Christmas 2009

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Christmas on a Cruise Ship:
Being so far from family during holidays can be difficult, while we have lived in Thailand we have tried to do something really different during Christmas to help with that struggle. Last year we left on Christmas Day for a trip to Vietnam, this year we wanted to celebrate somewhere colder and more Western. As a family we decided to visit Greece and Italy, spending Christmas on a cruise ship would be a great experience. The whole day was spent at sea so there were no distractions or excursions.
We started our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. Mark and I sang with the Christmas choir made up of over 100 passengers at the Midnight Mass. It was interesting and enjoyable practicing and singing with such a diverse choir. It can be frustratingly slow when all instructions have to be given in 4-5 different languages but it was fun too! We sang O Come Let Us Adore Him in Latin, Silent Night and O Happy Day in English. I met a fast, new, friend from Ft. Worth in the choir, onboard with her husband and two daughters. We walked the streets of Crete, Greece with their family the day after Christmas. I’ve enjoyed visiting with several American families, most of which are military and stationed in Germany.
It was my first Latin mass to attend, the priest was onboard from St. Peter’s in the Vatican. He did read the account of Jesus’ birth in English from Luke though and that was helpful. Mark and I commented that it was probably a more Christ-centered service than we would have attended on any American cruise ship. There was no mention of Santa Claus or Happy Holidays, it was a very holy and spiritual service that over 1500 people attended, what an unexpected joy!
We slept in on Christmas Day after not getting to bed till after 2 a.m. Later in the morning Mark and I had planned and arranged a Christmas Scavenger Hunt for the boys on the ship. We had all agreed that this trip was our Christmas ‘gift’ but we had managed to pack and hide a few small things to place in the boys stockings onboard. The boys were funny, they were timid and embarrassed teenagers but later said that was their favorite part of the WHOLE trip!! We hid clues throughout the ship-at one point they had to sing Jingle Bells in front of several crew members, they had to greet Paulo at the reception desk with “Good Morning” in Italian….all the hints eventually led them back to our cabin and their awaiting Christmas goodies. We just wanted to think of some way to make it more memorable and special for our guys, they were very appreciative and it made it all worthwhile!
We splurged and purchased a movie to watch together in our cabin while enjoying some gelato. Later we enjoyed a nap with much relaxation. We enjoyed a special dinner in our dining room in the evening before preparing to visit Crete, Greece the following morning. Our last stop in Greece!

Egypt

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Cruise-Day 5
We entered Egypt through the port of Alexandria where we were met by Usouf our guide who would escort us to Cairo and the pyramids. Before leaving Alexandria we stopped by the Library of Alexandria, the largest library in the world and saw the site of Alexander’s Lighthouse, another wonder of the ancient world.
We drove 3 hours through the desert of Egypt to Cairo. The land of a 1000 minarets-there is a mosque on every corner it seems. Our Muslim guide commented that he had never met an American family like ours, deeply religious who believed in modesty. Sadly his perception of America is greatly tainted by Hollywood it seemed.
We played a game of who could spot the pyramids first, Ethan excitedly won the contest. How cool that we get to visit the pyramids and ancient sphinx on this trip?! We rode camels around the periphery of the pyramids in the desert surrounding Cairo. After climbing and exploring the pyramids, visiting the ancient site of the embalming process, and the sphinx we began our journey across town to the oldest world museum where most of the discovered treasures from recovered pharaoh tombs are housed. What an amazing museum, the King Tut exhibit was especially stunning with all the jewels and gold found within his tomb.
We had a Alexandrian driver who proceeded to get very lost in Cairo, so much so that finally a taxi was hailed to lead us to the museum and after lunch he was replaced. We saw parts of Cairo that most tourists never see!! We were shocked by the poverty of Cairo, much worse than Thailand and were exasperated by the Egyptian people and their begging and demanding of tips. Our camel guide seemed totally insulted by our $5 tip for a 15 minute camel ride. So many of the buildings are not completed which Mark had learned on an earlier trip to the Egyptian capital that if a building is never completed no taxes have to be paid on that property. Our guide confirmed that and thus there are many, many buildings that are still in the construction process.
Our guide led us to the Hard Rock Café of Cairo for a buffet lunch, we would have much rather have eaten at a more authentic Egyptian eatery but our guide was sure the Americans would rather eat at a widely recognized place and he was concerned that we might become ill from local food. Of course, he didn’t know we were coming from Thailand and that we usually look for the places off the beaten road and hardly ever frequent the Hard Rock in America!
It was a long, memorable day of sight-seeing. The boys were thankful to be returning to our ship late on Christmas Eve after a day of not feeling totally safe especially when we were lost in the poorest slums of Cairo earlier in the day. We did stop at the Carrfour of Alexandria (Carrfour is the French Wal-Mart) for some last minute stocking stuffers before boarding our ship.

Athens, Greece

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Cruise-Day 3

We arrived into the Piraeus port of Athens on Wednesday and were able to find our private tour guide, Demitrius, outside customs without any difficulty and headed through the crowded streets of Athens to the famous Acropolis. Nearly every ancient Greek city has an acropolis, which translates to ‘top of the city’, where they built monuments to house and appease their Gods. Athens has the most famous Acropolis being built around 429 B.C. that is home to the Parthenon. It’s really hard to comprehend how old Greece really is!
At the Acropolis we also visited Mars Hill, where Paul shared the gospel with the Athenians, that night in our cruise cabin we reread the message that Paul preached to the Athenians in Acts , observing that the Greeks were a religious people and that he had noticed that they had a monument to the unknown God and he went on to tell them about THE unknown God with many coming to believe in Christ.

Olympia, Italy

Cruise-Day 2

We boarded a MSC cruise excursion bus headed for Ancient Olympia, the first site of the Greek Olympics early on Monday morning. It’s warming up as we continue south on the Mediterranean Sea. Everyone, except for me, have been sleeping well in our spacious, balcony rooms. Last night the seas were a little rough and woke me up. It gave me lots of extra prayer time to the ONE who controls the seas. I contemplated how Peter must have felt in the stormy waters in a small boat and empathized with his and the other disciples fear. We are in a HUGE ship and I feel unsettled as we encounter the white capped water and sea winds. I am making a concentrated effort to keep my eyes on Jesus when I feel fear at sea.

I enjoyed seeing the coastline of Greece for the first time as we drove to Olympia. We landed at the port of Katakolon. The land reminded us all some of Texas, the numerous, olive trees are similar to the mesquite trees of Texas with only small rolling, barren hills. Even though many, many olive trees were destroyed in a arsonist, fire in 2007.

We toured the ruins of Olympia which consisted among other things the sanctuary of Zeus and the ancient stadium where the Olympic games began. Dustin, Ethan and Mark raced across the original start and finish lines in the earthen stadium that once seated 50,000 spectators where the first recorded race took place in 776 B.C.! Dustin smoked them! In ancient times they would have had to run totally nude and I would not have been allowed in the stadium being a woman. We were happy on both accounts!

After visiting the ancient site we went to a Greek restaurant for a traditional meal and dancing. The meatballs were a hit with the boys, the pickled octopus-not so much! It was a great start to our 10 night cruise.

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Pisa, Italy

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We awoke on Saturday morning to a snow covered Pisa, Italy. We enjoyed touring the Leaning Tower and Duomo of Pisa in the snow. We took the obligatory pictures of the boys trying to prop up the leaning tower before enjoying a wonderful cup of hot chocolate at a small café’ bar at the base of the tower. We are on a quest for the best hot chocolate in all of Italy. So far, Milan’s cup of chocolate is the forerunner for the title! Most of the cups we have enjoyed have tasted like slightly diluted, warm, hot fudge sauce with whipped cream. We will attempt to copy it when we return home!
We departed Pisa driving towards Genova, 85 miles away. What an enjoyable drive through the mountains of Italy, thankfully, the roads were clear but the landscape was sparkling beautifully with the fresh fallen snow. We had remembered to bring some Christmas CD’s, we have finally found some Christmas spirit after a reprieve from the hot, tropical, temperatures of Thailand.
We arrived at the airport of Genova around 1 pm, turned in our car, hailed a taxi and headed for the harbor for our awaiting cruise ship, the MSC Splendida. This is our first cruise experience but we are looking forward to someone else doing the ‘driving’ and much relaxation.
Cruise Embarktion:
This will be quite the multi-national cruise as many countries are represented among the 3500 passengers, 1700 being children! It was a ‘kid’s cruise free’ offer so thus the large child population which is fine by us. We were pleasantly surprised that our cabins were larger than expected. Because of the winter storm that is currently crippling most of Europe we departed 2 hours later than expected. We are all still struggling some with the time change. I took a nap before dinner but Dustin and Ethan skipped their first dinner because they were already in bed!
Nathan, Mark and I enjoyed our first cruise dinner with a whole table of other cruisers that could speak barely any English. Of course I tried to communicate which was difficult between the French and German speakers. I did understand that the ship had been held for a couple at our table because of the snow delays at the airport but unfortunately their luggage didn’t make it, they hope to find their luggage waiting at our first stop on Monday in Olympia, Greece.
Day 1:
Today is a day at sea. We are planning lots of rest, bingo, stage entertainment and lots of eating for the day! It’s quite restful to watch the sea with the Italy coastline in the distant background as we sail on towards Greece.

Driving in Italy

We made it to our Hertz pick-up point in Naples after a very exciting taxi ride! Our taxi driver managed to make Thai, taxi, drivers appear safe and sedate!! What a ride, for only $50 we all endured a 20 minute Six Flags rollercoaster experience whether we wanted to or not!! No height requirements required! He was driving down one-way streets the wrong way all the time yelling, "No problemo!!!" and other unidentifiable verbage in Italian at other drivers who were honking and yelling at him!! I kept trying to communicate to him we really weren't in a hurry! It might not be so bad to be driving ourselves around Italy afterall!

The 'renting a car, driving the west coast of Italy ourselves' plan went a little awry when Hertz wouldn't accept my Thai driver's license (My new TX license is setting somewhere on Deaner's desk-Mark told him to just keep it until we came this summer!! I don't know if I blame Hertz much, I'm not totally convinced a Thai driver's license should be globally recognized either!) So Mark is our primary driver and I'm the navigator not the foundation of a nice, peaceful, enjoyable drive. We always do so much better when I'm driving and Mark is navigating. NO GPS!! and no English map!! The first thing we did after loading the car and orienting ourselves to our Italian car was pray. We prayed hard for God to protect us and help us-we are needy especially driving out of Naples!

God answered! We were able to get out of Naples without any accidents, no one even honked at us and only had to apologize a little to the boys about our attitudes! Once we were out of Naples and on the autorun, A1 it was a 6-lane road around Rome-whew! We wouldn't want to take a 6-lane interstate through the whole of Italy, so we ventured off and stopped for lunch in one of the oldest Medieval cities of Italy-Viterbo. Europe is sooo old! We are wearing out our Fodor's, Italy, travel book and found one of their suggested eateries and were not disappointed! The Italians might not be too friendly but MAN, do they know how to cook!! Nathan commented that he had written yesterday on Facebook that he had just eaten the best Italian food ever! After our meal he said he would have to change that status to, "I JUST ate the best Italian food ever!"

The tomatoes, the real ROMA tomatoes have not disappointed. The cheeses, the gellato, the pasta...the boys had a most delicious eggless pasta yesterday while I savored a chickpea/water chestnut soup. How in the world do all these Italians stay so thin for their Italian fashion? I think it's all the smoking and wine?!

After leaving Viterbo we drove along the west coast of Italy towards Pisa, Italy. It was really beautiful, the rolling hills were still green, dotted with many olive trees and vineyards with herds of sheep grazing. That was on one side and the Meditarranean Sea on the other. The hills are filled with ancient cities some still having their original city, stone, walls in place along with watchtowers. The houses are just as you imagine when you think of Tuscany-muted colors of rust, yellow, green, two-storeyed stucco houses with window boxes filled with geraniums and greenery. At one point Mark actually commented that he was glad we were driving!! This from the man that at one point in Naples rather heatedly voiced, "Why in the world are we driving and not taking the train?!" Which ironically we saw that Eurostar rail is set to strike so perhaps it is better to be driving ourselves!

It gets dark really early this time of year in Italy by 5:30 we were already using our car lights and it was starting to drizzle rain/snow. Thankfully, we are so close to the coastline, only a few miles inland over 10 inches of snow is forcasted overnight. We made it to Pisa around 6:30 and quickly found a hotel and were in bed by 7:30 thus up again at 0430!!!

We hope to tour Pisa this morning and the infamous Leaning Tower before driving on to Genova, Italy to board our cruise ship bound for Greece. We just want to be sure and allot ourselves enough time. The cruise ship will leave with or without us!

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Pompeii

We took the 20 minute train from Naples to tour Pompeii yesterday morning. It was a cloudy, drizzly day but we forged on! Hey! you only get one day in Pompeii right? We were surprised at the size of Pompeii, about 160 acres that was totally buried in volcanic ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. It's the largest excavation ever, I can't imagine how long it took to uncover the city of about 15,000 people, that was totally immersed in 1-2 meters of volcanic ash.

Hector was our informative guide for the day and we learned a lot. To recover the bodies an air pocket would be discovered by an archeologist and the cavity would be filled with plaster, left to harden and then the entire form of the body could be excavated. The body that was originally trapped by the volcanic ash eventually decomposed and left the empty air space. Many people were unable to escape the ravages of Vesuvius because there were only 7 entry gates through the city wall.

After rambling through the many streets of Pompeii we took the train to Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples where many of the recovered artifacts of Pompeii are housed. We saw discovered jewels, cooking ware, glasses, medical equipment, artwork...I think we had the full Pompeii experience.

My first impression of Italy some 20 years ago hasn't changed much. From my experiences I've surmised that Italian people are not very friendly. Most of the areas we have visited aren't tourist friendly. Even in the huge museum there were no maps in English and very few displays have English explanations. The transportation system is not user friendly-hardly any maps, NOTHING in English and rude people for the most part. I have ran into an occasional Italian person that will smile and try to make conversation. Yesterday on the train there was an older woman that tried to talk to me some and on the way to Pompeii two young male students on their way to school were excited by the novelty of Americans and wanted to try out their English speaking skills, but for the most part they are NOT friendly! In fact yesterday we were so grateful when we approached a uniformed train personnel at the station for directions to the correct platform and he was SO helpful even walking us to the ticket station and assisting us in obtaining our tickets and then walked us to the correct platform, what a nice guy, NOT! When we arrived at our train he promptly asked for 20 Euros for his services-$30!! and we thought we had finally found a really friendly Italian, no just a Italian con-man!! Mark reminded the boys that is why God instructs us to be friendly to strangers, to not take advantage of strangers because it is a powerful witness to the world of the difference of a Christian. Well, if that's the worse thing that happens to us while we are here we are blessed.

We are all up early again this morning-0500! Breakfast isn't served until 0730 so Dustin is reading, Nathan is on his computer, Ethan is watching a movie, Mark is working and I'm blogging! We leave Naples this morning driving up the west coast of Italy toward Genoa where we will board our cruise ship on Saturday afternoon. Getting out of Naples in the rental car may prove to be quite exciting, I'm just praying our rental comes with an English GPS!!

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We're in Italy

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After leaving the tropical weather of Thailand, having a short layover in the desert of Doha, Qatar we arrived to the freezing, snowy, weather in Milan, Italy. We were so relieved to find our luggage had arrived in the baggage terminal to quickly retrieve our winter clothes. The boys, especially Dustin, often talks of missing cold weather, were surprised how 'thin' skinned they had become. It was cold! -7 C-20 degrees F when we landed. It didn't take long to get in the Christmas spirit with the cold, scattered snow, the holiday displays...

We had to hit the road running if we wanted to see any of Milan. We landed at 0630, found a bus after changing clothes in the airport toilets and took the 40 minute ride to the train terminal to store our luggage while we explored the city until our train departed for Naples, Italy at 1515 in the afternoon.

We quickly realized we were a little underdressed! Milan is known as the fashion capital of the world for a reason, I guess. The ladies on the street make quite a fashion statement, I felt out of place without a pair of black boots on or a fur coat! Dustin commented, "Man, there are a lot of dressed up Grandma's here!" It really is true, everyone looked beautiful along the streets of Milan. We were too cold and too busy to worry much about fashion.

Our first destination was the Santa Maria delle Grazie where Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is housed. I never imagined that I might actually see this ever in person after seeing it so many times in print. Mark actually saw it several years ago for the first time on a business trip to this area. What an amazing blessing. The Grazie was originally set up to be a magnificent family mausoleum for the Sforza family. The 7th duke of Milan, Ludovico il Sforza commissioned Leonardo to paint the infamous painting just two years before he was defeated by Louis XII and spent the remaining 8 years of his life in a French dungeon. The painting has survived many unbelievable incidents, one being the American bombing of the building in 1943, another was the whitewashing over by some monks in the 19th century but after years of restoration it is available for viewing in all of its' glory. After going through two rooms of isolation, to control the humidity and environment, we finally arrived into the hall where the painting is displayed.

We then traversed the cobble-stoned streets of Milan to view the famous Duomo, the world's second largest church in the world, the largest being St. Peter's in Rome, which we will also see in the next two weeks. The detail and work on the church is astounding. In the pictures, every ornate, marble, spire has a statue at the top of it. We had fun seeing if we could tell some of the Bible stories from the many stained glassed windows. Before the Bible was accesible to the comman person that was how they were taught-through the stained glass stories.

We stopped for lunch and enjoyed some delicious Italian pizza and enthusiastically began our Italian food adventure! We had the most delicious cup of hot chocolate in Milan ever! It really tasted a lot like warm, hot-fudge sauce in a cup with yummy whipped cream on top.

We enjoyed the sights of Milan by subway and walking before boarding our 5 hour train ride to Naples. We were exhausted and took advantage of the long train ride to catch up on sleep some. When we arrived into Naples we had some difficulty finding our hotel, that is located in the historical Spanish quarter of Naples because of that they are prohibited in advertising the hotel any, sure makes it hard for a lost tourist in the dark to find! But we managed to arrive around 9:30 pm to our rooms and the very welcome beds!

I'm thankful that all went well on our most difficult travelling day of the trip, after 13 hours of planes, a bus ride, several subway commutes and a train ride we are in a nice warm hotel in Naples, Italy. Of course, with the time change I'm up early enough to make a quick blog entry before we take a train out to tour the ruins of Pompeii all day. Another one of those "never thought I would see" places!

Home Happenings

I've been neglecting my blog but a lot has been going on over here. I'm just going to hit the high points.

Our new home:

We should be moved over to our new home by the end of this weekend. It was a hairy last two weeks. We found out while we were haggling over our deposit and moving costs with our old landlord that he had already sold the house a few weeks ago. He was stalling until he left the country. The first clue that we got was when the new owner came to make sure that we were indeed moving out! He became suspicious when the old owner no longer answered his phone and he had been told not to contact us because we were extremely busy planning a Thanksgiving celebration! He was surprised to learn that we had not been released from our contract and that we were waiting on our deposit before we could sign a new contract and secure a new home. I felt sorry for him because he hadn't done his due diligence to verify that the current lease on the house was resolved before he paid for the house. He agreed to return half of our deposit ($3000) and release us from our existing contract but asked us to vacate in less than two weeks. We didn't even have a contract on the new house we wanted and they were waiting to find another residence until we committed officially to lease from them.

You've heard the verse, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good."? We really see God's hand in protecting us in this situation. Our old landlord is 'wanted' by many people here in Thailand, apparently he doesn't like to pay his bills. We had been warned that most likely we would never see our deposit again. I assume he feels he duped us and the new owner but God has taken care of us-again! Because this was a forced move, Exxon has agreed to pay our other half of the deposit, our moving costs AND give us a lump sum for redecorating our new abode!! Is that just amazing? We hadn't expected anything. Nok, our housekeeper has been angry about the whole situation and wanted us to take the microwave and the two beds that belong with the house. I had explained to her that those belong to the new owner, but she wanted to make sure that we received something to make up for our lost deposit. I had told her that God would take care of us and what a testimony to her of His goodness.

We have hired her husband and a few other men to move our belongings. I had been concerned about our big, baby-grand, piano being moved by amatuers and found a solution yesterday. Our new home will be two houses down from where we have lived the last 1 1/2 years. The house between the two residences has new tenants who just moved in this week. Yesterday, I stopped by to talk to their moving company and commisioned them to move our piano. The piano is safe and sound in our new home after quite a process. I had previously joked that we might could just roll it over. Well, the relocation of the piano wasn't far from that. Nine men came and CARRIED the piano on their shoulders! I could barely watch. I was a nervous wreck. The whole process took one hour, they had to put it down and rest about 6 times. What a sight! A piano going down the street in Thailand on the backs of 9 men, if only an elephant would have been rambling down the street! I'll put up a photo. I only had the courage to take one photo, it was way too scary to watch! I hid and prayed. We paid more than a weeks normal salary here but it was way worth the $90!




Thanksgiving Celebration:

We did have a Thanksgiving celebration here last Saturday. Of course there is no Thanksgiving holiday here so Thursday was business as usual. We had about 30 people here to help us celebrate from several nations. We had families from Indonesia and Britian that had never been exposed to Thanksgiving join us along with a family from Australia and 5 American families. We prepared a Cajun fried turkey because I could never squeeze a turkey into my small oven. One other friend baked a turkey and there were barely enough left-overs for turkey wraps the following day. I think we enjoyed all the delicious, traditional foods-of course at a cost! I was able to secure some imported Cool Whip for Mark's favorite Pink Salad and the 13 lb turkey cost about $60, priceless-right?

We had a Father/Son American football match. They ended up playing Dads against Sons, the Sons won! We will really miss our big yard! but will have a better basketball playing area. I didn't get any pictures, I was too busy playing hostess, hopefully, I can post someone else's at a later date.

The Prison Bakery:

We have been so busy during this holiday season. We have sold over 200 fruit cakes!! They are a hot item here and for a fruit cake our bakery has a pretty good recipe, they make it with pumpkin. It's a big money maker for us because we sell them for about $13/cake. The International Ladies had us make 150 mini fruit cakes for their holiday luncheon. We taught the girls how to make pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie and gingerbread cookies since September and it is now a part of our reprotoire. We will begin selling pizza and brownies to our weekly customers in the Spring, we have been perfecting our pizza sauce with the girls. We are putting an American mark on the bakery for sure! This is the first time they have had American directors.

The girls are warming up to us and it is such a blessing to be working with them. Yesterday, we presented Bakery Certificates to three of our girls that are being released this month. It was a huge ceremony with the boy prisoners also attending, they had several that had completed a framing course and they were also honored. We then obtained permission to take our 16 bakery girls out to lunch with their supervisors and two guards, "To keep anyone from escaping!" We paid for their lunch and had gifts to give each of them, a story of the birth of Christ written in English and Thai along with an ornament. I just wish I could communicate easier. I have found a new Thai teacher to begin lessons with in January and we continue to teach the bakery girls English when we have extra time, but we have only concentrated on useful terms so far-spoon, bowl, oven, apron, mixer....

We still have an art show this coming Thursday and another holiday bazaar at the local hospital the next Saturday.


a close-up picture of the three girls that are soon to be released.





Pattaya Praise:

Once a year Pattaya Praise is held here, a number of local and foreign bands converge on the city for a weekend of praise music. Many missionaries come just to pray over the city while the bands perform. YWAM has opened a hair salon/prayer/counseling building on one of the most infamous soi's in Thailand. Prayer was held 24 hours/day during Pattaya Praise on the balcony of their new building. One of the missionaries told of several ladyboys coming to the center and having their feet washed by the volunteers. We attended an outdoor event at the largest mall in the city on Wednesday night. Most of the music was in Thai but we prayerfully listened while many must have been hearing the gospel for the first time. Mark was encouraged as he saw one of his younger engineers at the concert and commented that the number of believers he is now aware of at the refinery doubled, he now knows two fellow Christians work at his refinery. I hope that it is a great encouragement to this young man knowing that his refinery manager is a believer in a country where we are such a minority.



We also attended the youth rally on Saturday and worshipped with a great Irish band. Remember this event is where God of This City originated from.



The boys:

Ethan made the basketball team for under 13, he was the only 11 year old to make the team and will be preparing for their 'district' tournament in March in Vietnam. He will also be competing next Saturday in Thailand's first Lego Robotic competition, he has been working all term with the team and he is one of the designers. And finally he got his braces put on a few weeks ago.

Nathan has been instrumental in getting their school's first softball team organized, he is mentoring the younger members of the team. He and Dustin spent last week on Koh Chang with all the 9th grade boys, they had to kayak 9 miles and camped out on the island without any supplies, sleeping out in the elements without a sleeping bag or tent, it sounded miserable to me but they had a blast! They were so appreciative of my cooking when they returned.

Dustin was a part of the pit band that just performed a musical on stage. He played the electric guitar, the music and singing was impressive. He will perform in the Orchestras Christmas concert on Thursday playing the french horn.

Our upcoming holiday:

We leave a week from Tuesday for our holiday in Italy and Greece. When I let myself think about it, I get really excited, just haven't had much time to think about it! We will be flying into Milan, taking a train to Rome then on to Pompeii. We will then drive up the west coast of Italy visiting Florence, Pisa and driving through the infamous Tuscany valley. We will board a cruise ship in Genoa bound for the Greek Isles, Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt! We will spend 10 nights onboard the MSC Splendida and be somewhere on the Meditarranean for Christmas Day.

I love and miss you all. A special thanks to our Aunt Lola, we received your box of love this past Wednesday-what a treat!! Thank you so, so much-the boys loved their ornaments! The Dr.Peppers are being saved for a really special occasion but there was no saving the Reese cups and Butterfingers!! We love you very much!