When in Rome....

How cool is this place?!?!

In St. Peter's Square outside of the Vatican

Hanging out on the Spanish Steps

The infamous Trevi Fountain. And yes we each threw a penny in

Mom, Dad, JR and I in Campo de Fiori grabbing a beer before our evening walk through the city

The views in Spello were incredible. This is on top of the hill where we stayed.

JR and I at dinner on the last night. The food was DELICIOUS!

Here we are in Perugia enjoying the view from the top of the hill. You could see close to 6 cities from there.

Bob, JR and dad at the cooking class the four of us took. Maybe the best thing we did while in Italy!

The view of the country-side just outside of our apartment in Umbria. Beautiful!!!

Well as you can see, we just got back from a little European vacation with the WHOLE family. We had a great time. My mom, dad, Bob, Lea, Josephine, JR and I headed out to Rome on Memorial day. We stayed there for 6 nights and took in most of the tourist attractions (Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Colosseum, Spanish Steps, Vatican City etc). It was really fun to listen and learn about the history of the city, but the hustle and bustle of it all was quite exhausting. Lets just say that on the days we didn't have anything scheduled we enjoyed a little extra sleeping. We stayed in an apartment just outside of the ancient city and enjoyed being in a residential area. We ate a TON of gelato and did our best to try and learn a little bit of Italian. Luckily, the locals were patient with us as our Italian skills were minimal to say the least.
After Rome we took a train 2 hours outside of the city into Umbria to a city called Spello. It was simply beautiful there. The town in literally nestled into the side of a hill. All of the streets are cobblestone, the buildings are all made out of the old limestone that you saw in the Ancient city, and the nonnas (Italian for grandma) were adorable. There was only one bakery there and it closed at 12:30. We were told to go early because there are times where he runs out of bread by 10/10:30 and closes up shop. So all of our pastries and bread each morning were fresh. We enjoyed the quiet and quaint village after coming from the busy metropolitan area.  The time seemed to fly by while we were in Spello but we enjoyed every bit of it.
It's nice to be home now and sleep in my own bed, but the vacation was wonderful and refreshing.  I hope you enjoy the pictures!  I may post more later.....


..til next time

Lillypie is DA BOMB!!!!!!!!!

my friend's blog has been nominated by a company called circleofmoms.com as one of their top 25 mom/shop blogs.  so if you would do me a HUUUUGE favor and vote for her that would be awesome. she would win a chance to be featured on their blog and it would really help boost her sales. she is hoping to turn this business into a full-time affair so that she can stay at home with her little girl (Lilly, duh!!!) and play an active role in her daughter's day-to day life.  So......go to this website http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/mom-shops VOTE FOR LILLYPIE!!!!! and vote for her.  you just scroll down until you see "Lillypie Accessories" and you click on the yellow/orange thumbs-up button to cast your vote. you can do this once a day until the contest is over. so PLEASE vote for her. she is working so hard on her business and i think it would be pretty neat to see her business continue to grow. thank you for supporting local business, especially this one!!!!

Laura.....YOU ROCK!!!!!!!

You know...

I really miss my little niece!!! She is already ONE and I feel like I barely got to see her in her first year.  So for all of you that have family close by, be thankful that you get to see them regularly because that's a pretty fabulous thing. I will admit that we got to see her more than I expected thanks to Bob and Lea being so generous but it still stinks that they are so far away. So, Josie, if you ever find this, just know that your Aunt Becky and Uncle JR wanted desperately to see you more but we just couldn't. We love you bigger than the sky.  These pictures are from when she was only 5 months old (she's now almost 13 months).  She's got the most serious personality I've ever seen in a baby but when she smiles it's the greatest thing in the world!

She is such a serious baby but I think it's because she is just taking everything in and processing it.  There is one thing that she is REALLY good at.....that would be eating. She's got rolls on her thighs that you could lose a hand in. And I LOVE it.

 

I don't know what hit me but this week I just realized how much I really do miss seeing my niece.  I miss Bob and Lea too, don't get me wrong. But I can always talk to them on the phone to catch up on what they have been up to. With Josie, it seems like she is always doing something new that I don't know about.  I just wish we lived closer.  So be sure to love on your nieces/nephews/grand-babies if they live close.  It's a blessing to have family nearby.

Ok I'm done pouting now. I just had to let you all know just how much I love JoJo.

....til next time

Bracket busted....

Ok the title has nothing to do with the post...sorry!

This year I decided that I wanted to go out for my birthday celebration. I love getting together with good friends for a good time and I couldn't think of a more appropriate time to do that than a birthday. So JR put together an evite and invited our friends to come out to celebrate. We had a great turn out and the night was fun. I hadn't been out with most of the people in the group so it's always fun to see people in a different element. We did lots of dancing and laughed a lot.  I would call that a success!!!! As one of my friends said, "if I am going to have that much fun on your birthday, you are going to need to have more than 1 of those a year."   I'm still trying to get JR to recreate the "Souja Boy" dance that he did at the wedding but he WILL NOT do it. Any help convincing him to do it is appreciated.  :-)

Here are some pictures from the weekend followed by some pictures of our small group which we LOVE:

 Here is the group that went out for my little birthday celebration. We had a BLAST out in Broadripple. Our first stop was La Piedad

 We headed over to Brothers after dinner for some fun! Here are the girls that came out to celebrate with me...I'm pretty sure I have some of the greatest friends on Earth.

 LOVE this girl

 Best friend for as long as I can remember...she's simply amazing!

 Of course the guys came out to make sure we all behaved ourselves. 

 I love this handsome man more than anything.  I am blessed to have him as my husband. xo



JR and I are a part of a small group at our church and we absolutely love it. It's such a good way to connect with the Lord outside of the usual church service every Sunday morning. These people challenge us in our faith each and every week. They are also a phenomenal support system in times when we need them most. All in all they are just loving children of God and we have really enjoyed getting to know them all over the past three years.  So anyway...we had a casual get together a few weeks ago instead of doing a study and we were ALL able to make it.  That NEVER happens. So I of course had to take a picture.

 All of the guys...

And all of the beautiful ladies (including the adorable Hailey)

We truly love seeing these people on a weekly basis. :-)

Look who I found....

check it out.....

click here

That would be my best friend and her sister at the Colts vs Jets game. They won tickets the day before to go to the game.  They made some awesome posters and wore some CRAZY outfits.  Don't you like Liz's blue wig? I think it's her color.  :-)  Just had to share. Kind of random but still fun.

what do you do if....

you have an ice storm and then get 6 inches of snow on top of that?!?!?! You build a snow family, OBVIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!! Don't we look happy? And just in case you wanted to know....the little snowdog in front IS in fact a snowdog.  My parents seemed to be confused and asked if it was a turtle or hungry hungry hippo? haha I just wanted to make sure that I clarified that.

Well the last two months have been filled with all sorts of stuff. We had a wonderful holiday season.  We were able to spend time with JR's family until one or so and then headed to my parents' house and had dinner there. It was pretty quiet this year but we all enjoyed just relaxing.

On January 3rd, I started my second to last clinical.  This one will last 12 weeks and it is in an outpatient setting.  The caseload is kind of light right now so it makes my 8am - 6:30pm days kind of long but that's ok.  It's simply wonderful to be working in a clinic and to not have to come home to do homework for the rest of the evening.  JR and I have been able to enjoy weekends together without me being grumpy because of all the school stuff that I used to have to do.  I might even say that JR is more excited about me graduating in May than I am.(because he'll get his wife back)  I have one more clinical to complete (3/28 - 5/6) and then on to graduation.

Did I tell you that we are going to Italia?!?! My family is taking our first true family vacation in YEARS!  We are using my graduation as our excuse to head to Italy for 2 weeks. It seems like a great time to go because I won't be officially working yet and Lea will be done with her classes too. We are going to be in Rome for 6 nights and the Umbria region (specifically Spello) for 5 nights.  We will be staying in a 3 bedroom apartment in Rome and a home Umbria. We are incredibly excited for our 2 week vacation.  Of course when we get back I'll post pictures so that you can see how much weight we gain after eating like pigs for 2 weeks.  How can you NOT eat all of the delicious food and drink the tasty wine from Italy? It's sinful to not indulge.  (or at least that's what I'm telling myself) :-)

I hope this post finds all of you doing well. Sorry for the large gap in my posts. I like to try to have pictures with my posts because they are much more interesting that way. :-) Nobody wants to read my ramblings if I don't include pictures.  I mean lets be honest....you wouldn't read it if there were just words and NO pictures.  Ok you don't have to admit to it, but I know that it's the truth.

Oh and I didn't tell you but Bob, Lea, and Josephine are coming to pick their dog up during President's Day weekend.  So we are THRILLED to get to see JoJo (and Bob and Lea) again.  She has grown SO much since the last time she was here (in November).  She is pulling up on things. She's blabbering ALL the time (just like her father). :-) I think the only thing that makes the distance a little easier is having Skype.  Josie can now recognize her name when JR and I say it on Skype and she'll actually look at our faces on the screen.  She will also smile in response to you on the screen. Man does that make my heart melt. Here's a quick picture of her.  Isn't she adorable?

...til next time

I'm going to make this brief

Quick update on Brad.  He does have osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone). He has had his surgery and is recovering well thus far. I believe he has to be non-weight bearing on his leg for 8 weeks.  They inserted a new rod into this leg that is filled with antibiotics, as I understand it from JR. I have no idea what the next step is but we are all elated that he is out of surgery and moving forward with this process.  We'll continue to pray for his recovery as I know the road ahead is long.

As of yesterday at 12:30pm, I am OFFICIALLY done with my academic classwork for my graduate degree.  Can I get an AMEN!?!?!??!  I took my final final yesterday and man does it feel good to never have finals again.  I can just feel the tension easing in my shoulders and neck as I sit here typing this.  My DPT class had a small pub crawl yesterday after the final (that's right at 1pm we were pub crawling).  I did not plan to stay.  I simply wanted to grab a beer and have lunch with my classmates since I won't be seeing them until graduation.  Buuuut, the joy of being done just couldn't be denied so I didn't head home until close 5pm.  :-) It was totally worth it!  That evening we had our traditional Ugly Sweater Christmas party with the class and of course we had a great time. It feels SOOOO good to be done with this part.  Now I just have 2 clinicals standing in my way of graduation.  I get "hooded" on May 15th so let the countdown begin.  WOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now it's off to dinner with my lovely husband for a celebratory drink and dinner. YUM! Oh and of course some last minute Christmas shopping as well.  Oops! We were pretty unprepared for Christmas this year. It really did seem to sneak up on us.


...til next time