14 Months

We have been here 14 months. That is hard to believe. The year has flown by so very fast. I hope we can slow time down a bit and make our last year in Italy last a bit longer.

As much as I'm trying to live in the moment and enjoy our stay in Italy, moving back to the US has been on my mind lately. We plan to move back at the end of June in 2011, once Brandon finished his school year. Thinking about this brings excitement and quite a bit of sadness. There are many things I look forward to at home and oh so many things I will miss. I'll write more about this in a future blog.

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This morning we checked out of our hotel in Vicenza and decided to take a few more backroads as we headed towards home. We drove through many towns and finally up a large hill (small mountain) on a twisty, winding narrow road. The hillsides were full of vineyards and cherry trees.

On the way down the other side of the mountain, as we headed in the direction of the autostrada, I spotted a roadside fruit stand. I ended up buying 3 kilos of cherries. Thats a lot of cherries. They filled a plastic grocery bag. These would be my snack on the 2 hour drive home.

We arrived home mid afternoon. As much as it is nice to travel, its also nice to relax at home. Katrina spent time looking over her photos while I watched stage 7 of the Tour of Switzerland. Team Radioshack is doing well, with 3 riders in the top 20. Lance is in 7th place.

At 6:15pm, we headed over the parking lot at Brandon's school to meet the bus. They ended up being a bit late and didn't arrive until almost 7pm. When they did arrive, they were all smiles and very excited to see their families and share their stories from the residential trip. Brandon talked non stop all the way home. He had a blast. I will do my best to get him to write a guest blog in the next few days.

Mike came over to pizza and Wii this evening. We bought a new Boom Blox game while we were away. What a cool game. We had a great time.