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!!