Oh how we love the pines...

I love the mountains... It's hard to beat the smell of fresh pines! This weekend we headed north to Prescott for a long weekend. Todd's family has a cabin outside of Prescott that our kids love to go to. It has a little steam, (that actually had water in it this time) that the kids love to play in.
I had so much fun watching the kids play in their "fort" that is right across from the cabin, connected to the stream. They love to play in there and spend most of their time hidden away having fun. As much as I love the mountains, I love even more that all of our attention is focused on playing outdoors.
The girls loved playing badminton. Most of our time was spent playing baseball, seeing who could hit ball the farthest down the road. Megan became quit the baseball player.

Shayne kept busy, using his Scouting skills. We brought him a new knife from Italy that he put to good use. He whittled his way thru several branches! We keep our golf-cart at the cabin so the kids love to take rides.. this weekend we wish we had warmer clothes with us! We had soooo much fun, frozen fingers and all!!

Schools out for the summer....

I can hardly believe it's summer time! Typically when we think of an Arizona summer, we think of sunny & hot. Well, mother nature treated us to a great first day of summer break! RAIN and WIND! So what do you do when it's raining outside??

Soccer at the park with friends

Rain clothes??? What's that?

Who needs a slip-n-slide when we have a tramp out back?

And the winner for being the most soaked goes to.....

EMILY (surprise surprise)

You'll notice that Ashley isn't in around for any pictures.. she spent her first day of break at a friends house, far away from the rain. Soon the rain will be gone and the heat will rule, but for now we are livin it up while we can!

Just say it isn't so...

Today was a bitter sweet day, my little Emily is officially done with preschool. (She's here with her bestest friend, Audrey) That means I'm done with yet another stage of life. Where does the time go?? I can remember like it was yesterday, wishing my kids would just sleep thru the night, then it was if they would just entertain themselves for a few minutes. Now...I sit here in the silence hearing in the distance my children just doing those things that I once wished for. I just want to halt the growth, freeze the time, beg for another day of them needing me...

I remember holding Emily as a newborn, both of us crying for hours on end. I wanted so badly for it to end. I wanted her to get bigger and stop crying. I remember my Grandma telling me "just try to enjoy it, this time will end too soon." I thought yeah right! Now look, she was right. I wish I would have sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the ride a little more instead of wish for the next stage in life. I guess the saying is true...Time is slow when living in it, but way to fast when looking back upon it.

So today a bid farewell to preschool forever... another one of my babies, spreading her wings, ready to fly.

The Amazing Race..

So we made it home a day late...but I'll get there in a second!

The final day of our trip was filled with gondola rides, walking tours, spaghetti, and shopping.

A few facts we learned about Venice..

1. Lot's of people in a very small confined space
2. Over priced.
3. Everyone smokes
4. Fish and pasta are more abundant than pizza. (southern Italy where Todd served his mission was filled with pizza shops, not the case here)
5. Water and Coke are not easy to find
6. Internet? They haven't quit got to that yet
7. The sunset is the best, seen from the Grand Canal

Seeing as though it was our last day, we spend time getting "stuff" for the kids. That night when we finally got to call home (the 9 hour time difference really messes everything up) we heard that my poor mom, our babysitter Jessi and my friend Allison were all dealing with throw-up..from 3 of my 4 children!! They got sick Tuesday night and it continued on and off all week. My heart sunk and I wanted to get home, especially after hearing my kids on the phone, sad voices and tears. We felt horrible for all parties involved. First, Jessi is a BYU student, no kids, and she had to clean up so much puke I felt horrible. Then Allison, has 5 kids of her own and then was picking my sick kids up from school and trying to keep Emily (the only one healthy) so that she didn't get sick, oh my gosh I felt bad. Finally my mom, well she's a grandma I knew she could handle it, but then I heard that Shayne had a band concert that she took the kids to, thinking all was well, and Ashley got sick in the middle of the concert and almost made it to the bathroom. Yikes!! I owe so many people, so much!

So we asked for a wake-up call bright and early (5 am)along with a water taxi to take us to the train station to start our journey home. Well, 5:45 I heard a banging on our door. I stumbled to the door, thinking the place was on fire, and an angry Italian man stood at the door yelling at me, in broken English, that he'd been calling us for 45 mins and we never answered the phone (among other things that I couldn't understand) and that our taxi was waiting for us. Luckily we had packed the night before, so we threw on some clothes and headed downstairs to the awaiting water taxi. Our train didn't leave until 6:30 so we were still doing ok, late wake up and all. Upon arriving at the train station, we realized that we'd forgotten our backpack that had our passports in it!

An so our Amazing Race began...

Todd ran back to the taxi and asked if he'd take him back to the hotel quickly. Well in Italy, nothing is quick! I stood at the train station with all our bags waiting for Todd, not knowing when he'd get back. We missed the first train...missed the second train.... we had one train left that would give us enough time to still make our other connections. (we were taking a train to Milan, flying to London and then home all in the same day) Then our world came to a HALT! THe Italian transportation industry went on STRIKE! Yeah that's right, no taxis, no trains, no planes, no NOTHING! A 4 hour strike.

I consider myself to be an avid watcher of the Amazing Race, I know the tricks they use to get on planes, trains etc... well I've decided that people are much nicer if they have a camera crew filming their every move, because they could care less that we HAD to get home and would not put us on another train!!

As to not drag this out any further....hours later we caught a train (we had to kinda sneak on, that's another story) we're yelled at by every Italian British Airline member that could find us, and finally got a flight to London late Friday night (the same time we should have been flying over the Atlantic) We stayed the night in a little, and I mean little hotel, no bigger than my bathroom Friday night and hoped to get on a flight the next day.

So after 8 days of galabanting and 2 days of trying to get home, we made it home Saturday night. The flight was no piece of cake. 10 hours of flying.. 2 1/2 of those hours with with planes air conditioning out, and all 10 hours with Todd being air sick, and he was in the middle seat. I knew it was bad when he jumped up and when he finally returned to his seat, he was holding a bag, a coke, some rolls and had sweat all over him. Lucky guy sitting with us right???

But we're HOME!!

Venice..

We survived our long 7 hour train ride from Vennia, it actually wasn't bad at all. The train wasn't full so we didn't have anyone even sitting around us until one of the last stops. Between the beautiful Swiss Alps to view, a nap and books to trip was a piece of cake.

We arrived in Venice and found an Italian holding a sign reading SMITH so we approached her and found out see was our ride to the hotel. Looks like our travel agent thought we should arrive in Venice in style, so she arranged for a private water taxi. We had the boat to ourselves, with our own guide and the Grand Canal all around us.










Our hotel sits just off of St. Marks square. I remember seeing pictures of people wih pigeons all around at this square. The pigeons were not in shortage!

We Kiss Vienna Goodbye..

Our final day in Vienna was fun! We didn't take a bike tour (Todd's back and the European bed aren't agreeing) but we did take the last of our bus tour. We got to drive over the Danube River







and found another ferris wheel, there is NO way I was going on this creaking old thing!







We also went to a great palace, Belvedere.
We saw orignal paintings of Monet and Von Gogt while escaping the rain. 3 floors of paintings! I guess I've never really appreicated fine art before, I may need to attend a few art masterpiece classes with my kids next year! It was fun though.
The gardens were perfectly manicured. We had a beautiful view of Vienna from the palace. We didn't want to wait for our tour bus to come back so we thought we'd take a walk back to the city center, it didn't look very far. Well, it's a good thing that we were both wearing our walking shoes! We had NO idea where we were! Good thing that I had 2 maps and a map reader with me!!! 2 1/2 hours later, we found a familiar street. Mr. Map Man, doesn't need directions ya know. Needless to say...our feet hurt! We did see some streets and little old markets that we would have never seen otherwise, thanks Todd!!
Our last stop in Vienna was at a gelato shop. We thought we'd better see which Country has the best gelato. London was good...but Vienna puts London to shame! I will never bother going to a gelato shop at home ever again! The gelato at home tastes like dirt compared to here, and we haven't even gotten to Italy yet! We'll cast our final vote after the trip is over.
Tomorrow we leave bright and early to catch our 7 hour train ride to Venice. I can hardly wait to hear Todd talk to all the Italians! We will finally be able to find a bathroom!!

Vienna...

Today was a cloudy, rainy day. We got to do quit a bit in between rain showers. Emily wanted us to take pictures of what we ate while we were gone..so this post is for you Emily!
Daddy ordered a Frankfurter for dinner, thinking it would be a great sausage..it came in a pot of boiling water, with a round bun and a cup of horseradish, for dipping. Not exactly what he imagined! I told him it looked like an expensive Oscar Myer Weiner to me!
For breakfast we found a little cafe and each had the best apple strudel that we've ever had. We got to eat outside at a little picnic area. We were the only ones not drinking beer or smoking. While the rain was coming down, we took shelter in a small cafe for a snack. Dad had a chocolate filled crosissant, I had a regular one. A funny thing happened to us there... We asked to use the bathroom, although they don't call it that, so dad went first. He came to 2 different doors. One labled with a D, the other with a H. He wasn't sure which to go into so he guessed that maybe D stood for "dude". When he came back he told me which door he went into. I then left and thought I'd better go into the other door. Well turns out that D doesn't stand for "dude" after all. I went thru the door marked H and found a free standing urinal, and that's it! Thankfully nobody was in there, so I quickly went into the other door. I returned to the table to let dad know that d definatly does not stand for "dude" and he's lucky that no damsel walked in on him!
Back to the food.. You'll never guess what restaurant we found..TGIFridays!
It just wasn't he same Megan. The honey mustard was horrible.

We did do some other things today like..Sat with some pigeons..
found a fake well..
Posed by an awesome fountain (yeah I'm not sure why I was getting so comforable there)...


and took a bus tour to avoid the rain. (sorry, too rainy to get the camera back out!)



Tomorrow, depending on the weather, we are doing a bike tour...stay tuned!

(ok, so spell check doesn't work here, its late and my personal spell checker is asleep, so sorry to you English majors)

(P.S.- mom, I can recieve your emails but it won't let me respond...but thanks for your notes!)

Top 5 Things I Miss....

1. My kids (man I miss them bad!)

2. Ice/Cold water (everything is either room temp or served with 1 piece of ice)

3. Dr. Pepper

4. Fresh air (smoke free)

5. People who like Americans

So we made it to Vienna. We had a very warm welcome into the country by a nice taxi counter worker....when after ordering our taxi in more sign language than words, she told me in a very direct way, that maybe I should learn the language if I wanted to come to her country. Very kind!

After our first European rain storm, while driving to our hotel, we found that we may not all speak the same, but we all can communicate with the universal "bird". Our taxi driver loved to exercise this right!

Tonight we wondered down a few blocks to Stephansplatz. I think all the hustle and bustle of Vienna must happen here. We watch several street performers. Break dancing must still be cool.


We also found a one man band that would make the guy on Mary Poppins proud. Todd thought he'd tip the guy..too bad he didn't convert his currency fast enough..the guy was good, but not as good as Todd tipped him!

London Day Two

We had a bit of a late start to our Saturday. Today we were going to catch a train to Manchester, to see a football match. We found out late last night that the our plan wasn’t going to work out. The train that would take us there would leave early, no big, but it would be a 4 ½ hour ride. That would have been bearable, but the returning train left before the match would be over, leaving us without our prepaid hotel in London. SO… plan B. I guess you could say that we sleep in a little. 11:30am London time, but really our bodies are still in AZ so it was only 3:30am there! We got woken up by housekeeping trying to get into our flat to clean it. Turns out, that we woke up just in time to watch the Manchester match on TV. We both wish we were there, I guess we’ll have to come back!
Today we took a double decker tour bus. We went all over London. This is the London Bridge..

London Eye.. we went on this yesterday!

This is me and the Queen in front of Kensington Palace. Princess Diana lived here.


For lunch we found this little place that was kinda like the UK version of In & Out. The little ketchup dispensers cracked us up. They look like something from Emily’s play food!

Tomorrow we are headed to Austria! A new adventure awaits!

Hello London

Hello from London! After a long 10 hour flight, having our bags come off last on the round and a crazy taxi ride, we made it to our hotel. Our hotel overlooks the river Thames. We are directly across from the London Eye, the very large ferris wheel. I faced my fear of the horrifying ferris wheel today and took a ride on the Eye. It’s about a 30 min ride all the way around with a top height of 420 ft. The view was incredible!


Tonight we walked all around the city and ended up in a side alley and found this “hole” pizza joint. Yummy is about all I can say. I know that we were suppose to wait until we got to Italy for pizza but…. we were really hungry! Tomorrow we will hunt down some fish and chips.
We’ve been planning to go to the Manchester United match tomorrow but we are being told that it a 4 hour train ride and that trip would eat up our last day in London. We may still go, we’re working out the details with the concierge.
This jet lag is really messing with our bodies. We tried to sleep most of the time on the plane but that’s always hard. Right now it’s already 11:00 pm and my kids aren’t even out of school yet! It’s crazy that losing 8 hours makes that much of a difference. We are having a great time exploring this awesome city. I’ve never seen so many people smoke and drink on such narrow streets in my life. Todd said, “just wait for Italy”.
I know that we had only been gone for 24 hours but we really miss you Shayne, Megan, Ashley and Emily!! Be good. Love you!