Second verse same as the first.

I wanted a chance to share some of my favorite memories as well as some of my favorite pictures, so here I am to encourage you all to not only read my blog today but also to (as Chris said) look at our new 'flickr' account. I will try to put the pics that we have on the blog as I sit down to blog but there are a lot of times that I want to put like 30 pics on here and I do not have a lot to say so I will try to keep both of them updated, really I will.

So the things that I took away from Sicily I wish that I could actually put into words. It was THE most amazing vacation that I ever taken. There was is so much that I want to tell each one of you individually but I will try to be as general as I can here.

Mom and Dad did a great job showing us as much of Sicily as they could in 3 days and I want to thank them again for the opportunity to go there. There were a lot of firsts on this trip; it was the first time that Micha took a plane, it was the first time that Chris or I had been to Europe, it was the first time that Micha has seen a beach (BTW she LOVED it), it was our first family vacation, it was the first time that I felt real jet lag (I am not sure that I am still over it), it was the first time I took a vacation and NEVER thought about work, and it was the first time of many that I went to Italy.

I am going to try to sum up the whole trip in as little as possible, I know right now that this is going to be really hard because there are a million things that I want to say about Sicily.

As Christine said earlier I miss the smell the most. There are a lot of orange trees there and right now they are all blossoming so anytime that you were in the north east part of the island no matter where you were it was like smelling the orange blossoms. I had never encountered such a strong pleasant smell over that large of a space.

I loved the history that was involved with Sicily, I think that my favorite day was the ruins just to look at them and imagine how those people built them and looking at the cities on hills and to think about the battles that took place to keep their city in their control. Just looking at the things that were built over 2000 years ago was incredible.

Mount Etna was so phenomenal to look at every time that I could look at the volcano I could not take my eyes off of it. It was just the most beautiful piece of earth that I have ever seen. I added a picture but it does no justice to actually looking at it with your own eyes.

My favorite part of the whole trip was to watch how much fun Miss. Micha was having. There were parts of Micha that I met on this trip that I had never seen. Sometimes it was not so great, she was more tired than she had ever been in her life, and other times she showed me a caring side of her that I had never seen. Yesterday I was making breakfast and she asked, "What are you making for breakfast daddy." I told her, " I am making biscuits and gravy I hope that is okay, I know that Uncle Ken just made us biscuits and gravy but I wanted them today." She answered with the most amazing thing that I ever heard from her lips. "Whatever you want to make is okay...people need to be thankful for whatever they get." Wow that is quite a thought for anyone, yet alone a four year old. In fact it has made me think the last few days. I should be thankful for everything that I get.

Thank you so much Dad and Mom!!