SERIOUSLY

The title - My new overused phrase. As if you can't tell

5:30am - 10pm daylight sounds like fun if you don't have kids, or if you have kids that don't base bed time on when they can SEE it get dark OR WAKE UP when the light enters their room. Seriously not cool.

Roller shades, for lack of a better term, suck.

Keeping light from coming through the windows at 9pm is a seriously challenging task.

A little bit of advice - don't put a vacuum cleaner belt on your vacuum that isn't made for your vacuum. Ex. a bissell belt on a eureka vacuum. Your vacuum will sound like a screaming woman, melt the belt and all important pcs. on the bottom of the vacuum, seriously stink up your house and then die. Just take the wrong belt back and get the right one.

Never think to yourself that the snow/winter must be over. As soon as you do, it dumps 12 inches on you 2x in a 5 day period. Seriously.

This is a little disturbing

I stopped watching Oprah a few years ago cause Dave Ramsey was her guest and she kept cutting him off in a sentence and it made me mad! This snipit from YouTube was emailed to me today. I am not sure about the church mentioned, I have not heard of this. But what O is saying about God and the way to God is sick and disturbing.

Would love to get some feedback on this.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JW4LLwkgmqA

Up and Running.....well almost

YAY!!!! I am so sad Kevin is not here to see this in person. I have been trying to get C to walk on the skype camera for him. Won't be long now till he will be running with big bro!

Urgent Prayer

Please pray for our nephew William, he just turned 2 and was hospitalized tonight for pneumonia. Also pray for his mama and daddy.

*** Update ***
William is doing much better. After some IV fluids and antibiotics he is sitting up and drinking, eating, and playing around. Lord willing, he will get to go home tomorrow. So please keep him on your prayer list.

*** Latest **** 4/10/08
William is at home and recovering. As well as mamma and daddy. Thanks again for the prayers.

Rome

ok, so in my attempt to fix the slide show I somehow deleted what I wrote about rome. So I hope you read it cause it ain't getting retyped. Let me know if the pics are still all messed up, cause on my computer it is working fine.

*** Ok I give up! You will just have to use your imagination and come up with a good view of us in Rome based on the pics available. Grrrr!!!

Venice

This was my favorite place of all the cities we visited. The atmosphere is so laid back and there are no cars. The gondolier cheesing it up for the camera is the guy we hired for our midnight gondola ride. Along this ride we saw the house where Casanova lived. The pic of us at St Marks Square with St Marks behind us, we are fresh off the overnight train looking very unshowered! Yuck! We of course took in all the usual sites, St Marks Basilica, Doge's Palace, gelato, gelato, gelato, murano glass and just the great scenery. We grabbed sandwiches from "sandwich row" and sat at the waterside for our last dinner. It was very cool seeing the city light up and people watching.

St Mark's Square is unbelievably crowded. All of these vendors are selling corn to feed the flying rats (the nickname we gave the pigeons). I was so disgusted to see theses kids with these nasty birds all over them. I had to take a pic just to show you all.

Venice is a labyrinth so finding anything can take some time even with a good map. So we did not find the original authentic carnival mask makers. The pic of the Harry Potter Books had a price tag of 3000 euro, not dollars, euro. So, that is almost $5000. I also took a pic of the fish cause the European idea of refrigeration is very different than ours here in America. The big bridge is the San Rialto, it offers the best view of the city and the grand canal. I will definitely go back to Venice, and for those of you who think so, it doesn't stink.

Paris

We are back from all of our jet setting and I am now finding a few moments to catch up. I have lots to tell so posts per location are my way of sorting through it all. I am so skipping Hawaii right now, cause I am still on my Europe "high". So, I shall begin with Paris.
We got in Thursday morning and hit the ground running. Literally. Our plane was late taking off in Huntsville, so we landed in Atlanta at the departure time for our flight to Paris. So we ran 3 terminals in 7 min with 25lb packs strapped to our backs. I was sweating like a pig when we made it to the gate. Thank you God for listening to me, cause the whole way to Atlanta I was praying for a miracle to delay our Paris flight. We stumble to the Atlanta gate and see ppl boarding. The scanner was not able to read boarding passes so everyone had to get new ones reprinted. Seriously, thank God for answered prayers! After we arrived in Paris, it took us about 3 hours to get all the little details sorted away before we could drop our packs and see the sites. First we started with visiting the crepe stand and having dark chocolate and banana crepes. Talk about melt in your mouth. So fresh, he made the crepe, buys the chocolate across the street and the bananas next door. The pics of the little markets were in the neighborhood we stayed in. We stayed on Rue Cler (in English Cler Street). It is a pedestrian only street and you can take an hour stroll down this little lane to find chocolate shops, cheese and pastry shops, fresh food markets, flowers, cafes, etc. All the locals were trolling around their little shopping bacgs on wheels. Tres Parisian. After that we take a few self guided walks on the left bank, admired the Seine, and took lots of breaks to sample the local fare. Day 2, my 30th birthday!! We were going to hit all the awesome museums. However, all the museums decided to go on strike, so they were all closed! I was seriously like, "Seriously, are you telling me the truth?!" So instead we battle the rain and hit up the churches, Notre Dame, St. Chapelle, and St. Sulpice, The Arc, anything that was free and outside. The weather was great too. If you see the pic of Notre Dame, the sky is completely black. Not more than 20 seconds after I took that photo we get pummeled by pea size hail. Lovely. Thank goodness we brought most of our Alaska gear, so we stayed nice and dry despite the annoying pelting. We left Friday night for Venice and returned to Paris the following Thursday. The museums were off strike so we toured the Louvre, Orsay, Rodin, and Army museums. I could not put all my pics on this slideshow, so when you all take your visits you can see the scrapbook! I loved Paris. I think the neighborhood we stayed in made it great for me. It was such an awesome place, this is where you need to stay if in Paris. The people seemed very responsive to my feeble attempts of having a conversation and everyone knew enough English for us to get by. This is definitely on my list of places to return. Hope you enjoy this first installment. Oh, and check out Kevin's face while he is standing next to the huge painting dubbed, "The Birth of Venus". Too funny!