Random September happenings

I completely butchered the blog this week (this is my 3rd attempt). So here is the skinny on our boys. Zane is just so much fun, challenging, but fun. He loves preschool and always comes home with the best projects. He is working on learning to recognize and write his name. He has been working with Daddy this week on learning to ride his bike without training wheels. He seems to be doing really well. He jsut freaks out when he notices you aren't holding onto his seat. We bought zane a halloween costume, and it ended up being way too small. So we took it back, and much to our pleasure, he decided he wants to go as a police officer (and we already have that costume).
Ryder is at that age where he is growing and learning by leaps and bounds. He has started climbing onto our recliners, and with a little help, onto the couch. This is a big deal for a kid that still wears 9 month clothes. He loves to go outside every morning and ride bikes. He is feeding himself all of his food now, which as a parent is a huge time saver.
The boys are finally getting to the point where they are playing together more, they are wrestling a bit now. And scaring me half to death some times. Zane has been using more and more imagination these days, building things, pretending. In an effort to pre-occupy him the other day I put blankets up around his bunk bed, creating a cave. It worked so well, that he won't let us take it down, and now he is sleeping with his door closed again, no more "I'm scared"
Anyway, life is great. The weather is getting cooler around here, and we are really looking forward to spending more time outseid again. (BTW, the underlining is compliments of Ryder who did something to my computer and now I can't get it off).

Our Cruise

Kib and I are back from our trip, and needless to say, it was AMAZING!!!!
We made it to Barcelona with no problems thanks to Kib upgrading us on our flights. We spent three days in Barcelona and fell in love with it. The people, the culture, the public transportation. It was all fabulous. We saw so many of Gaudi's amazing buildings. Frankly, we didn't know who Gaudi was before our trip, now, we are amazed by him. The food was amazing in Espana, as well as all of the places we visited.
Once on the cruise, we started our trip with a day at sea. There is so much to do on cruise ships, it's great. We went rock climbing, roller blading, I worked out (got some personal training sessions in) and we ate, and ate, and ate. Oh those coconut cookies, they were my kriptinite.
Our first port was Mt Visuvius and Pompei. This was the day that I was looking forward to the most. I studied a lot about Pompei in school, and to see it in real life was a dream come true. We first went to Mt Visuvius, it was almost a mile shorter than it was 2000 years ago, and still magnificent. We climbed to the top and we were able to look in the crater. No Lava, but cool none the less. Then we went to Pompei, what an amazing place. The Romans, city of Pompei, were so advanced for their time. As our tour guide said, "we havn't ever invented anything, we just think we did." So true. I don't think Kib was initially excited about this day, but by the end, he was enthralled with it all.
The next day we went to Rome and Kib and I decided to see it all on our own. And we did. We used our feet, and some public transportation, and did as much as we could in 10 hours. We went to the Vatican and saw St Joseph's Basilica, it was HUGE. Then we scurried over to the Sistine Chapel where you aren't allowed to take photos, so don't ask to see any. From there we ran to the Coliseum we got the opportunity to skip the hour wait for tickets, followed by an hour wait to get in, by joining a tour group, it was great. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, then we followed that same tour to Pantheon Park. It was a great day.
The third port we went to was for the Pisa, Italia. Not much to say about this place, it was cool to see the leaning tower of Pisa, and that's it. Big building, leaning 14 ft the wrong way. The neat part was when we learned that originally they only built the first 3 stories, and then the building started to lean, in the other direction from where it leans now. Then a few hundred years later they added the next 6 stories and tried to straighten it out, and it now leans in the opposite direction. Weird. Apparently there are a handful of buildings in Pisa that do this.
The next port was VillaFranche, France aka Nice and Monte Carlo. We spent the day hiking up to a Fort that was at the top of the mountain dividing Nice and Monte Carlo. It was a very enjoyable day. We didn't love most of the people here (what can we say, they were French) but we enjoyed our relaxing day of exploration.
We ended up with an extra day at sea, there was bad weather, and we couldn't get the ship into port, so no Marseille France this trip.
We talked to the boys almost everyday. They did great without us. Maybe a little too well, just kidding. They loved going to our friend Vonie's house everyday, and playing with Kortnei and Josh on the weekends, and they really bonded with Reyna during our absence.
We are so lucky to have had this amazing experience together we enjoyed experiencing things on our own that neither of us had ever done before. It was quite the trip and we can't wait to do it again.
Here are some of the photos from the trip, I pared it down from 700 photos to 82, so you get the gist of out trip, but just not the details.

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