For the most part, life here in Spain is fairly normal. For my part, I go to the grocery store, cook meals, pick up around the house, take Katie to & from school, etc. The same sort of things I did in Texas. Often life here is even difficult as we still adjust to living in a foreign culture (though thankfully this is much less true than it used to be!). This is why you don't hear much from me: normal is not necessarily newsworthy :-)
But then there are times like this weekend and all I can say is WOW!! How could these adventures all be really happening, and on the spur of the moment besides?!?
I mentioned last week that we were headed to Milan for the weekend to join Jason on a business trip. We were excited to go b/c it is northern Italy after all, and seemed exciting. Well, when I looked at the guide book to see what we should do there - and yes, this was after I'd already made the plane reservations - it just didn't seem like there was that much to do in Milan. Milan is full of fashion and business, neither of which interest me all that much :-). And we were going from Wed to Sun so we'd be there awhile. Also, after 2 weekends of touring museums and beautiful churches, we were kind of museum & churched out. Now when Katie hears that we're going to visit a new city, she says, "Are we going to see a beautiful, old church there?" :-) But I figured how could northern Italy be bad - at least we were looking forward to some really good food :-).
Well, sure enough, we toured around Milan on Thursday and saw all we needed to see of Milan :-). It was nice, but we saw it all - and we mostly ate our way around the city on Thursday. :-) (and yes, their beautiful old church, the Duomo, is beautiful) We saw on the map that Lake Como & the Swiss border are not very far from Milan, and an easy train ride away. So we planned to do that for 1 of our remaining days, but weren't sure what we were going to do the other day. The other cities of interest in Italy are at least 3 hours away from Milan, so it just didn't seem feasible to go to Venice or Florence or Pisa.
But Friday morning we get up and Jason says, "Why don't we just go to Venice?" Well, why not indeed. :-) So in the space of a couple of hours Friday morning, we called and found a hotel to stay in, packed up our stuff, checked out of the Milan hotel, and navigated our way onto the proper metro and trains to get ourselves to Venice :-). It was a bit crazy. Rich, Katie & I went on ahead and Jason joined us after he finished work on Friday night. I didn't really get excited until we were on the train b/c it just didn't seem like it was all really going to work out.
Jason & I were talking: I'm not sure that Venice has been on our short list of places we have to see before we leave Europe. (that we haven't actually made such a list is one of the problems, I think :-) ) So, for me, it made it even more amazing that it just worked out for us to go there. It is truly one of the most remarkable & unique cities in the world and once we were there it was truly overwhelming. As we pulled into the Venice train station, I was reminding Katie of a time we joined Jason on a business trip to Vegas when she was 2 and we stayed in the Venetian hotel. I was just trying to help her understand what we were going to see by telling her of the fake canals and gondoliers inside the hotel. I couldn't even finish talking about it b/c I almost started crying out of amazement that we were actually there in the real place!
I don't even really know what else to say about Venice. It is just truly a magical place. There are no cars on the island - only little bitty narrow streets to walk on (lots and lots of walking :-) ) intersected with river roads throughout. The main "street" that snakes around the islands is called the Grand Canal (at far left) and it was so cool. The taxis are boats, the buses are boats (you can see one of these with the red seats in the front on the left side of the picture of the Grand Canal), the police "cars" are boats. I even saw several trash truck boats :-). It is unlike anything else I've ever seen!
The main square is called Piazza San Marco and it was beautiful. We did not go in the church, but we did go up in the tower across the square to get a beautiful birds-eye view of Venice. BTW this is Katie's favorite mode of taking pics these days - she wants every picture to be a "silly face" picture. Oh, and there were SO MANY PEOPLE in Venice! It was by far the busiest place we've visited!!
One of Katie's highlights was getting to ride in a real gondola. She was soooo excited! (I think the look on her face says it all!) We had told her that we were going to ride in a "beautiful boat" before we left, so she asked about it constantly. (The other pic is with another gondolier who was kind enough to have his picture made with her.)
It was really a surreal experience and so hard to believe that we were really in a gondola rowing through the canals of Venice. What an experience! Sadly, we heard no singing gondoliers in Venice, though we did catch one bearing an accordion player that was quite nice to see.
To cap it all off, Grandpa watched Katie for us last night and Jason & I got to go out to eat by ourselves - in Venice!! It was a very special evening to finish up a weekend I will never forget.
We are truly blown away by the opportunity we have to experience Europe like we are getting the chance to experience it. We are so thankful for the chance we have been given to live here! Words fail me :-)
We were very sad to hear that our dog Rusty died yesterday in Texas. He had only gotten sick a couple of days ago, and we are thankful that he did not suffer long. He was living with our friends, Ron & Mindy, who were so gracious to take care of him while we are living here in Spain.
Rusty was such a good & loyal dog and we have many happy memories of him. (This is us with him last year on Christmas Day - and our other dog, Rosie, in the background.) We got him from the Irving pound when he was 4 months old in July 2000. He was mainly Jason's dog and loved to follow Jason around everywhere, even underfoot if necessary so as not to miss out on whatever Dad was doing. He would lay under Jason's desk for hours, "helping" him work :-). He was so eager to please you and figure out what you wanted him to do, such a nice change from the beagle we had before him :-). 
He was a cocker/lab mix - his mom was a lab, so that's the only part we know for sure, but the cocker part was pretty obvious. He inherited much of the cocker breed's nervous tendencies and usually found something new to be afraid of on a weekly basis :-). He used to love tearing up "do-to-do's" (the center of a paper towel roll) until one accidentally hit him on the nose and he became mortally afraid of them forevermore. :-) We named him Rusty b/c when his hair would get long, he had brown tints on the edges of his hair. Maybe a little random for a black dog, but that's why :-).
Our hearts are very heavy today b/c we won't get to see Rusty again, but they are mostly heavy for our friends, Ron & Mindy, Andrew & Sara Beth (at left with Rusty this summer). Rusty had become their dog as well, and he loved living at their house. They have squirrels to chase in their backyard, and Mindy took Rusty in the car with her when she went to pick up the kids from school nearly every day. They also took him camping with them several times in their RV. We are so thankful to them for taking care of Rusty so well and giving him such a great last year of life. When we saw Rusty this summer, at first he didn't even recognize us (maybe his eyes were going?), but when he finally smelled us, he went crazy. As the evening wore on though, we were very happy to see that Rusty really wasn't partial to us - he followed them around as much as he followed us. So he truly felt settled in his new home. I know it will be a much harder transition for them as they get used to their house w/o him again.
