A long time coming.

It has been a few weeks now since we have been back from our vacationing. Court is napping and I have nothing to do. This is probably a good time to blog.

Courtney and I were lucky to be invited to go along with her family on a cruise in the Mediterranean followed by a week in Italy! Awesome, I know! My extent traveling before this was the Northwest, the Northeast to visit Court and her family, Russia when I served there as a missionary, and our honeymoon to the Dominican Republic. Needless to say, I was excited.

We flew into Venice, Italy the day before our cruise. That night we took a gondola ride and ate at an Italian Restaurant. Dad, who speaks Italian, made friends quickly with the owner. That is one of his talents. He can make friends with anyone.

The next day we got on our cruise. We went to Dubrovnik, Croatia first. Then we went to Athens, Katakolon and Olympia in Greece. The food was great, it was relaxing and we had a great time. I ate escargot, duck and many more delicious things. I would recommend a cruise to anyone. They are so fun and relaxing.

After the cruise we ended up back in Italy. We did some site seeing and then traveled to Padua, Verona(home of Romeo and Juliet) and Milan. We did the site seeing thing and had a great time. I would say the only down side to this whole trip was the fact that they were having a major heat wave. It was in the high 90's the whole time with humidity of like 83%. It was killer, but overall well worth it.

While we did our site seeing thing in Italy we stayed in a hotel in the top of the mountains. The hotel was huge, and it used to be a old ski resort. Have you ever seen the shining? It was that creepy. There weren't tons of people there and it smelled funny, but the view was amazing. Did I mention I ate horse too!? Crazy huh!?

One of the highlights of Milan was that we actually, with our own eyes, had 15 minutes to see "The Last Supper". It was an amazing thing to witness. I never knew it was in a small church in Milan. Had we not been on a tour I never would have known. The church was in an obscure place, no big lines or fancy signs saying here is The Last Supper. It was a really neat experience .

Coming home we got stuck in Amsterdam and our luggage was lost too. It was a hard way to end such a wonderful trip. There was tons of things more to say but I figured it would bore everyone to read it all. I took almost 500 pictures too. I'll add a link to some of them. If you want to hear more about the trip just let me know.

Cruise - Italy Trip

Stewart Falls

Last Saturday the Stuarts invited us to go hiking. It was a lot of fun. The weather was great and we all had fun. Even Tommy loved it!

Apparently I can link to my album on Picasa. I hope this works.

Stewart Falls

Michael 1 Vending Machine 0

In most buildings here on campus you can find some type of vending machine. The building I happen to work in does not. Whenever there is a need for computer support in the neighboring building we often stop at the vending machine.

Today we were called over to help out. So on the way back we stopped. Micheal, one of my coworkers decided he would try this new bag of chips. He paid, made his selection and as the chip bag fell, it got stuck. This is bad you would think, but no, the vending machine kept spooling and another bag fell out. This bag got stuck on top of the other. Now that is ironic. However, another bag was spooled out and dropped to the bottom. Well, we couldn't just leave those bags sitting there. Michael decided to buy a Butterfinger which was directly behind the trapped bags of chips. Did he want the Butterfinger, no, but he wanted to knock the chips down. It was successful! Michael bought 2 items and walked away with 4. The best part, the chips were delicious. Finally, we were able to strike back at the vending machine for all people everywhere who have had a selected item get stuck.

Michael 1 Vending Machine 0!!