It's been a few weeks since my last post.  A quick run down of what has occurred since I last wrote.  The wife and I spent 12 wonderful days in Italy (Sans Kids), The mother in law is in town and we have been forcibly pampering her to the best of our abilities despite her protests.  The boys have been little hellions as usual, the grass has grown tremendously (I still haven't mowed and keep finding reasons not to), and we pulled the camper out to get it ready for the camping season.  All in all, we have been busy.

     The trip to Italy was awesome as previously noted.  We probably averaged 5 to 6 miles of walking a day.  The country was beautiful and even in the areas where English wasn't spoken, the people were friendly and tried to understand what we wanted.  The food was out of this world.  even the sandwiches at gas stations blew our minds.  It was really a mostly trouble free trip.  All of the problems occurred either on the way to, or coming from Italy.  On the way there, we got to the airport in Seattle and realized we didn't have our international driving permits (turns out we didn't need them), then in Paris for our change of planes, we found out that we had to go through customs and then go through security again.  We got to our gate and found out the plane was delayed by 45 minutes.  When we finally boarded, we sat at the gate for 45 minutes before we were informed that someone failed to get on the plane but his luggage made it and they were looking for it.  1.5 hours and 3 times through the luggage and they still hadn't found his luggage, so they lined up all the luggage on the tarmac next to the plane and had us exit through the front door, identify our luggage, then re board the plane through the rear door.  All this after Laura and I had been up about 24 hours.  We finally got to Rome (3 hours late) and headed to the Hotel.  We ended up getting separated on the subway.  Laura (rather than take a return train to the appropriate station) walked to the Hotel and checked us in.  We managed to meet up outside the proper station 45 minutes later.  That was the last trouble we had until we went to leave.  Turns out, our plane leaving was so early, that there was no train to the airport so we had to sleep in the airport or drop 50 euros on a cab.  We slept at the airport.  Then the plane was delayed by 30 minutes since the flight crew was late.  Once again we had to go through customs and another security screening in Paris which meant we barely made our flight to Seattle.  Since those were the only bad spots of the trip to Italy, it was a great trip.  I will post a detailed blog on the trip once I am done typing it up (it's a work in progress since I am transposing the journal I kept with my wife).  All in all, it has been a fun couple of weeks.

    The mother in law has been a joy.  We keep telling her that treating her as we do is the least we can do since she babysat our 4 boys (did I mention that they were boys and that there were4 of them) for us while we were in Italy.  She constantly tries to slip us money and pay for meals, etc.  We have thoroughly enjoyed having her here.  The boys have loved having her here and we are all going to miss her.  I loved having someone else to cook for.

    As for the camper, we have a lot to do with it prior to camping.  We have to get it in to get a new battery, a cable replaced, and the vent repaired (it got blown open during a snow storm and damaged as a result).  We also have to do some major cleaning in it as the snowstorm that managed to damage the vent, also got some water inside and created a little mildew, not to mention that the outside managed to grow its own protective algae layer.

    Well, that about covers it for today.  Come back tomorrow for Happy Hump Day.  See then.