Pompeii

We visited Pompeii one day. Ryan and I weren't sure what to expect, but it was super cool. Pompeii is a town that was destroyed  and buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted. 

So part of the town has been excavated, but they say so much of the town is still underground. You can see the structure of the stores, the streets, houses, etc. It was pretty crazy. 

They actually had some of the remains of people, animals, and items that were excavated. 

We even saw some of the wealthy houses with tile floors. It was a huge area we covered, and it was just a portion of the town. 

Mount Vesuvius in the background. 

The whole group! 

The Amalfi Coast

So in April, I got the chance to go to Italy for work. I was hosting the Portrait of Italy trip for the Traveling Cyclones. Ryan was able to go as my "companion". 

This is the view on the Amalfi Coast. It was beautiful. It was amazing how narrow and curvy the roads were. Our big tour bus got stuck a couple times and we had to back up to let someone else pass. You could see on some of the buildings some scrape marks where vehicles couldn't quite fit. Our tour guide told us that if we ever come on our own, don't rent a car on the Amalfi Coast! 

First photo in Italy. 

This was our first gelato. We don't look too bad for having been traveling for about 16 hours between flights and airports. Then another 1.5 hour on a bus. We had some time to kill before our group dinner so we got some gelato. 

The first of MANY duomos (cathedrals) that we saw. 

My amazing travelers! There were 23 travelers plus myself and Ryan. And our tour guide Mara. It was such a great group! We spent a lot of time together but everyone really enjoyed each other's company. 

My little bunny

We went shopping and she got these bunny ears at Bath & Body Works. She's "ear-resistable" :) 

Grandma Rita made her some scrapbooks and she was loving looking at them. There are pictures of her as a baby so she thinks that is pretty cool. 

We love America! This was back in April, but now (in September) she is learning about the flag in school. She can tell us that "the American Flag has 50 stars and fourteen stripes". Ok, so it's not perfect but we are still pretty proud. We just got to get her to say thirteen stripes :) 

She helped me pick out the pinwheel for her Great-Grandpa Julius. I buy a pinwheel each year for the cemetery. 

The Easter Bunny & Easter Egg Hunt

This was as close to the Easter Bunny that Addison was going to get. We were on the 2nd level of Valley West and the Easter Bunny was on the 1st level. Ha! She enjoyed watching him from there. 

Bondurant had an Easter Egg Hunt one Saturday morning in April. This is our first hunt! It was a little chilly out, many kids had hats & gloves. Oops. Thankfully we had a hood on our sweatshirt.

She got the hang of the hunt pretty quick. She wasn't the fastest kid out there by any means, but she figured out what she needed to do. We tried to direct her to the Butterfingers and Reeses - haha!

 We may have waited longer for the hunt to start than it actually took to pick up all the candy, but she still thought it was a good time!

Vacation has come to an end

One short kid teasing another.

Makena, Addison and the babies. 

Our vacation had come to an end. We were on the airplane and Addison was begging to go back to Grandma Rita's. We kept telling her that we had to go home to see Dad. We told her that we need to bring Dad back to Florida. Little did we realize that she was expecting that we were flying home, getting Dad, and flying back. She was so disappointed! In this picture, she is saying "please..... let's go back to Florida" ha!