Home from Italy

Here's Andrea's picture as DEMANDED by Nana... will get to more Italy pictures soon enough.

It has been hard to recover from our last trip. I've finally caught up with laundry and we have enough food in the house to eat after three trips to the various grocery stores around town. Even Andrea slept for two days straight after we got home.

I make three to do lists every day of things I can't forget to do... and I end up just losing each list. If I lose a to-do list does it mean I don't have "to-do" it? I'm on my fourth "to-do" list today but can only remember four of the things that were on the previous three lists. Oh well, I did buy milk, so at least I can consider the day a success. Oh, and I also translated my way through Danish websites to find AND purchase my kids school pictures!! Felt quite proud after I was done...

So Italy... It was interesting. With four kids I wasn't a fan of the skinny one way streets, so called "sidewalks", and the scooters zipping around everywhere. The big cities we were in seemed run down and cramped, but I think that's alot due to the ancient-ness of the towns in general though. I'm sure smaller hill side towns are quite pretty. : )

The Vatacain was big and the HUGE wall around it was interesting, the Sistine Chapel was impressive... even the curtains were painted on the walls. We saw the Uffizi gallery and I know now that Michaelangelo's David statue is NOT in the Uffizi gallery (despite looking for it for two hours). I think we saw lots of famous paintings though because most were hading behind glass and had their own humidifier thingys. We aren't too big on art though... so I can't tell you what we saw. : ) A picture of two little angel kids looked familiar though.

As I mentioned before, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was my favorite. How "un-sophisticated" is that?! I just think it's hilarious that it's leaning so much! We even stopped by there again on our way back home. ...We started in Pisa, took a train to Rome, took a train to Florence, then took a train back to Pisa and had a "layover" there until our flight left that night. Lots of trains... Some fast, some not-so-fast.

Andrea did great. She was a wonderful little traveler and made us lots of friends along the way. On both flights she just ate and slept... no crying or being fussy at all. Scotty did well too - he had lots of things to amuse him throughout the whole trip and ice cream every day helped. Michaela and Sierra, well... they are seasoned world travelers now so they know the routine. Look at the boring stuff nicely and an Ice Cream and Playground will follow. There was even a few times we got a sincere "Wow" from Michaela, which to those of you who know 10 years olds... a genuine "wow" is a big deal! Pizza and Ice Cream every day. Ice Cream was super yummy and a real treat since I don't like the Ice Cream here in Denmark... Pizza I could do without for a while now. :)

So, no offense to Europe, but I'm done seeing it. We'll make sure to fit in Sweden (I want to go to the Arctic Circle) and I'd like to go back to the Effiel Tower for a few days... Czech Republic is supposed to be nice... Perhaps Iceland (Hilde's idea), China, South Africa (Ingrid's idea)... Faeroe Islands sound fun too. Any suggestions? :)