A Glimpse into my Life.

It's been a bit crazy in our lives lately. Now that we are finally home and (mostly) over jet lag, I am attempting to catch up on life and blogging. Most of the laundry is washed and put away, the house is *somewhat* cleaned, and dinner is cooking so I have a few moments. Back in January, my parents called to tell Hubby and I "Happy Anniversary." Now, there wasn't anything unusual about that, but then they told us that for our ten year anniversary they wanted to send us somewhere and watch the kidlets for a week while we left. Then they told us they wanted to send us to Italy! We were totally in shock and very happy. We had to figure out when would work with Hubby's and my Dad's work schedules, and then where in Italy we wanted to go. Hubby and I both had lists of places we wanted to go, and once those lists were down on paper and we started comparing, we realized we should just move there for a few years to put a dent in the lists! We then decided to each pick one or two places we really wanted to go and work around those. Luckily, our short lists were pretty similar. Rome and the Naples region. We then decided to stay in Sorrento and use that as a base for setting off to what was in the Napoli region.


This is a view of Mount Vesuvius from the road down into Sorrento. Our hotel was up the hill from Sorrento so we had about a mile walk into town every day. It was a great way to start the day. Walking past Olive Groves, and down orange tree lined streets was fabulous!


This is the harbor in Sorrento. It was gorgeous!


Walking under the orange trees! It was incredible to wander through the streets in the evening. Hubby and I tended towards wandering off the beaten path and found a very lovely little restaurant in the more non touristy part of town.


This is the entrance to Pompeii. The rings you see were where they would moor their ships. Pompeii was formerly a coastal city. When Vesuvius irrupted, it changed the coastline and ended up raining so much debris on the town that it was completely buried in volcanic rock, ash and mud. People literally choked to death on the air. Hubby estimates Vesuvius added almost a mile to the coast from where Pompeii was to where the present coastline is.


Pompeii was a large thriving city in it's time. It was set up so that the different neighborhoods had their shops, 'fast food' restaurants, and bakeries.


This is the body of a pregnant woman that they found in the ruins. As they excavated Pompeii, they found numerous bodies, and when they tried to move them, the excavators found out how fragile they were. The solution was to pour plaster around the bodies and basically cast them.


The stones in the middle of the road were so people could cross the streets without having to step into the muck. The stones were spaced evenly so that chariots could drive down the streets. At night, they would flood the streets and wash them out to control some of the mess and smell.


These are some of the grinding stones at the mills. They would put large beams in and use that to turn the stones. I can't remember exactly, but Pompeii had either 20 or 30 bakeries in it. They also had a surfeit of hotels. I find it hard to imagine the quantities of bread that was produced in the city.

More to follow, but it's time to get back to everyday life! 

And I wouldn't expect it to be.

Last night Jake got a phone call saying that his cows were out. They go through phases and there won't be any problems for 6-9 months, then suddenly they will be out 4 times in 2 weeks or so. To keep them from becoming a problem we had to move them. There is an Officer that is semi-harassing Jake about the cows so we are trying to diffuse the situation as pleasantly as possible. We had Hubby's parents and elder brother with his family come to help us move them. Jake had two friends and one of our neighbors came to help us out. Since we were at Hubby's parent's house when the call came from Animal Control, Hubby and I were still in our church clothes. We didn't have time to change before it was time to move cows.

Needless to say, that lovely outfit I wore to church, complete with almost 3 inch heels, was what I wore to chase cows in. Now to properly visualize this, you have to picture me running through knee-high grasses with a section of mid-shin high thistles mixed in. Ouch. Plus, the ground isn't the most level so I almost face planted a few times. Kelli, my sister in law was out there helping in flip-flops and I finally gave up and let one of Jake's friends do the running because I almost wrenched my ankle a few times and didn't want to break it.

After running around in my heels, I decided that it was better to just go barefoot because I could keep up with everyone that way. I kicked my shoes to the side of the road (and my in laws picked them up later) and took off running. I was quite the sight running down the road, barefoot, in a maroon skirt, herding stick in hand!



We got the cows moved and you know it's bad when your brother in law offers to give you a piggy back ride down the road to save your feet from getting torn up. I did decline because at that point there was nothing else to really be done for my feet other than to keep on walking.

We got 30 head moved around and they've all stayed in so far! We are hoping and praying they'll stay in so Jake won't have any more issues with this Officer. My kids didn't get to bed until after 10 pm, but they had a blast with their cousins and watching all the parents chasing cows!

This adventure was almost enough to make me break my no horseback riding on Sunday rule. I guess technically it wouldn't be breaking it since I wouldn't have been riding for pleasure, it would have been to alleviate problems, but skirt notwithstanding, if I would have had a halter and lead rope in the car, I would have been on a horse.



Thankfully, the only casualty from this adventure are my feet, although a self administered pedicure when I got home did wonders, and my stockings. Although I loved the pattern on them, I didn't think to take them off with my heels otherwise, they would have been saved. Oh well, I'll just have to watch Target to see if I can find some more like them.