Just To Remind You How Cute Erma Is

Because I have not posted in a while I am afraid that some people might have forgotten how adorable Erma is. This is her as a cute kitten.








And this is her as a cute adult and neck warmer.



Ahh, I love her!

I'm Back!

I know, I know, it has been a while. You see, I went on this vacation - an awesome vacation - and once a person goes on an awesome vacation, it is hard to accept that they will one day have to go back to real life. So I’m back, as a matter of fact I have been back for a rather long time, but I’ve been dreading the first post-vacation blog post because it is a lot of pressure. I really don’t feel like blogging about my entire vacation minute by minute because I would like to keep it as a pleasant memory for me instead of whoring it out with pictures and eighteen paragraphs about all the great stuff I did. Instead, I’ll just do that a teeny bit.

So here it is, I went to Italy for two weeks with my mom. That’s right, we both left our silly husbands behind to go to Europe, and I personally think it was an excellent decision. Here is the great part though, we met up with her Mountain Friend (my parents live on a mountain, so all friends in that immediate region are Mountain Friends) and the Mountain Friend’s sister, who doesn’t live on a mountain at all. My mom and I did Rome with just the two of us and then found the others in Florence and continued to wreak havoc on most of Tuscany and Umbria with them. We traveled into small towns, got lost in vineyards, saw a billion beautiful churches with amazing artwork in them, spoke Italian poorly, and laughed constantly, all while trying to keep to strict regimen of at least one gelato a day.

Here are a few things I learned:
-Men in Rome dress very well. They also flirt very well and excel at it.
-People in Italy do not obey traffic laws. Now that I think of it, they don’t really do rules very well at all.
-There is good wine everywhere.
-A smile goes a long way even if you have no idea how to speak the language.
-I have finally accepted olives into my life. It feels so sexy.
-Cameras are annoying. This is something that I have always known, but when I have a bunch of rude people at the Vatican pushing me around so they can get a horrible shot of The School of Athens just so they can prove they were there it makes me a bit grumpy.
-German tourists are jolly, while Canadian tourists can be snippy.
-Humans really are amazing. Our gang got our fill of art and architecture and between the Colosseum in Rome and the Justinian mosaics in Ravenna we were just flabbergasted at what humans can make.
-And one of the most important things I learned: If I really love a piece of artwork, there is nothing stopping me from one day going to see it in person. I don’t know why that never occurred to me before, and I know that I will not be able to do it again any time soon, but I am confident that I will be able to see more amazing art and architecture up close and in person during my lifetime.

So now I will leave you with some pictures (half of the pictures are on my camera, and half are on my mother’s camera because we are both technologically challenged, especially when it comes to strange European plugs):




Italy has too many ruins, they are everywhere! They make great benches.




Pigeons are gross no matter what continent you are on.




They really are cute, but I think the Pope has a better chance of defending himself with his pointy hat. I think Jordan must have been a Swiss Guard in a previous life.




Apparently lions really like to eat Christians because we kept seeing it everywhere.




Lunch is Assisi. Just another day of drinking wine and overlooking a beautiful valley...I mean I do it all the time in Delaware.




This? Oh, its just the view from our Villa outside of Arezzo. I just threw it in here even though its pretty similar to the view from my apartment.




Ancient Rome. Seriously, ruins everywhere.