My yard...

...is starting to look like a yard! We have grass! Well, weedy grass, but it's green and it looks better than before. In fact, considering what it looked like last summer, I'm amazed we got it looking so good so soon. My veggie plants are amazing, and we've already had some of our lettuce. The peas are starting to form pods, so they'll be ready in a week or two. Yay! It's a success! I think it helps that the weather lately has been, um, wonderful. Weather like this doesn't usually stick around so long. For the last two weeks and for this following week the temperature has stayed in the 60's or 70's and we've even had rain every so often! Its been kind of like... well, spring! We usually have about 2.5 days of spring before the temperature rockets from 50 to 95. Praise God for spring!

Raspberries

Tomatoes

Lettuce

Beans

I'm pregnant!

We found out on Memorial Day that we are expecting our first baby! I thought for sure that it would take longer than one month to get pregnant, so I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I guess God felt we were ready. So, come February we will have one more life in our family. I'm so excited but at the same time I don't know how to feel. I don't feel pregnant yet (though I'm sure that's coming soon) so it's hard to convince myself that I am. I read that about now (5 weeks) the baby is the size of a sesame seed and it's heart will start beating soon. Wow.

I'm thrilled about becoming a Mom so soon. It's what I want to do and I feel so blessed that we were able to get pregnant. We know several couples who are unable to have kids of their own, or had a difficult time with it, so sometimes I feel almost guilty that it was so easy for us. However, one of these ladies assured me that they would never want anyone else to go through what they went through to have kids, so they never feel cheated when other couples become pregnant right away. It helps that a good friend of mine found out a few weeks earlier than me that she is expecting her first also, so it will be fun to have someone to be pregnant with.

Thank you God for this blessing.

Florence: Day Four

So, yeah, still trying to get the rest of my Italy trip up. Slowly but surely. It'd probably be easier if my computer didn't take so long to upload photos. Sheesh.

Most of what we did this day couldn't be photographed. The Uffizi Gallery (for which we waited in lined for a hour and a half) was amazing! One of the best museums in the world, it was an artist's paradise! We also went to the Academia Museum to see Michaelangelo's David (for which we waited in line for a hour and a half in the RAIN). Aaron made a point of telling me multiple times that we spent more than three hours total waiting in line that day. Poor guy has never been to an amusement park on a busy day, it was almost too much for him. But, he's so patient and tolerant of my wishes, after all, this is WHY we came.

This photo was taken just outside the Uffizi on the Arno river, the Ponte Vecchio bridge is in the background.

The Ponte Vecchio bridge was last rebuilt in the 1300's and was the only bridge in Florence to survive the bombing of World War 2. It's lined with gold and silver shops, filled with the most beautiful (and expensive) jewelry imaginable. It was fun to look :)

The best part about Florence had to be the food. Everything we ate was fantastic. The gelato was the best we had, even the pizza was amazing. The place we ordered from was packed, and the guy we were trying to order from at the counter didn't speak any english so we just pointed and took it back to the hotel. He was really nice about it. I think we got something with four cheeses, and one with onions and white sauce. It was heavenly.



The best part was dinner though. Hands down this has got to be the best meal I've ever experienced. Partly because of the restaurant's atmosphere. Very non-touristy, we actually couldn't find it, it was tucked away in a really crummy area of town. Only 10 tables, three in the loft where we sat, a bar and a fireplace downstairs, with the kitchen under the loft. We went all out on this one a bought a bottle of wine and a full three courses. The wine was amazing, and it made everything else wonderful (wine has a way of doing that).

Unfortunately most of my pictures were too blurry, due in part to the dim light and, I'm sure, in part to the wine. We had this amazing bruschetta, Aaron had ravioli with some kind of green bean (or broccoli) white suce, and this really yummy pork with sweet peppercorn sauce, and I had penne with creamed pumpkin and gorgonzola, and beef and arugula with balsamic glaze.

We were so stuffed after dinner that we were debating not having dessert. The waitress had other ideas. She insisted we have their house tirimisu. Since her recommendation on the wine went well, we agreed. Personally I'm impartial to tirimisu, but then again, this is Italy and we are here to have the best, and tirimisu is their most famous dessert.

So, the whole "being too stuffed for dessert" and "being impartial to tirimisu" thing? I did not realize that I had never HAD tirimisu until I experienced this. It was awe-inspiring. Truly. It was so good we were giggling (okay, that was probably the wine too). :)

We had no problem finishing off the whole thing, in fact I bet we could have each eaten our own. That waitress got a VERY good tip from us!