Almost...

Once again we've been working on potty training with Zach this week, and the week before. He has been telling us that he needs to go, but only after he has gone in his pull up or underpants with rubber pants. Tonight after we put him to bed, I heard him calling out to us, so I went upstairs. I found him in the bathroom, naked on the bottom half, and looking at a nice pool of potty that he had made in front of the toilet. Well... we are still looking at it as a victory because his diaper was dry which means he knew he needed to go and tried to do it.. he just missed. :-) I have hope that he may actually get out of diapers.

Pray for me

Tonight Zach threw a ball over our balcony down in to the dining room. It didn't hit anything, but it could have broken something. When I looked up, he was leaning over the balcony looking down in to the room. I went upstairs and took him in the bathroom to talk. He was crying saying that he didn't want to get in trouble. We talked about how serious it was for him to climb up and lean over the balcony and what could happen, and also what could happen if he throws anything over the balcony. I told him that if he did either again, he would get in serious trouble. I then asked him if he could remember to not do those things and he said, "Daddy, will you pray for me so I can remember?" I was happy to.

Later, when it was time for bed I told him that he needed to remember to stay in bed and not come out. "Will you pray for me?" he asked. I did and then he said, "You're such a nice girl to pray for me." I laughed and said, "Do you mean nice daddy?" "Yes, that too." he replied. I told him I love to pray for him and he can ask me any time. :-)

Bologna

Our last day on our recruiting commercial trip took us to Bologna, Italy. Yes, that's Bologna. I had never heard of it before some friends of mine moved there, but it turns out that the university there was founded in 1088 and is the oldest University. The term "Alumni" actually comes from the Bologna university. We trained in from Florence on Tuesday and spent all day around the city and on the campus filming Italian students and taking pictures.

This is a picture from San Luka, a church that overlooks the city and the countryside. The weather was perfect and it was really beautiful.

We saw this street sign while walking. The name of the street is "Street of Hell" and I thought the "do not enter" sign was very appropriate. :-)

Students gathered at a central square of the university. Everything is so colorful!

These two Italian students met up with us and we filmed them in a couple of different scenes.

We filmed one scene on this street (right next to "Street of Hell" )

A picture of me under one of the porticos. There are porticos on almost every street- something that Bologna is famous for.
This is the central cathedral in downtown Bologna. It looks crazy because the pope cut of funding when it was only half built, so the city built the rest out of brick. It's not too pretty on the outside, but inside it is really cool.

On Wednesday night we left Bologna at 11:18pm and took the overnight train to Zurich. I caught at plane at 11:55Am to Washington DC and now I'm waiting for my flight home to Austin. I can't wait to get home!

Cinqe Terra

On Tuesday we went from Florence by train to La Spezia and from there to Riomaggiore, the first of 5 towns along the coast in an area called "Cinqe Terra" (cinqe is Italian for 5.) Henry came along from Florence so we could film him there. Of all the places I've been in Italy, this was by far the most picturesque. It was really beautiful.

A view of the coast from where we got off the train.

The town that is built up in to the hills leading down to the ocaean. It is so colorful.

Matt and Henry walking down a tiny alleyway as we were working our way through the town. Just after this picture, a van that filled the entire path came up the hill and we had to jump out of the way up on to a landing.


Even someone's laundry hanging out is beautiful in this place!

Matt filming the town.

Me at the overlook looking down to the ocean.


We went down right to the water and filmed a scene on the rocks right by the ocean. It turned out really well!

The water was a beautiful blue and the weather was perfect. We couldn't have asked for better conditions! If you ever get a chance to visit Italy, be sure and go to Cinqe Terra.

Morocco

We flew to Casablanca from Rome on Saturday. It was an easy flight (about 3 hours) and we really didn't know what to expect. Many people frowned when we told them we were only going to Casablanca and not other cities, but I thought it was nice. French was the predominate language along with Arabic. All the menus though and most everything was in French. I don't really know much French, but I was able to get by ok. It's a lot easier than trying to read Arabic!

Here is a view of the city from the roof of an apartment where several of the women from the team there live.
This was the view out our hotel room window. Lots of palm trees!
This was a beautiful church that was converted in to a mosque.
This is the "Medina" market. We went in there and found several places to film as well as some old men to film for the commercial.

This was a great door we found in the market and later went back to film with one of the team members.
This was a little island of volcanic rock with a small group of houses on it. We went out there and ended up coming back the next day to film.
A resturant that we had lunch in. It was GREAT food!
We went back to the beach to film at sunset. The weather was perfect.
We went out on the rocks and one of the women stood at th end for the shot looking at the sunset. It was very cool.
Here I am with the little village on the island behind me. During low tide you can walk out to it, but at high tide it is surrounded by water.

This is a video I took out on the island when we went back to film. We were only there 1 and a half days, but we had a great time with the team, had great food, and got some great shots for the commercial. I'm so glad we were able to go!

Florence

I haven't had very good internet access the last few days, so I couldn't upload new pictures. After spending the night in Switzerland, we took the train the next day down to Florence. We stayed with some friends there and we went out scouting for where we would film the next morning.


Here is a picture of me in one of the big plazas. We ended up filming here as one of our places.

This is the main dome (cathedral) in Florence. It is very beautiful and made a great backdrop for the other scene we filmed the next morning.

This is the river as the sun was going down in Florence. We left from here and went to have some of the best pasta I've had before. It was a great evening! The next morning we got up at 5:45 and met one of the Florence staff guys at 7:30 to film. We filmed in the two places, then hopped in a taxi, picked up our stuff and went right to the airport. We flew to Rome then on to Morocco...

Switzerland

Matt and I arrived in Switzerland today and got directly on a train to Grindelwald. We are working on shooting scenes for an recruiting video we are doing for the Campus Ministry. I've always heard the Switzerland was beautiful, but I was not prepared for just how beautiful it is!
We met a Swiss intern in Bern and then she rode with us up to the mountain town.

This is a picture out the train window on the way up in to the mountains.

This is Grindelwald. Our hotel is on the left where it says "hotel."

We took a tram up to 7,000 feet. This is one of the mountains we could see so well on the way up.
Here I am doing an over the shoulder shot of Dorthy, the CCC intern looking in to the valley and out at the alps.

This was at the lookout point at the top of the tram line we took up. It looks down in to the Grindelwald valley. It was really beautiful and I think we got some great video. We, however, have not slept in 28 hours (except for about 2 hours on the plane) so I'm feeling pretty tired! We get on the train tomorrow and head to Italy. More pictures to come!

Memory Verses

Today we were working on this week's AWANA verse with Isabella. I asked her if she knew her new verse and Zach said, "I do!" "You do? What is it?" I replied. "God loves English!" he replied happily. Later it turned in to "God IS English, John 3:31" and he's been repeating that all day. Goofball!

Going for a ride

I have an electric scooter that was loaned to me by a friend at church. I've been testing it out with a new kind of transmission that his company makes. I've been riding it to work a couple of times a week and it's a lot of fun. Tonight, I decided to take the kids for a ride and they LOVED it.

Silly outfits

Both Zach and Isabella love to dress up. In the last couple of days, they have been wearing silly outfits. Some are old fashions that they have brought back (see the "oven hat" below) and others are new and unique...

Zach and Isabella both put on their "oven hats" at the dinner table. They were busy "cooking up" some crazy food and needed the correct attire. :-)


Next we see Zach in onesy and coat. Was it 85 outside? Yes. Does it matter? No.
Isabella also got in on the action with her coat and shorts, though she didn't think she needed to zip hers up. :-)

I've also heard them making up games a lot lately. Yesterday Zach was telling Isabella, "Let's play the grasshopper game!" "How do you play?" responded Isabella, "Well, you put down the pillows, and jump and jump, and then do a grasshopper, then you do a backflip..." and on and on it went. I really wanted to see the backflip, but before they got too far on "grasshopper," Zach switched to "Flip the Ant" and launched in to another long list of complicated rules. All of this while Isabella carefully listens, nodding her head the whole time and trying to keep up. That game ended up really just being Zach chasing Isabella until he tackled her and she burst out crying. Fun fun. :-)