Sun, surf, and sand...

Oops... missed some greetings!

Happy Belated birthday to Chris (while we were in Italy) and Karmen (right after we got back). Speaking of Karmen, she and Tim are expecting their first child at the end of the year!

Graduation congratulations go out to Natalie's cousins Marcie and Brianne. Marcie's headed to UTSA in the fall, and Brianne's off to TLU! Good luck, gals! :)

Four busy weeks between posts leaves a lot to update!

Most of our faithful readers here have already seen our trip report from Italy, but if you haven't, go check it out!

The weekend after we got back, Richie headed to Houston for a volleyball tournament at Third Coast. He and Viet had a pretty good day but lost in the semis. Natalie stayed in Austin to attend Brad and Amanda's housewarming get-together and do some pre-Steeplechase shopping with Lisa and Geoff.

Weekend before last, we headed to Nashville with Lisa and Geoff to see their Alma Mater (Vanderbilt), Geoff's hometown, and go to Steeplechase. We really enjoyed our first trip to Tennessee but we didn't have time to see everything. We'll be back!

Last weekend, Mother Nature must have decided it was officially summer - after a series of cool, rainy weekends this past one was a scorcher! We had Rob, Jason, Austin, and Haille for a quick visit Friday night, spent Saturday running around town to various events including a photo shoot that Richie's car was participating in and Natalie's cousin Brianne's high school graduation party. On Sunday we spent our first official "lake day" on Lisa and Geoff's dock. We have a few equipment kinks (and body kinks - do we remember how to wakeboard/ski?!?) to work out but we're definitely ready for lake season now!

In sadder news, Richie was the unfortunate victim of a fender bender a few days before we left for Nashville. He was stopped at a red light and a high-school kid in a Ford Explorer bumped into him from behind. Luckily no one was hurt, and the damage was mostly isolated to Richie's tailights, bumper, and trunk. So look for Richie to be in a rental ride for a couple of weeks once the NSX goes into the body shop. :(

All caught up now, I think! And I've added several albums to our pictures page as well (even though I'm not *quite* caught up there). Enjoy!

Ciao di Italia! For real this time! Even though we're on our way out...

We're in Venice waiting for our flight home. It's been a wild 10 days. We did make it to Rome, finally. But our bags did not! They didn't catch up with us until a couple of days later, so that was a bit of an adventure.

Rome was packed... the Sunday we arrived was the day of the new Pope's inaugural mass. Due to a bad combination of our late arrival, the residual crowds, a Roman holiday on Monday, and the fact that we were still trying to track down our bags, we were not able to get in to see St. Peter's Basilica. :( But we did get to see the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and plenty of other Roman sites. It was an exhausting day and a half and then we set off for the countryside.

We were in Tuscany (Cortona - where Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun is set and about 10 minutes from Castiglion Fiorentino where Natalie studied in the summer of 1997) for 2 nights and then on the coast in Cinque Terre for 2 nights. We got to visit a lot of quaint little hill towns and really enjoyed the slowed pace of the Italian countryside. And somewhere in there we got our luggage! Hooray!

We returned our rental car in Florence and spent a little over a day there before heading to Venice for two lovely nights. So even though it started badly, it was really an amazing trip and we're sad for it to be ending!! (And definitely not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow morning!)

Look for LOTS of pictures to be posted soon! :)

Arrivederci!

PS - Brad, no problem! Sorry to have bothered you! There wasn't really anything we could've done to avoid the delay, I don't think. Hope you're feeling better!