Say Cheese!

Our first weekend in the states was a big family weekend. Everyone was in town to celebrate Papaw's retirement. Since the whole crew was there, we seized the chance to take some family photos. The whole tie-wearing thing sort of started out as a joke, when I told Jason (who wanted to wear one) that there was no way either of my brothers would be wearing a tie for the pictures. Well, the next thing I knew, both of my brothers came in wearing their ties (having been prompted by my silly husband, of course). By the end of the day, even poor Jesse the dog had his tie on.

We took lots...some serious and some, well, not-so-serious.

I love this crazy family!

On the Road Again

Well, we've done it again...gotten so far behind that it's just too intimidating to try to catch up. So instead I'm going to just abruptly jump ahead to our most recent trip, in hopes of just starting fresh and getting back into the blogging groove. You can just guess what we did between the beginning of August and the end of October!

Late last month, Jason and I had the incredible opportunity to attend a conference in Austria. It was breathtakingly beautiful. See?

This is the view from our hotel. We felt like we were looking at a postcard scene. We had to drive about three hours from the airport to the hotel, and the whole time we just oohed and aahed at the scenery. The trees blanketing the mountains were all changing color, and it was just delightful. But it was a good thing we enjoyed the fall scenery on the first day, because by the second day this was what those hills looked like!

 We got snow! Beautiful, peaceful, lightly-falling snow almost every day we were there. We were in heaven!

We took a few early morning walks around the town. This gorgeous church was just down the hill from our hotel.

And here we are with those beautiful snow-capped hills behind us. We wanted the kids to see that Mom & Dad were really in the snow!

Where were those kids, you ask? They were having adventures of their own! Before we left for Austria, Mimi and Papaw flew over to visit us, and we spent a fun week enjoying our city. Then, a day before Jason and I needed to leave, we packed the three kiddos up, and they headed to America with Mimi & Papaw! They spent the week at Camp Mimi, as Papaw likes to call it, and then we flew to meet them when the conference was over.

As always, they were super excited about getting to see Jesse the dog! They were also pumped because Halloween fell during that week, so they got to experience that American-style for the first time (though we have had some overseas Halloween fun in years past). 

Mimi made these amazing costumes for them. Aren't they perfect?? They were still wearing them when they picked us up at the airport later that night! We were very excited to be reunited with our little pharaoh and Cleopatras, and they were excited to show us their huge stash of candy!

It was a wonderful week! I'll be back soon with more about the next part of our trip.

Green Grass...No, it's Astroturf...Oh Well, Close Enough!

And here is the next installment of our "Catching Up From the Summer" series: Beach Vacation!

This past June, while the big kids were still in the states, we got a disappointing email informing us that the hotel where we had vacationed for the last six years would be closing immediately. We didn't even have time  for one last trip! We were all sad about not being able to return to a place that holds such special memories for us, and we weren't really sure what we would do when it was time to take another vacation.

Fortunately, we didn't have to figure it out for ourselves. Some friends called in August inviting us to join them at a new place that none of us had been to before. We were able to work our schedules out, and just a few days later we were driving up to to a beautiful villa with its own private swimming pool! It didn't take the kids long to test out the water!

It was a lovely 3-story villa with a separate apartment on each floor. There was no one on the third floor, though, so our two families had the whole place to ourselves. It was a perfect set-up. And yes, the beautiful green "grass" on either side of the pool was actually astroturf, but we didn't mind a bit.

From our second-story window, we could see the gorgeous blue sea across the street. On the second day, the dads walked over to check it out and discovered that they could walk out just a short way and see all kinds of beautiful fish with their snorkels. From that point on, we all took turns making snorkeling trips to the beach. Neither Lee Anna nor Sawyer had ever snorkeled before, but they were big fans of it by the end of the week. Lee Anna was very nervous before her first trip, but she cautiously made her way out into the water, glued to her Daddy's side. Once she realized that there was so much to see, however, she forgot all her fears and could not get enough. She came up from the water more than once just to exclaim, "Oh Daddy, it's WONDERFUL!" 

Sarah Claire didn't get to snorkel this trip, but she did enjoy the pool time. They had a collection of fake lily pads to use as decorations in the pool, but Sarah Claire thought they were way too fun to just use for decoration.

One morning, we took the kids to visit a local aquarium.

  They loved pointing out all the fish they saw!

The windows had these little ledges that Sarah Claire perched in so she could be up close to all the action. She just sat there and watched while Sawyer and Lee Anna raced around from tank to tank.

So while we're still sad that we can't return to our old favorite spot, we're glad that we were forced to try something new. We had a wonderful, relaxing week with lots of sunshine, good food, laughter and relaxation. Hmmmm...I think it's time to go back!

Roll On 18 Wheeler

Well, it's been a day or three since we posted anything here. We've got a good bit of catching up to do. We'd like to keep things in chronological order, so that means we need to start by backing up a few months...so here goes!

Some time this summer, Beth and I took a little trip to the north coast. As we were going, we took a few pictures to highlight the differences between this highway and an American interstate highway. This first one isn't that out of line--just a farmer carrying some peppers to market in the back of his pickup. Okay, so he may have put one or two more sacks than the truck was designed for, but still, it's a truck with peppers in it. 

Same deal with this next one: it's not crazy to haul some coiled up tubes in the back of a Chevy, but he might have put a few more on there than he should have. 

But then it gets a little strange. We couldn't tell if this next one was cow bones, palm branches, or some combination of both! 

These office chairs looked a lot funnier in real life. Imagine those wheels that are sticking straight up also spinning wildly in the wind! 

You might see a truck carrying scrap metal in the States. But he might pull a tarp over the top, or at least throw a rope or two over the pile to keep things in place. And yes, there's a guy sitting on top of the heap, too.

Here comes a cell phone tower, on a truck made for carrying two-by-fours! Where's the red flag that's supposed to be tied on the back? 

 And is this a sliver of a really big satellite dish? Or maybe a drainage pipe? Who knows?

Box springs! A huge stack of box springs headed to a mattress factory! At least he tied them down.

Ceramic toilets and sinks. Packed in with straw. 

We weren't sure that little rope was enough to hold that tailgate up against the weight of these hoses, but it seems to be doing okay. Really, most all of these things are also transported by trucks on I-10, but trucks in the states have closed trailers so we don't see what they're hauling. And they can't overload them and stack them up twice as high as the truck. 

This next shot was a little concerning. We were headed north, and started seeing a line of southbound trucks on our side of the divided highway on our right! They just made their own service road out of our right lanes to avoid going a long way to turn around. 

 Now this will communicate in any language! See, everything's not that different. 

Look closely at the stickers on the back of this one: Somehow this Chevy is powered by Windows XP! I guess the spell-check feature was turned off. 

As soon as we started home, we noticed a pretty strong showing of tomato trucks (no, it's not the first time we've seen lots of tomato trucks on this road!). So we started counting. In two hours, we passed by 158 trucks full of tomatoes! It takes a lot of tomatoes to feed 20 million people who all want tomatoes and tomato sauce at every single meal! 

Yes, there's an app for that. Just click on the plus every time you see a tomato truck and let the phone keep track for you. 

And that was our road trip adventure. Stay tuned for more catch up posts coming very soon!

Complex Connections

In our previous post, you can see the happy Seminole fan getting the season kicked off. What you can't see in that picture is what had to happen for that to be possible. You see, our current home is about 6506 Miles.(10,470 kilometers) from Doak Campbell Stadium, so lots of electrons have to move through lots of wires (and probably some waves have to bounce of a satellite or two, as well) in order for live images of boys playing a game with a funny-shaped ball to reach my desk. It's not quite as simple as sitting on the couch and pushing a couple of buttons on the old remote.

First, you might have seen the two computer monitors on my desk. I just bought the bigger one a couple of weeks ago. It lets me read news stories or study maps on one screen while reading and responding to email on the other. Really, I got it so the little letters on my laptop screen could be big enough for my 40somethingyearold eyes to read. But I digress.

(Here's a cute shot of our youngest Seminole fan, just because almost everyone reading this is her grandparent)

For the past three football seasons, we've been able to watch American college ball with the aid of a device called the Slingbox. The Slingbox connects a cable TV box to the internet, so we can see whatever is on at Beth's parents' house. We sign in and whatever they are watching comes on our computer screen. And if they're watching a movie and it's time for the 'Noles to kick off, we have the power to change channels from that same computer screen. (Mysteriously, our phone always rings right after I do that.)

This weekend, however, my Slingbox remote wasn't working, and Beth's folks were not home to fix it. But those proverbial cats can be skinned using a variety of methods. OnE of the biggeSt American sPorts Networks offers lots of games online. You go to their website and click on a game and Poof, there it is. So I did that, but they have this pesky rule that their service is only offered to people in the States.

But there are ways around that, too.

I simply had to sign on to a VPN connection to make my computer appear to be in the States. I did that, then went back to the aforementioned website to watch. They are a little selective and wanted to be really sure I was in the States and with a partnering cable provider. So I had to sign in with the user name and password from our American cable provider. And it worked!

After all that, we were still a few hours away from the midnight kickoff in our time zone. So I got to watch a little of the Miami-Boston College game. I was proud that my kids noticed how much the BC colors look like FSU colors. I really wanted to watch UF struggling against Bowling Green, but that one was blacked out and it wasn't worth trying to skin a different cat to try to get to that!

We're undefeated so far, and looking forward to a fun season!

Happy Man

So what if he had to wait until midnight for kickoff? This guy is watching Seminole football! He's a happy man.

Living It Up

So what have these two been up to the last few weeks?

They've been having all kind of adventures...in America! For the second year in a row, the grandparents talked us into letting Lee Anna and Sawyer make the trip back to the states to spend some quality time with Mimi, Papaw, G.G., Grandpa, and of course Jesse the dog, and have some good, summer fun, American-style!

 Sawyer and Papaw got bumped up to first class for their last leg of the trip to Florida!

Apparently they thought the 3 at the end of the movie title meant they were supposed to go see it that many times!

 By their third time seeing it, I bet they could have almost joined the cast!

They played putt putt for the first time and totally loved it! Lee Anna even got a hole in one! When they finished the course, she begged to do it again, and then said, "Well, can we at least just walk through and look at all the holes again?" 

They also spent lots of quality time in the water--in the pool, at the beach, and on the river!

And they've had all kinds of other adventures that I don't have pictures of, including a fishing trip where both kids actually caught fish! We're glad they've had so much fun, but we're ready to have them back under our roof again. When I told Sarah Claire they would be back soon, she said, "Yaaaaay! And I will hug them!" I'm sure there will be lots of hugs all around tomorrow night. Come see us, guys!

Out on the Town

A few nights ago, we ate dinner out and took a little after-dinner walk. Here are a few pics I took while we were out...

It's that time of year again. In less than two weeks, most of the folks in this part of the world will begin fasting from sunrise to sunset for 30 days. Several weeks before Ramadan, these little lantern shops start popping up all over the city. The folks in our country use them to decorate for the month, usually hanging them outside their flat or at the entrance to their building, although you can also buy a mini lantern on a keychain, or one as large as a small automobile.

Sarah Claire befriended this donkey on our walk. She really wanted to pet and hug him, but thankfully was content to have her picture taken with him.

Speaking of hugging, she has also gotten into the habit of stopping to hug most of the trees we pass. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I am sure that it makes for a dirty little girl by the time we get back home. 

And check out my fancy new shades! They were purchased on the same walk. We passed by the entrance to the metro (our subway) station, where there is always an amusing assortment of goods for sale on the street. That night we saw fruits, vegetables, sunglasses, Ramadan lanterns, shoes, shorts, t-shirts, kitchen bowls, pots & pans, blenders and other small appliances, and popcorn. We resisted most everything, but I did come away with this high quality pair of sunglasses. They may resemble a brand you've seen before, but if you look closely, you'll see that they are quite unique! 

You may be wondering where our older two munchkins have been lately. Well, they've been off having adventures without us for the past few weeks. I'll post more about what they've been up to soon!