pictures for grandpas

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monasteries, beaches, fortresses, castles, and 2 kids

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pics of santorini

sunburn, beaches, and tiny umbrella drinks

Sorry its been a while on the updates, maybe i will have to send some more postcards of sandy beaches in paradise. We finally made it to the weather we were expecting a month ago, the ocean is actually warm. We traveled through montenegro and albania since the last update. The mountains in both were the most beautiful we have ever seen, jutting right out of the ocean. we had a very hard time communicating,  no one spoke english. Its been cool to see some places we read about in the bible, corinth, mars hill, dalmatia and soon to be crete. The places are mostly destroyed but its still amazing to sit there and think 'these people (both local and the world) still have the same issues today'. I think the athenians of today reject the gospel for the same reasons they rejected Paul. The peloponnese (southwest) area of mainland greece was amazing: oranges off the trees for sale next to the orchard, few tourists, 80 degrees, laidback drivers, folks selling their homebrews on the sidewalk, huge castles on top of mountains, cheap rooms, and free bedbugs to go with you. There was a ferrystrike in greece last week, we got stuck in athens for 8 days, too long for us country folk, though the food there rocked and the acropolis was all that pictures make it out to be (big fancy rocks). We are currently on the island of Santorini, which is THE most beautiful place my eyes have ever seen, its a volcano filled with ocean......if you have never seen a picture, google it, its worth the time. Sunsets here are crazy good, the beaches have black and red rocks, which are very hot on Havas feet, and the cliffs that make up the inside walls of the volcano are stripes of color that the sunset makes light up. Sambo felt and smelled the hot sulfer coming out of the volcano crater we hiked up to. You can boil eggs on it in 10 minutes. The ground is very fertile, there are vinyards and wineries all over the island. They let the vines grow in circles laying them right on the rocky ground, no trellis.  The kids have had so much fun on the ferries, the ride is slow but we pass so many islands. There are over 6000 islands in greece.  It has hardly rained since the last update, I am so glad not to be hanging out waiting for spring breakup in north idaho. I started drawing houseplans in my head last week, I guess its almost time to come home. The kids miss chili, and I really miss mexican food and staring at Ben. I think I need to find a job that is on a sandy beach with weather like we have had working 3 hours a day 365 days a year. My wife could get her bikini tan and model for our income.  I really think I could be content.......though all of you know otherwise.
Ericka is cutting the legs off all of the kids pants, sewing them with a sewing machine that looks and moves like a stapler, making them into shorts. Hava has loved all the flowers, everything is blooming in every color. She has learned so many new words like 'happy donkey'. Sambo rode a donkey up the caldera trail a few days ago, which I swear I pulled up the mountain, screaming at it in at least 5 different languages. We went to a museum in Sparta that was about the olive and the history of pressing, making oil and soap, and cultivating. It was very good, I cant believe the work that goes into making oil and refining it. We have come to believe that there is no flat ground on the baltic peninsula or in greece. We climb 1000's of stairs everyday, mostly carrying hava and scraping sambo off the rocks. He has looked like a boy fresh of the battlefield with a bruise or scrape on every inch of his body. For all the concrete they have on this side of the world, they dont use it on sidewalks. All the sidewalks are drystacked rocks or slippery tiles, perfect for a 20 month old girl learning how to walk.
2 weeks ago in Athens we met a great family from calgary, Canada and spent a few days with them hanging out. They have a 7 year old boy named Sam, and sambo had a great time with him. They followed us to Santorini about 10 hours after we left athens and we got to spend a few more days with them there. It was great to have real conversations with people we enjoyed and hope to continue the friendship with them since they only live a few hours away from us.
So, I would love to show some closeups of my tanlines, but some of you would take offense. Oh, and do any of you actually think we are drinking tiny umbrella drinks that cost 20 bucks?

Kardamyli and Monemvasia, Greece. South peloponese was amazing, beautiful, and virtually no tourists except us.

HR=Croatia

Croatia started out alittle rough with us being sick, and the first place we rented was like a cold steam room, but with each place we went, things got better. We left Rovinj in a rental car and took a winding road along the ocean and through many tunnels to Zadar-a walled city with a sea organ and many churches.  The apartment there was recently remodeled, and felt much more homey than Rovinj.  The owner brought S some chocolate and I saved it rationing small pieces to him not knowing that all older people in Croatia use chocolate as their best used tool with kids. Everywhere we go I turn away for a minute only to look back and see S with chocolate. He happily tells me "that lady/man gave me chocolate."  What can ya do? Our little H usually gets in on it too. J and I laugh that S didn't know what candy was until he was over 2, but not this girl. We've eaten our share of pizza since we've been over here, and I can't seem to get over the observation that all the locals put ketchup on their pizza.  Zadar was nice but it rained and not much was open except churches. We hit the parks and just let the kids get wet.  Just fyi-I loved swiss air, they were great with the kids, their food wasn't bad, and you get swiss chocolate on your way off the plane. The sun was bright the day we left Zadar and the bus ride to Split was hard, because whatever bug we had was getting worse not better. I could hardly pull a wheeled bag and carry H. Split was so different than any other town we had been in Croatia,  there were Attractive people...I don't know how many times we approached someone to ask directions thinking we were asking a man only to get face to face with a woman. Haha. Split was full of young people with kids and babies. H loves babies right now, so as we walked she keeps saying "baby!" H and I rested for 2 days before I felt like I could walk much. We walked some beaches, watched excavators, checked out some churches and museums. J and S climbed the bell tower in the Diocletian palace. S was scared to come down because he thought the bells were going to ring right next to him. H has been putting everything in her mouth, which makes us cringe, but I can't carry her all the time.  It's nice to hear bells every half hour, most of them stopped after 9 pm, except here in Kotor, Montenegro.  We thought Split was our favorite until we got to Dubrovnik. It's another walled city, but so incredible-the history, buildings, bays, museums, people. We saw our first live starfish, walked the walls, S met a friend named Mary, from Nottingham, and we hiked 506 steps home to our apartment. The best place we stayed, the owners served us fresh lemonade fromher lemons in her garden, her son takes care of the apartments and was ever so helpful to get us whatever we needed. He offered to have his mom do our laundry, and she gave us some homemade candied lemon peels to take when we left.  They spoke just a little English but enough to know they didn't want to talk about certain parts of the war-their house was hit and he showed us where there was still shrapnel embedded in some of his walls he planned to fix.  We had a magnificent view of the ocean from our room and of the city. I haven't figured out how to do pictures fromhere yet, so be patient, I'll keep trying.  Oh, and H got bit by a dog in Dubrovnik,  she is fine, the police made a report and wanted to take care of us but the officer didn't speak English,  so we had an interpreter.  We are so blessed, it could have been much worse. I'm thankful it looks like a scratch, even though it's on her nose. We came to Montenegro 2 days ago and hiked a mountain to a castle/fort yesterday after it had hailed hard in the morning,  some places there were 3 inches of accumulated hail.  The beauty of this place reminds me of home. As I've traveled, I keep thinking "this is neat, or this is beautiful, but it's just not as good or as beautiful, or as wild, as Idaho. I love my home and could be content to never leave my familiar things again.

Start of the great adventure

So I'd love to report all sunshine and roses, but that just isn't the truth.  Nevertheless we have had fun. The kids have been real troopers hiking up steep hills, sometimes multiple times (because we don't know where we are and have to go back down for directions.) We started in Venice and it rained the whole time. The last day there we finally bought an umbrella.  There are only 4-5 times per year the water is so high they have to use the platforms to walk through parts of town and we were there during one of these times.  We saw 2 guys carrying sheets of drywall through the streets with plastic over the drywall, each of them in knee high rain boots, in 6-8 inches of water carrying umbrellas. Pretty funny to us because we weren't used to it. The kids have had the most fun chasing birds, feeding the birds, watching the dogs (there was not a dog in Venice without a raincoat), and looking at boats. We thought it was fun to ride the water bus' at first but after a while they lost their excitement.  I think we all really liked Murano, where we stepped into a shop to ask for directions to a glass factory and they invited us into their back room where there were two guys making glass.  It was a welcome sight-this hot industrial room filled with tools and hatch doors for furnaces. It had been raining and it was nice to dry out a bit and see some beautiful art being made.  We've been eating so much bread--it's so good! In Italy we ate cheese everyday with our bread.  We are now in Croatia.  Some differences between the 2 countries...Italy had hot water, hot showers, big towels, noisy streets, dog poop everywhere,  and incredible pizza. Croatia has nice people, towels big enough to dry your hands, dog poop all over the sidewalks, limited heated rooms and 1 hour of hot water to shower.  So it's fine, just some new things.  I guess we are just spoiled.  Language is a bit of a challenge because Croatian is not similar to English or any language with latin roots, where Italian was fairly easy to figure out even though we didn't know it. Many young Croatians know English so we are not getting into trouble. The past few days have be een sunny and we have been to parks and picking flowers and collecting rocks and pinecones.
Everyone is good, we have runny noses but we have been touching the world, so that's to be expected. S is drying out finally after Venice,  where he couldn't help but walk through every puddle in his path. We have done some laundry, well actually J did the wash and the machine malfunctioned and he lost his money and his soap, but we didn't wash everything.We are all prpretty dirty as it's spring here and spring equals mud when you have kids. Well that's all for now.