home

Forgot to add that we made it home! Got in at 2:30 am, Wednesday and were asleep by 3. Napped for 4 hours before Amelia woke up. That was a fun reunion and then she punished me for two days. Yesterday she niced up a bit.

Lots more to come!

Nearly Home

We are about to board our final flight I the trip! I just slept for 90
minutes in a cushy leather chair in the Red Carpet Club at SFO. Pretty
awesome. That, and having clean multi-stall bathrooms with toilets
that actually accept tp. :)

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Arrivaderci!

Today we head home. Yay! It's been fun but I am ready. We did a whirlwind walking tour of Rome yesterday. Thank you transportation strike! We also heard there was an Alitalia strike yesterday, so maybe we'll see some of our cruise co-travelers who were scheduled to leave on their flights yesterday this morning when we go to the aiport. This will be especially great for Brandon who has several super-favorite friends. This is, of course, sarcasm. There are some who complain all the time and there are those who complain about those who complain. Guess which one is in our party? :)

Wish us luck in our travels home. Seriously. I think we've demonstrated that we need it.

Blus Seas

No kidding - the Mediterranean is such an amazing shade of blue. I'm sure the photos will not tell the story. And I may not be able to tell it either; the days are running together. We're at sea today after our stops in Greece and Turkey. We hit Naples tomorrow and then on to Rome where the floating portion finishes. Internet access is crazy expensive so the whole story (what I recall as well as many embelishments, to be sure) will come after our return to real life. In the meantime, I'm off to the bar for a fancy drink!

Trip

So, after joining the boat in Corfu, we have docked in Katakalon, Athens, Mykonos and Kusadasi. We've seen some wonderful things and eaten some wonderful food. We have also slept too much and stayed up too late. No one here is complaining.

Guess what?

We are on the ship! It took a few days and many hours in the many airports, but we got here. We got to Corfu after wearing the same clothes for roughly 36 hours. Luckily our hotel was able to give us our room at 7:30am when we arrived so we promptly took hot showers and slept for 8 hours. We got the ship this morning and are currently at sea en route to Olympia.

Thanks for all your well wishes. Wait, you were sending them, right?

Let's try this one again!

About to board again for SFO to Frankfort. We are now missing Venice
and Croatia but will beat the boat to Corfu. This trip WILL happen!

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First day of vacation gets us hours away from home. In the same state!

Our flight was finally canceled. Well, it was actually pushed to 11 this morning. This meant we got a voucher for a hotel and no luggage for overnight.  Luckily we have toothbrushes with us and a few other items to feel freshish as we try this thing again! At this point we only know that we're getting to Frankfort. Brandon is working with the cruise line to figure out when and where we will meet the ship so we can then book the rest of flights/trains/ferries or whatever. 

Adios, South San Francisco Comfort Inn right on the train tracks. We hope to not meet again.

Super! We are still in SF. In the plane. Have been on board for more
than three hours at this point. On the plus side granola bars were
handed out.

We are still hopeful we'll get to the ship on time but we've lost our
evening out in Venice. Did I say the granola bars fell in the plus
category? What I really meant was where's the damn booze!

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Funny...

...Brandon's face upon leaving the mens room after using the Dyson
hand dryer.

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And we're still here in San Frsncisco. The aircraft problem migrated
from the entertainment system to the interphone system and the amassed
trwvelers migrated from gate 98 to gate 102. It was a mad rush to
resume a wait-and-see attitude. Potential exists for departure.

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ONT - SFO

Made it to SF with minutes to spare. Now facing slight delay while
entertainment system gets repaired. At least priorities are in order.

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First day of travel

Here we sit, drinks in hand, waiting for our first delayed flight. Our
first flight of our trip. Not panicking!
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Trail Blazing Resumes

I mentioned we're on diets. We've been talking about it for a while but with our love of all things cheese and beer, we've put it off. Then we got the email. From Princess Cruises. A 12-day Mediterranean voyage. (That's what you say on a boat, right? Voyage? "Trip" doesn't really seem to cut it.) We'd been hoping to do a cruise after the first of the year but this is the region I really wanted to see and Brandon was able to line up all the appropriate signatures on his time-off request and, most importantly, my mom agreed to spend two weeks at our place caring for Amelia and the dogs. Oh yeah! Did I mention? We are going alone. No kid. So, Nutrisystem got our money and we are now losing weight. We were crazy hungry for a few days. Then our bodies got used to that. They're still adjusting to the increased roughage. Well, Brandon's is still adjusting. (Where are those matches?)

So, we leave the end of the month and fly into Venice. We sail from there and hit Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon, Athens, Mykonos, Kusadasi, Rhodes, Santorini, Naples/Capri, and finish up in Rome. WTF! We are so excited. Now I just have to figure out how much freaking out I will put up with from myself when we leave our baby for that long.

Helpful Child

I definitely have a blemish on my face. I definitely picked at it. Amelia definitely sat on the couch next to me last night, poked it, and said, "Ewww. Yucky. Yucky. Yucky yucky ew."

Um, thanks.

Diet

Brandon and I are on diets. He's in El Centro, California for the week. This is pretty much as close to Mexico you can get. If you're not already thinking gigantor burrito, I feel sorry for you. Anyway, he allowed himself a diet break for lunch the other day and sent me photo proof. Jerk.

Some things

I picked up a couple of DVDs for our family-friendly collection (this is a tiny subset of the regular collection). One is called Barnyard. It's an animated number about which I'd heard nothing. This is often how I shop. Anyway, enough about me, the movie's rated PG. The label explains the rating's for "some mild peril and rude humor." I read this aloud to Brandon.
B - Sounds like our house.
R - Mild Peril? Yeah, we got that.
B - No, rude humor.
R - True, we got it all.

---

Amelia, after much beating training, has been going to sleep for naps and bedtime generally without complaint for, oh, I don't know, a year now? Until Tuesday. Tuesday I put her in bed for her nap around noon. As is our custom. She's been doing a noon to three nap and an eight to eight overnight for some time. So, Tuesday she screamed for a good ten minutes (as opposed to a bad ten) before going to sleep. Tuesday night I went out for lady time to play bunco with the gals. (You have to play bunco with "gals.") When I got home Brandon reported Amelia had a scream-fest at bedtime to the degree he went in to comfort her. This is a super-rare event around here. This screaming continued through Thursday. Every sleep attempt was met with this reaction. When my child is in this kind of distress there is a large portion of my brain (heart?) which kind of clumps up and gets pissed off. Others suffer. Friday rolled around and we were all home and I decided to do an experiment: it was noon and Amelia had played, pooped, eaten - all the important stuff - so I asked her if she was tired. She said no. Okay, we did this for quite a while. When she wanted to interact, I told her that since it was naptime and she was supposed to be sleeping, I would not play with her. No, she could not have more to eat or drink, it was naptime. She persisted with the line that she was not tired. At 1:50 I said, here's the deal, you are going to sleep. We all went into her room and put her freshly diapered bum into bed. She said "no," but we said "yes." She hollered for a matter of seconds and slept until after five. This led to nine o'clock bedtime which was not protested at all. Since then she's napped from about one to four and gone to bed by nine. The screaming is over. This may not seem like a big deal but an hour is big in the land of the 1.75-year-old. Or more specifically, the land of the mama of the 1.75-year-old. Deep breath. Embrace the change. Vote for Obama.

Don't be the one

She noticed the "shoo" (airplane noise) outside the store yesterday. For the first time. She pointed to her bum and said "seet." I helped her up and she sat. And she loved it.Here's the thing: she doesn't know it can move.
Here's the warning: don't be the one to teach her. I'm looking at you, grandparents.

This is what you get when you say, "Show me your teeth."

Morning, Sunshine!

18-monther gets first haircut (operation mullet-be-gone a success!)