Ciao Bella! We loved Italy!

We recently celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary by spending 10 fabulous days in Italy! We had such an amazing time enjoying the sights, the food, and the gelato!

We started our trip in Rome and visited most of the "must-see" places there. We walked the city and saw Piazza del Popolo, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Colosseum, Forum and everything in between. We spent quite a bit of time in Vatican City checking out the museum, St. Peter's Basilica, and climbing the Dome.

Here we are at the Colosseum

The next stop was Florence. We took in most of the sites in town including the Ponte Vechio, Academia with The David, Uffizi, the Duomo where we climbed all 430 something stairs to the top, and all the magnificent piazzas and pizzas! While in Florence, we took a bike ride through the Chianti/Tuscan countryside and enjoyed some wine tasting at Castello Popiano and a lovely Italian lunch.

Sunset over the Arno (behind us is the Ponte Vecchio)

Our last stop was Venice. We decided this was a perfect last stop to our Italian adventure since it seemed to be a slower paced city. We enjoyed St. Mark's square, our Grand Canal cruise, visiting Murano, riding the vaporetto, the peaceful gondola ride, canal side dining, and just strolling down small streets and finding little canals everywhere.

Standing on the Rialto bridge overlooking the Grand Canal

We posted a ton more pictures on our picasa website. We have separate albums for our time in Rome, Florence, and Venice. We hope you enjoy!

Adventures at Sea World

We finally made it to Sea World with Shannon, Michael, Kiersten, and Brodie. Kiersten has been wanting to show us around for some time now but we had never figured out a date to go. We originally thought she would show us around the zoo or the Wild Animal Park, but she insisted that she "likes Shamu Rocks!" So Sea World it was!


We had a great day exploring the different habitats and checking out the rays, penguins, polar bears, manatees, sharks, fish, Shamu...the list goes on and on. Kiersten definitely knew her way around and made sure that we saw the dolphin show, pet show, and Sea Lion & Walrus show with Biff.


We made it through the day and over to the Shamu stadium for Shamu Rocks. The music came on and Kiersten was singing along to "I love rock and roll" but then fell asleep before the real show started. SO cute!

Here we are in the polar bear cave with Kiersten.

You can check out some of the pictures in the slide show to the right.

We need to make plans to go again because we bought fun passes - 1 day pass that gets you in through December 31. More fun is sure to be had at Sea World before the year is over!

Arizona Spring Training

We took a mini vacation and headed to Arizona to catch a few Spring Training baseball games. We saw a couple in 2007 when we were out in Florida, but now this year both of our teams were in Arizona. On this trip we were able to see both the Angels and the Dodgers. Our friends, Chris and Abby, joined us as we took in the sun, the games, and some good food!


Here are just a few pictures from the trip. If you would like to see more, check out the slide show to the right. (Sorry for the strange formatting in this post - the way we uploaded the pictures was weird and we couldn't get rid of the big spaces).

Picture as we drove into Arizona.

Our first baseball game was at the Angel's Tempe Diablo Stadium. We got to the stadium around 10:30 so we could check out the team practicing.

Checking out the city at dusk - watching to planes come in to Phoenix.

Enjoying the Cubs game.

Enjoying wine at Bar Bianco. The wait to eat at Pizza Bianco was 4 hours and after 2 hours of drinking wine and eating appetizers, we decided they weren't actually lying about the time.

Checking out the new Dodger stadium. Camelback Ranch in Glendale.

The sunset on the drive home.