First Family Vacation

Well, we're back home from what's sure to go down as a trip with quite a few unforgettable moments! Nathan just fell asleep, Mark's taking a nap, and I just finished off a pack of some of my favorite cookies. So I thought I'd share a bit about our first family vacation.

We've traveled quite a bit with Nathan over his short 6 months of life, even staying in quite a few hotels with him, but on all of those trips we were either working or with other friends/family. This time it was just the three of us.

Here's a few interesting things we did/saw . . .

I saw broccoli on the breakfast buffet - and actually ate some!

We saw a little boy squatting in a not so private place to relieve himself - as they say around here, BIG potty - gross!

A guy told us about an olive festival in his village and invited us to go. We asked for the details, and he told us it would only be for that day. After about 2 hours of driving through olive trees for as far as the eye could see on a little dirt tractor path, turning around to start down another road, and winding through a couple of random villages (getting weird looks the whole time), we finally found a real road again. That wasn't the right road either, so we turned around to give up and head back to the hotel. After we turned around we saw the sign for the village. So off we went AGAIN in search of this festival. Guess what we found when we made it to the village . . . a sign that clearly stated "Olive Festival Fri., Oct. 9" We went on Wed.!

where we came from
the view from the road
nothing but olive tress for as far as the eye could see

where we were headed to
that's the village way up on the hill

Nathan got to play in the swimming pool for the first time. It was indoors, so it wasn't cold. But it was chilly enough that it took a while for him to relax. Once he got used to it, he was splashing his hands and squealing in delight.

We drove around looking for an old castle and ended up on another tractor path in the middle of olive trees. We drove so far only to find that the road became impassable. On the same day we tried to get to an old monastery, and the same thing happened. We had to turn around before we got to it because the road was impassable. Sounds like a pretty desolate place, huh? It was, but it was sooooo beautiful!

in our search for the monastery we couldn't get to we found this one

We searched and searched for Mark's favorite national meal and sweet treat - never did find either!

We learned that Nathan, like his big brother Titus, can be kept occupied for a long time with plastic bottles and any kind of food wrapper that makes noise.


I got to enjoy a nice, relaxing aroma therapy massage at the hotel.

We found cinnamon sticks and dried cranberries at the local bazaar - those are rare finds, and I was thrilled!

Also at the bazaar, we walked through the shoe section. In our city, shoes get strung up on lines that hang from one side of the street to the other. At this bazaar, the shoes were stacked so neatly in boxes and displayed so professionally, it was like walking into Rack Room Shoes!

We also got to visit some ancient ruins. The view was spectacular!





We had a few bumps along the way, but it was great to have some quality time as a family!!