Happy Liberation Day.

Today is an Italian holiday and JJ had the day off from school.  Not sure what we were "supposed" to do today, but we just relaxed at home.  JJ is sick and Owen is teething really badly, so it wasn't a super fun day, but we survived.

JJ resting on the couch and kept saying, "no, I don't want to go to bed."

A few minutes later, he was out.

Owen started "real" crawling a few days ago.  I think he gets faster every day now.  

Since I was taking videos of Owen crawling, JJ wanted to show-off his crawling skills also : )

T-Ball.

The Opening Ceremonies, JJ's team is in the royal blue.

Today was JJ's first t-ball game.  Yes, they have "real" games at this age here on base.  He has practice once a week and then a 3 inning game on Saturdays.  Luckily the other team agreed to only play 2 innings today.  The kids, and parents, were definitely ready for the game to be over by that point.  

The hitting and running the bases went really well, it's just the fielding that's the problem.  They all had their positions, but once the ball was hit every kid on the field would run for the ball and create a huge pile of preschoolers fighting for the ball.  There was kicking, pushing, hitting, and crying.  JJ didn't do any of the aggressive behavior, but did cry when the other kids were mean.  Hopefully the kids will get better as the weeks go on or we might just quit the season a little early.  We don't want JJ to end up hating Brian's favorite past time.

8 Months Old and On the Move.

Owen is now 8 months old and loves to crawl around.  He's doing a 3-legged crawl, but if he sees one of JJ's toys he can move really fast to go get it!  Owen seems to really like to be able to move around on his own, but JJ isn't such a fan.  I had to have "the talk" with him and explain that if he truly doesn't want Owen touching one of his toys then he can either play with it in his room by himself or wait until Owen is napping.  JJ, of course, chooses to wait until Owen is napping to play with most of his toys now.  I can definitely foresee lots of refereeing on my part in the future when it comes to touching each others stuff.

JJ still makes Owen laugh all the time and plays with him, but I think he misses the newborn stage.  We met our new neighbors today and they were holding Owen and being really sweet with him, which apparently sent JJ the wrong message.  When we got home, JJ said "after we give Owen to the neighbors we can get a new baby."  I explained that Owen wasn't going anywhere and luckily JJ agreed that it was ok if he stayed with us!  

Bologna, Italy.

Brian apparently took a very wrong turn on our way out of Switzerland and ended up driving through So Cal!

We finally ended our vacation in Bologna.  It was pouring down rain the day we were supposed to do some sightseeing, so we ended up just leaving for home early, which was ok.  We were all very ready to be home.  Here's some of Bologna.

My friend Stacy was actually in town for work and we got to meet up for dinner.  It was great!

I'm finally done with posting about our trip.  As I'm sure you can tell, we had an amazing time.  We've decided to do one big trip a year.  Last year was Paris and Normandy, this year was the road trip and now we just have to decide what to do next year.  I'll start back with "current events" in the next post : ) 

Interlaken, Switzerland.

The next stop after leaving Germany was Switzerland, where we spent a couple of days.  It was definitely cold, but the view was gorgeous.  We stayed in a nice little tourist town and one day took a train out to a different town and then took a boat ride back to where we were staying.  The boat ride was about 2 hours, which was probably about an hour too long for the boys!

JJ coloring on the train.

Owen enjoyed his second train ride of his life.

The goats across from our hotel.  JJ loved them.

Switzerland was nice, but the people weren't super friendly.  We have definitely been spoiled here in Italy with everyone saying to JJ and Owen, "caio, bello, bellisimo familia!"  Once we crossed over into Southern Switzerland though, the culture actual changed and people called the boys beautiful again : )

We were glad that we went there, but it's definitely not on our list of places we want to go back to.  Brian was excited to get a knife though.  We also bought the boys knives which we'll give them when they're about 20!  Don't tell them we have them ; )

Innsbruck, Austria.

Our first stop in Innsbruck was the Alpenzoo which was full of animals that live in the Alps.  It was probably 1/100 the size of the "World Famous San Diego Zoo"!!  JJ enjoyed it though and didn't complain that it was so small.

JJ wanted to rush through the whole zoo to get to the bears.  When we found them though, he was a little scared that the glass barrier wasn't safe enough.  Luckily we all survived : )

Look Grandpa, a moose!

After the zoo, we headed over to Alstadt von Innsbruck.  It was a really nice little town and we ate some good food, shopped a little, ate some really good chocolate, then headed back to Germany.

There was a huge 3-story Swarovski exhibit and store that we didn't get to go in due to fear of JJ touching something!

One of the weird parts about traveling through Europe by car is that sometimes you can't tell what country you're in!  Since almost all the countries over here are part of the EU, there are no "real" border crossings.  We literally had to consult with the GPS sometimes to confirm what country we were in!  Definitely different that the borders in the US.

Easter.

JJ was super excited to dye eggs : )

After dying them, JJ ate 2!  He's really liking hard boiled eggs lately.

The Easter bunny got a little confused and came down the chimney.

We had a nice and relaxing Easter this year.  We went to Church, then the Easter bunny came, and then we ate dinner.  The missing item - an egg hunt.  JJ had waaaaaay too much candy already that day, so we didn't want to hide candy filled eggs and since he'd eaten half the real ones, there weren't many left to hide.  He didn't notice, so we'll just wait and do one next year.

PS - in case you couldn't tell, in the previous post the first picture is JJ on his first Easter, followed by a picture of Owen in the exact outfit this year : )

Happy Bright Monday!!!

I'll post more later ; )