day started about 7:00 pm.  We were pretty exhausted and ready to go home, but we decided to watch the men's final in doubles.  Some Spaniards and some French guys battled for 2 sets before the French guys finally won in the tie breaker. We were glad to have stayed because they hit the ball much harder and reacted faster than all of the previous matches.  The crowd really got into the French team. "Aller Jaune!"  because they were wearing yellow shirts.

All in all we had a wonderful day.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see that with the kids.  I doubt we will ever get that type of opportunity again.  Although I would highly recommend it if you like tennis.

We walked back through Paris to our car and headed home around 10:00 pm.  It was a brutal drive home, because I was so tired, but the kids stayed awake and helped me get home safely.  We walked in the door at 1:00 am and went right to bed!

What a week!

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