At long last...

So I'm finally updating with more pictures and stories! We're hanging out at CiCi's Pizza on this fine Memorial Day uploading pictures to Winkflash so we can get pictures ordered before too long, so what better time to do stuff with the 'ole blog!





This is inside St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. It was crazy how ornate everything was there. I can't even fathom how much money was spent in the making of that place over the years and how many people could have been helped instead of building a massive ornate church building. (This coming from the guy whose church meets in a school gym)





This is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Technically speaking you weren't allowed to take pictures in here, but there was tons of people in here and most of them were taking pictures...what can they do? Anyways, it was crazy...This chapel was bigger than I thought it would have been and I didn't realize how ornate the whole ceiling was...I just really knew about the part you always see with Adam reaching for God...it was really neat.




This is light on the wall inside the Pantheon in Rome. It's a big, circular building with a hole in the middle of the ceiling to allow light in. So there's always a "God-ray" as Joyful and I call them. It was a neat place...and it was free, so all the neater.



This is one of many pizzas in Italy. This one's the veggie pizza. It's got a slice of eggplant, some roasted red bell pepper and zucchini. Notice how the ingredients aren't mixed up...there's the eggplant part, the pepper part and the zucchini part.



This is the Rialto Bridge in Venice. It's the main bridge over the grand canal. I can't remember in what year it was built, but it was a really long time ago. There's 3 bridges that go over the grand canal, and this is the biggest/most impressive. Also, if you notice the boat going under it, that's essentially the Venetian "Bus". That was their public transportation there...they had stops just like a bus. We got a travel card for while we were there like we did for pretty much every other city, but nobody ever looked at them! Well, they looked at Joyful's once on the last day, but they never looked at mine. Stupid being honest people...we totally could've just ridden the things for free the whole time. Even the rides over to the other islands of Murano and Burano to see them make glass and lace...nobody checked for tickets on those either.

Hooray for functioning computers!

So a big thanks to Mickey who fixed the 'ole computer for us!!! It's up and running like new. Europe was a fabulous trip...we took a little over 2000 pictures on the digital and about 30 rolls of film. So on with the show!



The Eiffel Tower was amazing. We climbed the stairs up to the 2nd level...almost 700 stairs! Then we took the elevator all the way to the top. We had dinner that night at a little cafe near the tower and then went back so we could see it at night time. It was amazing at night time. Every hour on the hour it does a neat light show.



Notre Dame was awesome. We got to go up the towers to see the Gargoyles and everything.




The ruins in Rome were really fascinating. It was so neat to think of all the history that happened there. Just think, this is where Paul came to talk to Caesar!



The Collesium was neat to see. We didn't actually go in it, but it was neat to see from the outside.

Words..

I never can think up a good title for new posts :)





So I'll probably get some pictures up next week. The computer is going to get worked on this weekend. I don't know what happened to it while we were gone, but it got screwed up good. So our friend, Mickey, is going to clear the hard drive and start over from scratch. We went and got an external hard drive today so we could save all our important stuff...




Here's a picture from the Sunday after we got back. I did the Lincoln Half Marathon. No great finishing time or anything, but I did beat last year's time by a little bit. There was a small group of people from Heartlands who ran...Ave did the full marathon (his first one...good job, Ave!) Doug did the half and got done well before me, not that that's much of a surprise or anything :) It was a perfect day for running. It started out in the upper 40's and not a cloud in the sky. By finishing time it was about 60 and just gorgeous. My knees didn't give me any trouble which was awesome...I credit that to the fact that I was praying almost the whole time that God would let my knees hold out :) I was worried since I didn't run at all in Europe and I haven't exactly been Mr. Discipline with my running as of late anyways.

On a side note, I'm updating this in the middle of the day because I stayed home from job #1 sick today. I haven't felt 100% this week, and this morning I got up and started throwing up. I feel well enough to go to job #2 tonight, so that's good...

Home Sweet Home

So we're back home now. Vacation was absolutely glorious. I think our favorite city was Barcelona. They had such a great mix of cool shops, little restaurants, great weather, and it was very pedestrian friendly.

We were blessed with safety and overall good health...we each had brief moments of feeling like poo, but all in all we were fine.

I'll put some pictures on here before too long, hopefully. Our computer's being stupid for some reason, now that we're home. So I'm updating this on Stan and Mel's computer. Whenever we get everything up and running on our computer I'll put on some pictures and what not.