Mediteranean Cruise - Day 1 travel

So our vacation started really early on Saturday morning, we had to leave our house by 3:30 AM to get to the airport and check in by 4:30 AM.  It didn't help that David and I were trying to finish up a few things before we left and didn't get to bed until after midnight.  Also, Michael started running a fever and was not his normal self on Friday.  I was worried and wasn't sure whether to take him in or hope it would run its course quickly.  I stocked up on Tylenol and decided to hope for the best.  So we headed for the airport, all of our bags in hands.

 

As you can see Michael wasn't feeling too good and to top it off we had to check in the medicine because it was over 3 oz. and I forgot to give him some before I did that.

 

AJ, on the other hand, was up before I went to wake him at 3:15 AM.  He was so excited that he had a hard time going to sleep the night before.  He was wide awake and ready to go.  As you can see he took out the Uno cards to play while we waited for our airplane.

 

Once we landed in Ciampano (about an hour from Rome) we had to make our way into Rome, I didn't have this pre-planned and as many of you know that is not like me.  I had a rough idea of how to get us to the ship, but nothing definite. Here we are waiting for our bus to take us into Rome.  The boys liked to make a luggage cave.

 

Here is Michael after the medicine kicking in a little bit - a little more like himself.

 

On the bus and ready to head into Rome

 

AJ sitting with Daddy

 

So it took a little extra time to get into town because we were stuck behind this horse and buggy for a little while.  Cracks me up, right in the middle of a city on a really busy road.  It was also pretty funny because our bus driver was a crazy driver and was really upset when somebody took his parking spot in front of the Rome Termini.  I don't understand Italian, but I am sure it wasn't nice words he was saying.  Then we had to buy train tickets to get us to where our boat was.  The Termini is HUGE and so many people around, they say Rome is the biggest pick pocket place in the world.   So after we bought our tickets, we literally ran to the gate which was all the way on the other side to try and catch the 10:12 train and we missed it by 4 minutes.  So we had to wait an hour until the next one showed.

 

Then onto the train for about an hour and twenty minute ride to where the boat was docked.

 

Michael looking guilty of something, not sure what it was though.  :-)  And then once we got there, we had to take a taxi to the boat because you are not allowed to walk up to it.  So after a car drive, plane, bus, train and taxi we finally made it to the ship!

 

Here we are getting ready to board!!

 

The boys thought the room was soooo cool!!  They had bunk beds they slept in right above our beds.

 

What is really funny is on that warning right there it said not to let children sleep on the bunks, but David and I weren't about to try and fit up there on them and the boys had way too much fun up there!!

 

After that we headed for lunch and the boys' eyes were wide with all of the food there.  And as you can see Michael still wasn't feeling good, he didn't even finish his pretzel, which if you know him that is not normal at all.

 

Here we had to do our emergency drill.  Michael fell asleep while we were in the first part of the meeting in the theatre so David just carried him, he was starting to get hot again.

 

AJ with his life jacket all ready for the drill!

 

The boys on the front of the boat as we head out of port.

 

So I normally don't take pictures of food, but the funny story behind this, once David took off the head he put it in AJ's face and they boys were totally freaked out.  We had a good laugh about it, especially since they love bugs, snakes, etc.  But they sure didn't like the looks of it.

 

After dinner we wandered up to the top deck to check out the sunset.  A great way to finish the day.

 

Here you can see another cruise boat on the right side of the picture heading in the opposite direction.  It was  truly beautiful sunset!!

 

The top of our boat with the sun almost gone and so were we.  We were all pretty tired.  AJ and I didn't get a nap on the plane (mostly because AJ was so excited that every time I started to fall asleep he wanted me to look at something) and we headed for bed, happy and ready to start our adventures!!

We are BACK!!!

We are back from our two week vacation, and let me tell you it was FANTASTIC!!!  Two weeks with no electronics, cell phone leash, work, nothing but spending time as a family and we certainly did that!!  We had wonderful weather, met some great people and truly enjoyed just being a family.  We arrived home today and have unpacked, done laundry and working on getting settled in.  I have downloaded all my pictures and will start going through them and will get them uploaded, hopefully I will get my first post done by tomorrow.  :-)  I am as excited to write about our trip as I hope you are to read about it, there were so many wonderful parts and to finish it off with Rome was great!!!  We did a lot of walking throughout our vacation and a lot of eating ;-)  I can't say how wonderful and much needed it was!!!  I feel like we all really were able to relax and have a good time!!!  So stay tuned and I will get to picking out photos and start getting them uploaded soon!!

On a side note, we came home to this wonderful surprise!!!  Michael and AJ were yelling at us before we even had the van unloaded!

 

Yep, this is our garden right now!!  Can you believe it?!?  I sure can't, I didn't think anything would grow at all.  The boys were able to pick a few strawberries to eat today and everything!!  Just as a reminder, this was how our garden started out back in May....

 

To say the least all of us are really excited about it!!!  I think maybe next year I will have to plant things a little farther apart or build a second one.  Live and learn, not bad for my first try and not doing any research before hand.  :-)  I hope all is well for everybody and I will get to work on those posts - get ready for some history lessons.  ;-)

 

AJ's last day of 1st grade and end of coach pitch season

Well Thursday was a sad and happy day - it was AJ's last day of first grade.  I really can't believe that it is already summer and he is now a 2nd grader.  Where does the time go?  I really wish I knew.  I am a little sad because I LOVE his teacher and am going to miss volunteering for her next year, but I know we will stay in touch and hopefully Michael will get in her class when he goes into first grade.  So AJ and I wanted to get her a little gift to say thank you for all that she has done for us this year.

 

She is so genuinely happy it is fantastic!!!  We had a little poem for her attached to the cup and it was really cute and we meant every word in it!

 

Mrs. Richardson made autograph books for the kids, so they are going around getting all the autographs of their friends.

 

For the last day, she decided to have brunch, so we all brought in different breakfast items and it was quite a spread.  AJ begged me to make chocolate chip cookies.  Of course I said yes, but the only problem, I was so busy that I forgot until about 11 pm and then had to make them.  I haven't really gotten much sleep lately and can't wait to catch up a little, I hope.  ;-)

 

The boys enjoying their brunch!!!

 

AJ is deep in thought about something, not sure what it is.

 

Some of the boys and Julie hamming it up!  It was a great class and such a wonderful learning environment, we are really going to miss it next year.

 

AJ and Mrs. Richardson

 

Then today was the boys' last baseball games.  This afternoon AJ had a pizza party to celebrate the end of the season.  It was a great season, with a great coach and great parents also!!

 

So happy just to be there!!  I love his smile and cheerfulness!!!

 

Gotta love pizza!!!  He is such a ham!!!

 

The boys love to do their pouty lips because it always makes me laugh!!!

 

The coach talking about how well AJ did this year on the team!

 

His trophy!!

 

He was pretending that he was hitting with it!!  It was a good way to end the year and made some new friends as well!!  Now we are off for our cruise, so you won't be see anything for a couple of weeks, but check back in July and you will see what we did on our cruise!!!  Hope you have a great start to the summer!!!

Happy Father's Day!!!!

Okay so I know it is a little early for this, but since we are going to be heading for our cruise on Father's day, we celebrated early with David.  I had a dentist appointment that morning, so my wonderful husband helped the boys weed our garden.  And I couldn't help it, but I had to put another picture of it, things have just started to bloom and I am soooooo excited about it!!  I just had to share  ;-)

 

Isn't it so pretty and green right now, our tomato plants are in the back left, front left is pumpkin, then bottom middle is watermelon, above that is lettuce and above that are carrots, to the right of the lettuce is cauliflower, I think, above that are the strawberry plants and over from those are broccoli and cucumbers.  So we shall see how it gets along and if we get more!!!  Here is to hoping!!!

 

But any way, I digress, back to Father's day.  We took Daddy to a movie, a kids move, Epic.  It was a pretty good flick and we had a great time!!  After that we took him out to dinner.  They have a Chili's here on post and we had never been so we decided to try it out.

 

 

The boys were so excited to give him his present that they wanted to wake him up really, really early in the morning.  But I told them they had to wait until dinner.

 

They made a card at school - it says Best Dad Hands Down and he is!!  I didn't have any say in them picking the Seahawk colors they did that all on their own.  They know how much Daddy likes his Seahawks!!!

 

The boys really, really wanted to get him the bat cave Lego set and so we did, along with a new movie for him.  The boys are showing him all the cool things about it, they are as excited about it as he is!!

 

Eating dinner together!!  Man they look soooo much a like it is crazy!!  Both such handsome men!

 

I couldn't help myself, Michael just cracks me up!!  Can you tell he is running a fever here?  He basically laid in my lap the whole dinner, but had enough energy to ham it up for the pictures!!

 

Michael giving me a great big hug!!!  I sure do love when my boys give me hugs even if they aren't felling real good.  I hope he starts to feel better since we leave in about four hours for our cruise!!

Michael's last day of pre-K

I still am a little shocked that Michael is done with pre-K and will be on to Kindergarten next year.  I am just not sure where the time has gone.  They say it goes faster every year and I can totally see that.  Just yesterday it was January and now here we are in the middle of June and both my boys will be in elementary school next year.  So on Tuesday I went in to help the whole day with Michael's class and really did have a wonderful time!  I love those kids, they are fun to be around and it is great to see them outside of class too because they always run up to me and yell, Mrs. Vandeway, Mrs. Vandeway!  Just another reason I love to volunteer in their classes!  The morning started out a little cloudy, but thankfully it cleared up so we could have our ice cream party outside!
 

 

The class on their last day, Michael is by Mr. Angel on the right side.

 

His ice cream sundae with lots of toppings.  He didn't eat much of it, but he ate all his brownie that he helped me make the night before!

 

Being silly with a straw one of the other mom's brought in.  They are neat with the umbrella attached to the straw.

 

Enjoying his browning and he had to have the umbrella straw in his Capri Sun.  :-)

 

Michael is always climbing, no matter where we are he is always climbing!!

 

They are a precious class - I think one of them will be going to KES with Michael and possibly in the same class which would be really nice for both of them!

 

Michael with Mr. Angel.  Mr. Angel always called Michael "his dude"  When we left he said he was going to miss him and not sure what he was going to do without him next year ;-)  Michael also said that he was going to miss his school.  I am so glad he really enjoyed school and hopefully he will keep that joy of learning!

 

Ms. Duncan, Michael and Mr. Angel.  They were such wonderful teachers!!!  I really can't say enough about the two of them.  They worked so well together and so awesome with the kids!!!

 

That evening Michael had a t-ball game and they decided to do the end of the year party after the game.  We did a potluck right there at the field, it was great!

 

Michael is hovering over the pop that we brought because the coach said it was for the adults and Michael was making sure they all knew that!!

 

Daddy and Michael enjoying the sun, food and good company!

 

 

AJ enjoying the potluck also!

 

Michael with his baseball cupcake!

 

Michael giving the coach a high five - speaking of great with kids, he was so patient and really wonderful with the kids!   We were so lucky with coaches this season!

 

Michael with his trophy!!  He was so proud of getting another trophy - I think he is trying to catch up with AJ

 

The team with their trophies!!  It has been a good year and we have one more game left on Saturday to go.  They sure do keep us busy, but they love playing the sports and I love seeing the joy in their faces!!!