M-Moo missing her bed...

This is what my tired girl looked like the other night when I went to check on her before going to bed. She was practically falling out of her bed, poor thing.

Yellowstone (Take 2)

Mama-V went to Vegas for the weekend, so Daddy-J decided to take the girls (and g'pa Larry) to Yellowstone (via Jackson Hole and Grand Teton) again. Judging from the state of Mama's car when they got home... they had a great time! Here are just a few of the many pics Daddy took on the trip:




(Daddy's more of a landscape photographer than a people photographer, can you tell?)

Photoshoot by Kerry Sundahl Photography

My friend Kerry has a very special eye for photographing kids. I was excited when she decided to open her own photography business, and thrilled when she offered to take pictures of my girls!

So on a rather chilly and slightly stormy evening, we headed into Old Town Park City to shoot some "urban" shots of the girls. I know I'm totally biased, but I think they came out great.

(My apologies to those who will be receiving a holiday card from us, 'cuz we're going to use one of these pics (or maybe a few of them) for our card, and you will have seen them already. But I couldn't resist sharing.)

























Thank you Kerry!

Final installment of (belated) cruise photos.

Day 7 began with the ship pulling into port in Palma de Majorca, Spain. We spent the day visiting a beautiful cathedral and the Caves of Drach.


(This beautiful rainbow was flooding large sections of the cathedral because of the angle of the sun through the stained glass windows).


It is impossible to describe how amazing the caves were. At the end of a 15-minute walk through this labyrinthine cave system, there is an auditorium built right next to an underground lake. Gondoliers maneuver boats over the lake while an orchestra trio plays hauntingly beautiful music. Truly breathtaking!


And of course, on our last night aboard the ship, we dressed up for a farewell dinner... (sorry the lighting is terrible and I've had no luck fixing it!).

(For those who don't know, that is the dress I wore at our wedding reception 7.5 years ago).



On our last day (Day 8), we spent the whole day touring Barcelona. Neither of us had ever visited that city before, and we were totally blown away. We absolutely must get back there someday. We were tired and didn't take many pictures, but we visited a re-creation of a Spanish village, the Olympic stadium and museum, and saw a lot of amazing architecture. It was a very full day.








After all that, we flew home, exhausted but happy!

More (very belated) photos from our cruise (days 5-7)

Day 5 began in the port of Sete, France. We pulled in very early in the morning, and awoke only to look out our windows at some third-story apartment dwellers having coffee on their terrace about 100 yards away! The port where the ship docked was amazingly small.





We wandered the town by ourselves most of the day. We did some serious perfume shopping. We also enjoyed watching the town getting ready for their annual jousting competition that was to start that evening. They had built bleachers over the canals for the crowds. We saw many boats getting ready for the jousting. Seriously! The jousters dress up in costumes. There are 20 or so men who row the boats, and a jouster stands in the stern of each boat. The boats row toward each other and the jousters, well, joust! It looked as though there would be a huge celebration starting that night. Unfortunately, our ship was set to pull out of the port at 5:00 p.m., so we didn't get to see it!

But here's a 3 minute Youtube video from the Sete Tourism office that shows the jist of it...









We did, however, enjoy a beautiful late-afternoon/early-evening on the uppermost deck watching the town and port recede as we pulled out. One little motorboat that was tied up to the breakwater nearly capsized from our wake as we went by!

(That space behind the harbor-master's tower, right in front of the apartment buildings on the left of the picture is the spot where they somehow maneuvered our ship to the dock!).












That night, we had dinner alone on the deck at the rear of the ship. It was so beautiful eating, drinking, and watching the sun sink below the sea's horizon.







On day 6, we visited the island of Menorca, which is part of Spain. We set off in search of beaches that day, and wound up with a fun group (a subset of our big group) at Binibeca beach. We taxi'd across the island to get to the beach, and with our limited Spanish tried to arrange for the taxi to come back to get us later. That didn't work, but luckily we were able to call the taxi company and have someone come pick us up in time to get back to the ship!

Somehow we didn't take any pictures of that beach, but it was truly spectacular! Seriously one of the best beaches I have ever been to, and it had its own bar carved into the rocks at the side of the cove!

Here is a photo of the beach from Scott Wright, a British photographer:



This Youtube video (also not mine) is 6 minutes long, but it shows the drive along the coast and the beautiful beach.




That night, the ship threw a "barbecue" on the pool deck. I have never seen so much food in one place in my whole life!

We took this picture of the port as we were sitting down to dinner.




I ate and drank a wee bit too much that night! Everything was just so good!


Jim particularly adored this rather large fish that was purely decorative on one of the buffet tables!

This was the view from the ship as we sailed past Menorca that night.