Happy Veterans Day!

I just wanted to say Happy Veterans Day to my amazing husband and to all the men and women who have defended our great nation so that we may be free!  Brian's 14 years in the Navy have had some major ups and downs, but I'm so proud of him for becoming the sailor he is today.  We're not sure where the next 10-ish years will take us, but I'm proud to be his Navy Wife.  I love you, our veteran and hero!

And possibly another future veteran in the family . . . 

Malta.

We took a trip down to Malta while Brian's parents were here and had a great time.  It's a beautiful country made up of three small islands south of Sicily.  

Here was the view from our hotel room in St. Julian's Bay.  We swam in all three pools, plus the Mediterranean!

We went into the capitol of Valetta and it was great.  The history and architecture there was amazing.

One of the days we took the ferry over to Gozo, Malta where we took a bus tour around the whole island.  It was an amazing experience that I'll never forget.

Venice.

Ok, so I know I'm extremely slow with posting this, but better late then never, right?!

When Brian's parents were here, Brian and I took a long weekend trip up to Venice by ourselves.  Yes, you read that right, by ourselves!!  It was amazing!  It was a little strange to be without the kids at first, but we adjusted quickly : )  It rained a lot, but since we didn't have kids with us we were still able to do everything that we wanted to do.

One of the days we went to Hard Rock for lunch.  Don't judge us, we eat Italian food all the time, so eating American food was very different!  Plus, this was our view from the table.

It seemed a little surreal to be celebrating our 10-year anniversary (the "reason" for the trip) in Venice while our kids were in Naples with Brian's parents.  We felt very blessed.

Brian's Parents.

Brian's parents just left a few days ago after a great 2.5 week visit with them.  They had a little jet lag, but adjusted pretty well : )  The boys LOVED having them here, as did we.  

The first thing we did with them was go to Oktoberfest at Brian's base.  We actually did this with them last year too!  JJ got his face painted for the first time and as you can see, it was a huge success.

I'll be adding lots of posts about their visit in the next few days.

Cantina Del Vesuvio.

Last weekend we took a USO tour to a local winery and had a great time.  We got to help harvest the grapes, stomp the grapes, and then had an amazing lunch and drink some wine!  JJ had a great time collecting the grapes and kept running all over the vineyard.  The winery is fully organic and they do all the grape harvesting by hand.  I'm hoping they don't use the grapes that we stomped for next year's wine though!

The man in the white coat is the owner.  He was kind enough to come talk to us even though he is extremely busy right now during harvest.  This is a family owned business that's been making amazing wine and olive oil since 1951.

Here is their cellar.  They only sell wine from their store, not at stores or restaurants.  The wine was amazing and we got a lot to take home : )