Italia (Rob's pics)

Rob gets to travel quite a bit for work, great places like Turkey, Australia, maybe Estonia...you get the point. He hijacked my camera for his trip to Italy in February. I posted some of my favorites but Rob will have to add notes as to what we are looking at...I'm sure I missed something of great historical significance but maybe he can shed some light. I was never really good at history.

Vatican maybe?





This place looks huge, the people look so tiny! The statues on the top must be 15 feet tall...



I know this one. The only picture I asked him to take. It's the Bridge of Angels near the Vatican. I remembered this from my brothers travel pictures and I wanted Rob to get to see it.







Love this one...

Trevi Fountain maybe?

Rob loved this, I agree.



I am quite certain this picture does NOT do justice...

February Break

We decided to head up to the lake for some R & R during our February break from school. I wasn't sure if I would be a fan of all these week long breaks, but I have to tell you, the year has flown by. We got to sleep in on Saturday and that was SO sweet! Then we hit the beach to burn, burn, burn. Mom and dad have quite a bit of property to keep up with so we decided that we could lend a hand. It's not always fun and games up there. The stupid raccoon decided to make a home for himself in the Windy Two so that mess got cleaned up as well. A hard day of work and we had the rest of the time to play.

Sunday the weather was grumpy so we all just hung out around the house.

Monday was time to Geocache! We decided to drive around and hit some of the ones we have had trouble with in the past. Now that we know what we are doing it made it a bit easier. Unfortunately we let Grandfather pick the movie that night and he is now on movie restriction!

We decided to head back in time for practice on Tuesday but traffic was awful so we ended up missing it by 30 minutes. The rest of the week we just chilled around the house, got caught up on chores and made plans for our visit to Auburn on Saturday.

Ryan did decide one day that we needed to go to the store and buy fabric for her to make a pillow case. Gran and Grandfather got her a sewing machine for her birthday and I had been promising that she could make one. I think it turned out pretty cute. :)

lay everything out to get ready

removing the pins as we go

TA DA! a new pillow case for her travel pillow. Great job Ryan!

Chili Bake off~~Lament to Lazarus

Everyone knows Kevin LOVES to cook, Rob does too and the one thing they make together is Chili. There's nothing better on a Sunday afternoon than a nice big 'ol bowl of Chili. Yumm-o! SO the boys entered the 1st Annual Chili cook-off for our church to raise money for the Youth Group. Guess what? Rob got called out of town. :( Considering I have NEVER made a pot of chili I had no clue where to begin. I told Kev he was on his own and if he still wanted to enter then he had to do the cooking--all by himself. :D

There were two prizes awarded, name and taste. He was obviously going for taste but ended up winning for name. Have to admit that Jared helped him a bit with this. I only helped pour off the grease :) Either way he was happy to have placed and dad was super proud, even from across the pond :)


Way to go Bu, so proud of you! Can you cook this week? ;)

Rays Invite

This weekend we devoted to swimming...again. It was a tough meet for both kids-long events, long days, and big kids with fast times. Ryan had to swim girls that were almost 13 since it was a 12U event. Jared just had to try and post respectable times.

They both totally rocked it out and they each blew their times out of the water. Jared dropped time in 8 of 8 events and Ryan dropped times in 7 of 8. Unbelievable! The most incredible times were Jared's 200 Back, he dropped 10 seconds and on his 200 Breast he dropped 15 seconds. 4 seconds off on his 50 Back and 200 Free. Amazing!

Ryan had a 15 sec bombshell for her 100 Breast, an 11 second on her 100 Back and a whopper dropper of 21 seconds down on her 100 Fly. Super fun to watch. She also posted time in a new event, her 200 Fr. Her seed time was 20 seconds more than she swam it so I guess she did really well in that event as well. WAY TO GO!!