Mama and Papa's house

Before our Fayetteville girl's weekend, we met at mom and dads house for dinner and to play with Pearce. Nathan and Charlotte were so happy to be with him, and Pearce loved being with the big kids. He is so happy and thinks everything Nathan and Charlotte do is hilarious!

While we were gone, mama and papa kept all the kids on Friday while Wayne was at work, and they visited grandma for the afternoon and then Nathan and Charlotte went back to our house to be with grandmother and wait on daddy. They were very excited to spend the weekend with daddy because that meant sleeping with him each night and going to Toys R Us...wow!

High School Friends

This last weekend Carrie, Marla, and I drove to Fayetteville to visit our friends Adriana and Allison...our other high school friend, Marla Andrews, drove up from Hot Springs, and we had our own mini high school reunion! We had so much fun!!!

We left early Friday morning and got to Fayetteville around 2:30. We spent the day and night just hanging out and talking. Allison cooked us a great dinner too! Adriana has 4 kids, Annalise (7), 3 year old twins; Mary and Whit, and a new baby; Jack...needless to say, it was a busy house! It was fun playing with Adriana's kids knowing we could just have fun with them but not have to worry about our own 😊

The next day, we slept in and then went out to lunch, shopping and then out for a nice dinner that night. The 6 of us had so much fun being with just the girls and getting caught up!

Day 11

We're coming home! Today is our travel day so nothing too exciting to post except for one funny thing that happened to Wayne. We had our huge backpacks strapped on and were waiting at our water bus stop. Wayne was getting our tickets and ended up dropping his! It was about to blow into the water so he quickly tried to grab it, but then lost his balance. It was like slow motion for me. I saw him start to go sideways then he was falling backwards! He took several stumbling steps backwards trying to catch himself. There was a guy with a little dog standing by Wayne and I was so scared Wayne was going to fall on it. Luckily, he caught himself. It was all I could do not to die laughing!
We are going to have a long day of traveling; 22 hours to be exact...woke up at 7 am, got ready, took a boat to the airport, spent 9 hours flying from Venice to Philadelphia (watched 3 movies!), customs, 5 hour layover in Philly, and then a 3 hr flight to Dallas. We are so exhausted but have stayed awake the whole time to get our bodies back on U.S. time.
Can't wait to sleep in our own bed and see our babies!!! We won't get home til midnight so we aren't going to get Nathan and Charlotte till tomorrow morning. They are at grandmother's house, so we are going over there first thing!

Here is a picture of our ride to the airport!

Day 10

One thing Venice is known for is glass blowing. There is a small island off of Venice named Murano which is the main "headquarters" for glass blowing. So we took the water bus over that morning to walk around. It was about a 30 minute ride which was nice. As soon as we got off and started walking, we found a demonstration going on. It was so cool to see the guys actually melting and molding the glass. As we walked around, we went in and out of all of the shops and saw everything from tiny, delicate sculptures to great big huge ones!

We stayed in Murano for several hours and then went back to the mainland for a gondola ride! It was nice because our guy took us through all of the narrow passageways in the city. We then went back to our hotel, changed clothes and then went to a nice dinner on the water. I saw this restaurant the night before. It had lights all around it, was right in the water with lots of flowers around, a cute awning, and waiters in tuxes...when I saw it last night, I said, "Wayne! I want to eat there!" He told me that waiters in tuxes means expensive, but still took me there for our last Italian dinner. It was so wonderful! Our expensive dressed up waiter was so nice too :)

After eating, we took a long walk home, got dessert from a bakery and found a piazza where two groups of musicians were taking turns playing music. They were dressed in tuxes playing old fashioned, "big band" style music. As they played, the crowd kept growing. Everyone was dancing and clapping. It was so neat! I felt like I went back in time! We drank wine and listened to the music for a while and then headed back to the hotel. We were a little sad to think we were going home tomorrow, but we can't wait to see Nathan and Charlotte!!!

Day 9, continued

Here are some more pictures of our first full day in Venice. This was mainly our exploration day. They have 2 different modes of transportation that are used most often; the water taxi and water bus...the taxis are all old fashioned looking wooden boats and the water bus was more like a large pontoon boat. The taxis go wherever you want them to go and the water bus has specific routes and stops. The bus is what we mainly used. There was a stop right outside our hotel. So on our first full day, we rode the bus all the way up and down the canal. I can't begin to explain how pretty it was. It was just like the pictures you see, it was better than I imagined!

We also walked all over, ate gelato as a snack, and ate dinner in a piazza while "people watching." One thing we encountered in each city was "peddlers" selling different things like bags, kids toys, sunglasses, watches, hand made things, etc... When we were eating dinner on this night in one of the piazzas, there were several guys selling these glow in the dark helicopter sling shots. Once it got dark, it was actually kind of neat to see all of these lights spinning up into the air.
The piazzas always had restaurants all around them. Where we were eating, we had a great view of everything. There were several kids (whose parents bought them one of these helicopters) playing and running around in the middle of the square. Together with the peddlers, they were flying their helicopters and having the best time. It was so fun to watch. And the men selling the helicopters were so sweet to the kids! They kept helping them and showing them how to fly them higher. Wayne and I sat at our table drinking wine and watching the kids for the longest time.