Pregnancy photos

I know I never finished my europe blog, but I got a bit side-tracked once I got home. We have been thinking mostly BABY since then and I am trying to not be stressed about not finishing my last project:) Janelle, Matt's sister took some amazing photos of us and the hidden baby this weekend at Montana de Oro and I thought I'd share....

coming home to sweet America!

We are starting our journey home today at 3 pm. We are flying into Venice and then will hopefully run into town for one last wandering-fest. We catch our flight home Friday morning. We'll arrive in LAX at 4:30 and have dinner with Megan, maybe crash at her place and then head home. There are a few things we are looking forward to in the states, here they are
1. A real grocery store
2. going into a store/restaurant and being understood
3. not being considered "a tourist."
4. not looking like "a tourist."
5. being with people we know and love
6. the dollar! this euro is killing us!

A few things we will miss
1. taking really cool pictures of really cool things
2. sleeping in till 8 or 9 every morning, then turning over to Matt and saying "what should we do today?"
3. waking up because the tram is going by, the construction workers are singing in the building across from us and our housemates are doing the dishes ridiculously loudly-oh wait, i think i put this in the wrong list.
4. GELATO! going from place to place, trying to find the best!
5. the best Gnocchi I have ever tasted! and probably ever will! oh, it was in gorgonzola cream sauce too!
6. the freedom to do what we want when we want.

I have been homesick though and am really looking forward to coming home. I'm gonna be in "nesting mode" as i have just 12 weeks to go:) Keep checking this blog next week as I will put pictures up of Rome and videos from the whole trip.
Ciao,
Matt and Shellie

a challenge....

so, just want to put a challenge out there for you. there is a picture of a sign and then a vague picture underneath, if you can figure out what the sign says, you may be able to find something in the lower pic. what is it? Then I want some real guesses as to how we got the pictures of the wolf and bear, get creative. We got home late tonight, so i will put more details on the blog tomorrow. give me some good stories:)

The real tour-Slovenia to Spain

So, we start this tour off back in Slovenia where it was really cold. Well, our last day there was gorgeous! Her is a picture of Matt on his awesome bike! We rode ourselves around the lake that morning before catching our train. Is it just me or does he remind you of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz? A very manly version of such though of course:)


Here we have a mere glimpse of our amazing trip through the Alps to Innsbruck. I tell you, the entire trip was at least this beautiful!


This is a wonderful self portrait of us up on top of the local ski area at Innsbruck. we took the Cable car and then two gondolas to get ourselves to the top and it was completely worth it!


Me, getting more and more pregnant in front of the cable car doo-hicky and the mountains. When we were in Spain, the family I was with swore that I had gotten bigger just in 4 days! take note of this, you will notice that I have had a big of a growth spurt in my belly region once I get back. Let's just say nice things like, "oh, the baby is growing!" not "YOU ARE GETTING HUGE/SOOO BIG/GINORMOUS!!!" I seem to be a bit sensitive as to my growth. Side note: I am now in my 3rd trimester! The baby is just over 2 lbs and about 9.5 inches from head to butt. He is a mover and a shaker for sure and I absolutely love having him! BTW, he is kicking right this very moment!


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This is a picture of the ski jump in Innsbruck. We went up to the top cause we got a free ticket. Those guys that do that are insane! FYI, they had the Olympics in Innsbruck twice, in the 60's, then the 70's. They also do ski jumping in the summer, random,eh?


We made dinner for ourselves this night and ate on the little balcony of the apartment we were staying in. It was absolutely lovely!


We had a bit of a layover in Milan, so we quickly ran in to see this cathedral. It was pretty impressive! We also almost got nabbed by a pickpocket. This guy came up to me with popcorn seeds, trying to give them to me, which I was refusing as MANY pigeons started swarming both Matt and I. He then attempted giving them to Matt (actually shoving them in his hand), then it was revealed what he was trying to do, I saved the day as I grabbed our camera from his hand and took Matt away. The man immediately disappeared. I wasn't too into sightseeing after that, so we grabbed a Kebab and ate in our shoebox sized room.


Spain
This is a picture of the beach in La Coruna, where we landed and our hosts picked us up. Ill tell you more about them in a sec.


Our first day we took a walk around the little village where we were staying and ended up here at this cute little church.


Just on the other side of this river is where we stayed. You could see the river from our room in the morning, it was gorgeous. It had rained the entire week previously, and yet we came back from this walk sweating and I had to pull my pant legs up!


We took a walk up the river and went over this decent sized suspension bridge. Isabel, our mom for the week used to sit on this bridge when she was a kid and her brothers would jump on it, trying to scare her. The house they live in is a generational house that they have had in the family for a really long time. The house is made of granite stone. They have gutted it and it is nice inside now, and super cool!


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We went to a beach where Isabel used to spend her summers and she went out collecting snails to eat for dinner (she was nice and didn't make us eat them:). She brough us back this little hermit crab, I thought it was cute!


Portugal
This is the whole family. Stan (matt's old boss), Isabel, and Stephan, their son. We played on this wondeful beach and had lunch on our day trip to Portugal.


Portugal Fortress-this was a cool fortress right on the border, lots of stuff to buy, but no room in our bags for it!



We went to this amazing market in Padron sunday morning. It was the biggest market I have ever seen! Imagine Farmers Market times 20! They had everything there, but the produce was incredible! This woman was making churros right there in the market, in that big pot of oil behind her. The next pic is Matt and Stan eating them, they were delicious!




They sold these pots here as well. I don't know what to call them, but I think they fement whiskey/other liquors in them. Or they distill them, I can't remember.

Santiago Cathedral in Spain


Kay, that is the end of your tour for now. Rome will have to come later. We are enjoying ourselves. We saw the Vatican and St. Peters this morning. We leave thursday to go back to Venice, and Friday we go home. We are a bit homesick, but enjoying having eachother as we scour this city. Loves!

on our way to Spain

sorry that there are again no photos, i really wish i could put some up, it is so darn beautiful! we took a cable car to the top of the mountains yesterday to see the Alps in all their glory, amazing! we also went to the top of the big ski jump thingy that they use in the Olympics, man those people who do that sport are insane! We have been staying in an adorable little b & b in oldtown Innsbruck for these past three nights, enjoying people drag hard objects over the cobblestone street:) Well, we have got to get going to catch our train to Milan and then we leave tomorrow super early for A Coruna, Spain. Matts old boss moved there 3 years ago and we are going to visit him. I think he lives in a super little town and i know he doesnt have internet, so you just may have to wait for us to get to Rome to hear any more. I am also sitting next to a very stinky man and must get out in order to breath through my nose again. ciao, matt and shellie. ps. thanks for the comments! ps. mom, you have to answer the phone in order to get a call from me!

from Austria

real quick, we are in Innsbruck, Austria right now. The weather is incredible and the scenery is absolutely amazing. we will be here for tomorrow and then leaving wed. i will try to get some pictures of this place on tomorrow. the train ride here was the most incredible ride i have ever had, the alps are stupendous! we wish we could be backpacking right now! ciao

the future of the cat

We had a comment about throwing the cat over the balcony and I just wanted to make sure that you all know that we were very tempted, we shall see how tomorrow goes.....

Cold in Bled,Slovenia

Kay, so we didn´t actually take this picture, cause it doesn´t actually look like this right now. What it actually looks like is this, which is not bad at all, but different. We are in Bled, Slovenia right now.Yesterday was a bit of a recovery day, we enjoyed the fact that we are on vacation and do not have to be doing something at all moments. After our rest we made it down to the lake and walked around in the rain (which never did stop all day). We wandered around a bit and Shellie got cranky in the rain, so we decided to go to some mineral hot springs at a ritzy hotel in town. This was soooo much fun! They had multiple pools, one with seats and bubbles! There was also a super fun slide that connected the pools. Here is a picture of Matt going down the slide.

We must have gone down that slide 20 times while we were there, it was great! We went to a Pizzeria for dinner and the menu was a huge variety of pizzas and of course, omelettes-um, weird! So Matt got a pizza and I got a ham and cheese omelette, which was good, cause I was craving eggs, you just never know where you will get them I guess. Today we were awoken to a cat screaming outside on our balcony, it was absolutely marvelous! Here is a picture of him...After that delightful awakening, we walked into town and took a bus to Bohinj, which is apparently a bit higher in elevation and super duper cold! Cherie, I forgot to grab leggings, HUGE mistake! I will be finding some very soon. The mountains are marvelous here that is for sure. The lake was gorgeous, but we enjoyed it, had some lunch and then went back to Bled. It is so cold that we decided just to walk back to our hotel to get re-energized and warm.
This is me looking like a total goon with a baby belly. No Janelle, no one has tried to rub my belly yet, thank goodness! It has been pretty well concealed by my many layers, so the temptation has not been there:) The town in the background is Bled, we are on our way back to the hotel via this scenic road. We are just going to hang out for a bit till dinner now. We leave tomorrow for Innsbruck, going deeper into the Alps. We are in the Julienne Alps right now by the way. Ciao

Boating Venice

We just left Venice and I believe it will always hold a special place in our hearts. It is touristy yes, especially when one goes on a holiday for all Europeans, Easter Monday, but it is still Venice! We got in later than expected Sunday evening because of snow in Zurich where we had a bit of a layover. Our challenge was to get from the airport to the train station by bus and then pick up the water bus to take us to our stop, and then find our hotel amidst the winding streets and canals of Venice. Needless to say, we found it, but what an adventure! We woke up bright and early in the morning and went on a walk through St. Marks Piazza without any other tourists, it was wonderful! We will show you a pic of it. Then we went back to sleep:) We hit the streets again after our rest and picked up some tickets for the water bus and museums-we still get a bit of a break cause we are kids:) We went through a museum and then wandered a bit more till we got too tired and rested again-well call it jet-lag. Dinner was great, but challenging to figure out Italian, mainly because Matt forgot the language book, thankfully however we received the only english-speaking server! After a mad rush to find some good gelato and/or something else sweet-sadly we failed-it was too late-lame! The next day we found a grocery store that was INCREDIBLY small! You cannot imagine how much they tried to stuff in that store, along with carts and many people, it was a claustrophobic nightmare! We took a water bus to an island named Murano that afternoon with a million other people, which eventually gave me a bit of a panic attack, but thankfully not until we hit some land and I could get off. Im not sure if it is being pregnant but I seem to be prone to waves of nausea when squished tightly against other people lately, imagine that! Other than that, the bebe is doing fantastic! Anyways, Murano was delightful. We got panini sandwiches and gelato and shopped, it was great. They make beautiful glass on Murano, which we got to see them making, that was really neat-a safety hazard I believe as they let us walk right up to the workers with their hot pieces of glass. Yesterday was busy as we visited the Doges Palace (the palace of the "Kings" of Venice back in the day when Venice was an international business hotspot), St. Marks Bascilica, went shopping, hit the bus and came to Bled, Slovenia. We awoke to a gorgeous breakfast, which made us very happy. It is currently raining, so hopefully we will still be able to get out and about today. Sorry, there are no apostrophes on this keyboard, but there are some fun extras like č,ć, š, đ and ž! Well give you another post whenever possible, thanks for reading!

Day 5-Shadow Creek to Red's Meadow

Matt had insomnia again last night and Shellie slept fitfully. We still managed to wake up before the Boy scouts and get out of there before they made breakfast. There were very few people on the trail today, probably because it is a Monday. There was this one stretch that got so boring that Shellie pulled out her iPod and we both sang along. Shellie wore her Chaco's all day and can barely walk now. We are taking tomorrow off to go down to Mammoth to get some stuff and mail some junk home. We aren't sure if we will make it back on the trail at this point. We met a bunch of nice people in Red's today on the bus and at our lousy cheeseburger dinner:) Devil's Postpile was really cool. We got "lost" on our way to our campground at Red's Meadow. We looked at the map and prayed. When we opened our eyes we saw something bright blue in the trees, it was a tent! The campground was found! 10ish miles-5.5 hours

Day 4-Donahue Pass to Shadow Creek

We did our first pass today. It was a long day. We were able to sleep so we didn't get up until 6:45 am and left at 8:30 am. The first 3.6 miles flew by, so when the nice, flat mileage came and went so slowly-we were frustrated. After going up and down Donahue Pass, we had to do Island Pass, then way down to Thousand Island Lake(where we had a hot, miserable lunch), then up to Emerald Lake, down to Ruby, up out of Ruby, down to very windy Garnet Lake, up and then down Shadow Canyon. Shellie's feet were killing her the whole way. We had a great time in the word and prayer through Shadow Canyon. We ended up making camp with a group of boy scouts from Connecticut, which was very nice. It was a long, but fun day. 11 hrs, 15 miles