Just Old PIctures

I found some pictures that amused me, so I thought I'd share them. Four years ago we tried to take some nice pictures of the kids, with varying degrees of success.

Koleman understands the process.



Eli has always been photogenic.



Milena was still a bit squirmy. Tough to get any picture where she was in focus.



And Kelson just wouldn't play along, so we had to take a picture of Walter, instead.

You Gotta Do It

Blog about the first snow, that is.



It was a nasty, cold, windy day. Just to remind us that we do, in fact, live in Minnesota.



Eli probably wanted to build a snowman, but it wasn't that kind of snow.

Question

Is it inappropriate to follow a cute picture of kids and grandparents...



... with a picture of a dead mouse?



They were taken only a few minutes apart from each other, so that makes them related in some way. Right?

Geocaching at Seven Mile Creek

OK, I've had a very subtle request to include pictures of my kids on the blog. I guess Michelle and I aren't cool enough anymore.

So today we brought Grandma Karen and Grandpa Gary geocaching with us to Seven Mile Creek park. It's a very nice county park with lots of good trails and playground equipment for the kids.

The kids crossed a bridge.



Unfortunately we failed to find the cache at that side of the creek. Of course, everybody who has logged a visit since April has failed, so I don't feel so bad about that.

The first successful find of the day was done by Grandma. Like they teach you in Boy Scouts - always stick your hand in hollow tree stumps.



Eli made his first geocache find. He was pretty proud of that!



Michelle found a geocache very close to where she is standing.



And Grandpa was there, too. He spent much of his time chasing Eli and Milena through the park.

Catania, beautiful Catania

OK, I think this is my final post about our vacation that ended ... a month ago. Forgive me.

Anyway, I don't think that I can fully explain what Catania is like. It's very large, fairly dirty, extremely disorganized, quite loud and potentially hazardous. If we didn't have Matt and Susan there to pick us up and show us around we probably would have been hopelessly lost. It's nearly impossible to figure out where things are or where the buses go until you've experienced them for a day or two.

The neat thing, though, is that once you get a feel for the city it kind of makes sense. The giant volcano is north. The big water is eastish. Via Etnea is the street which runs down to the plaza by the Duomo, and points north to the big volcano. Even though things are dirty on the outside, behind the rough exterior is hidden beauty. And we felt completely safe there, despite the chaos.

It's certainly not a classic tourist location, that's for sure. But it makes for an interesting trip.

Anyway, on our last full day in Catania, we went with Matt and the girls on a little tour of Catania. We saw some of the cathedrals, attempted to visit a toy museum, and saw a very cool Roman coliseum.



If you're in an ancient Roman ruin, it's nice to have a Classics professor along to help explain things.



Let's see, there are apartments. There's some laundry. Oh, and in the background? Yup, that's the two thousand year old coliseum.



A view from where Matt teaches, which shows the true skyline of Catania - crosses and TV antennas.

I'm a monster

I must confess to my true nature: I'm a freak. After a lifetime of normalcy, I am now disfigured. Look, if you dare:



Isn't it horrible? Only half a nail. Young children scream when they see me, women weep, and men gnash their teeth. To be honest, it's hard to get anything done with all the noise.

More Ortygia

One of the best things about Ortygia is the Duomo.



The duomo was built on top of an ancient Temple to Athena. And not just on the site of the temple, either. It actually incorportated the Doric columns into the cathedral. It's kind of cool to see a church held up by 2,500 year old columns. (Michelle thinks it's cool)



The inside of the duomo was filled with your typical beautiful cathedral stuff. They're a dime a dozen in Europe.



And, thankfully, in Ortygia we found rubble. I love rubble. This used to be the Temple to Apollo. Now it's just old rocks. So it goes.

Ortygia

First the bad news (for me, at least). My laptop died. It's somewhere in the continental United States, hopefully being attended to by Best Buy geniuses. I don't know what's wrong, how long it will be gone, or how much it will cost to fix it. Other than that, it's fine.

Thankfully we still have the old desktop, so I've rescued some photos, moved them here, and will start blogging again. You may all rejoice.

OK, back to Sicily. On Tuesday we took a day trip to Syracuse, an ancient town with more history than, well, most places. In Syracuse, there are two main areas to visit, the ancient town with lots of historical rubble, and Ortygia, the touristy island, with a little bit of historical rubble.

We didn't know if we could visit both, so we went to Ortygia first. This picture shows how beautiful Sicily can be, when framed properly.



A great part of the charm of Ortygia are its narrow streets. Many of them are so narrow that cars don't drive on them. And that is saying something.



One of the fun parts of our trip was trying to find the tourist information office. We had a map of Ortygia which had an "I" marked on it. There was even a street name. We found the street, walked to where the office should be, and couldn't find it. Michelle noted a door that had "tourism" on it, but we saw that it was a travel agency. They did point us in the right direction though.

Apparently we had walked right by the office. Here it is.



What we failed to see was this sign, which apparently is sufficient to tell all the tourists that there is a tourist information office inside the courtyard.



In most countries, they mark the tourist offices so they can be easily found. In Sicily, they want to make sure that you really want to get tourist information.

More Food

First, the good news: for the past 24 hours my computer has been naughty to me, and I was even approaching the time where I figured I would have to visit the Geek Squad. Thankfully I was finally able to load in Safe Mode and do a System Restore. I'm sure you are all greatly relieved to hear that.

OK, back to Sicily. In a previous post I showed our visit to the markets to buy some octopus. That night it was time to make and eat it. While I didn't involve myself in the preperation, I did join in the eating. Michelle did help Susan in the kitchen, but there just wasn't room for me.

The first task was to de-gut the little buggers. Apparently they have some kind of plastic piece in their insides, which needs to be removed. It's a bizarre thing - for a critter which seems like it should be so soft and squishy, it doesn't make sense that there is a long, hard bit of molded plastic inside it. But who am I to criticize?



Here's a nice view of one of our octopi, right next to the implement of its destruction.



And a closer view, to show just how darn cute it is.



Here's the important thing, though - the final result. It was fantastic.

Catania Fish Market

OK, we're back to Catania. On the first day we were there, we walked to the market, which is really quite cool. The nice thing about markets like this is you really know what you're getting. Penelope examines some fishy things.



Matt gets ready to by squid (that one will earn its own post).



The bag of ice is all you need to keep the fish fresh.



I'll have one of those, and two of those, and four of those...

Bonn

On our last full day in Germany we took a trip with Martin and Nicole to Bonn. Lovely city. We visited a very nice museum there which did not allow pictures, so I won't talk about it. Then we went to the Old Town, or city center, or whatever they call it. That place did allow pictures. Here's the Rathaus:



Here is a statue of Beethoven, who was born in Bonn. I guess that's why they call him Ludwig Bonn Beethoven.



Here is Beethoven's birthplace. We decided not to waste our money and go in there, but I did get to take a picture of some random Asian tourist posing in front of the building. So that was good.



Beethoven was selling lots of things in Bonn, including this vulgar t-shirt. Don't click on the picture to enlarge it, or you might get offended.