It's a ........

We're having a GIRL! We just found out this morning and couldn't be more excited. I would have loved a boy or a girl, but I really was hoping for a little girl. Now we just have to be patient and wait for August to come around.

Fun in the sun!

We decided to give the wet weather in Seattle a break for a week in the Cayman's. I had some work meetings that took place there and Sheena was able to come out as well. Grand Cayman was beautiful and the weather was perfect at 85 degrees and sunny.

We had a blast snorkeling, swimming with stingrays (Blake did, Sheena was nervous), golfing with iguanas, scuba diving, a submarine tour, jet skiing, wake boarding, sea kayaking, sun tanning (or "sun burning for us Seattle white-folk), fantastic food, and a couple of relaxing massages to cap it all off. It was awesome ~

Poland

To round out our European vacation, our final destination was Poland. The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Poland was the super cold weather. The average temperature during our Polish sojourn was around 10 - 12 degrees, yikes!

Our first stop was Warsaw, Poland. Sheena and I were able to visit the old town square, eat some traditional Polish cuisine, and visit a few of my Polish friends whom I was able to meet during my mission to Poland from 2002 - 2004. I was surprised to hear Sheena say she actually liked the food. While we were in old town Warsaw, we had bigos (Polish hunter's stew with sauerkraut, sausages, and a few other things), pierogi z miesem (flour dumplings with meat), and roast duck. After eating out we walked around for a bit in a few of the tourist shops and then met up with a friend, Leszek Klabisz, for some hot chocolate.

Our next stop in Poland was Lublin. Lublin is on the eastern border of Poland near the country of Ukraine. While there we were able to have dinner with Czarek and Beata Gladun. It was fun to be able to see the Gladun's and the timing was perfect. Czarek Jr. was heading off on his LDS mission the next day (he received a call to Poland), so we saw him just in time. During my LDS mission to Poland, I was able to teach the Gladun's and it was neat to see them again. During our second day in Lublin we visited Majdanek. Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp from World War II located just outside Lublin. It was a sobering experience to see Majdanek and learn about some of the terrible things that took place there. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were held at Majdanek and I believe around 80,000 people were murdered in the camp (mostly Jews, Polish nationals/POW's, and Russian nationals/POW's).

Our last night in Poland we returned to Warsaw. We took a train early the next day around 8:45 AM to Gdansk where we had a plan bound for Rome, Italy. The train ride took FOREVER, around 5.5 hours. I kept telling Sheena I could run faster with snow boots and a speed parachute; the train was super slow and stopped in like every little bum town. We finally arrived in Gdansk where after a bit of confusion, we caught our flight back to Rome, Italy.

The next morning we caught our flight from Rome back to the United States. Our trip took a little over two weeks. It felt like we had been gone in Europe a month because we packed lots of activities into those two weeks. We had a blast, but we were happy to get back to family and those things we love and enjoy at home.


This picture is of the thousands of shoes left behind by the prisoners at Majdanek.


Jogobella jogurt, some of the best stuff around in Poland. Yum!

Zermatt, Switzerland

Did I mention how great the Swiss chocolate is?!! It's delicious and we made sure to stock up on our last few nights in Switzerland. Zermatt, Switzerland is the home to the famous Matterhorn. It was a sight; a cold one, but a beautiful one. We stayed in Zermatt for the last 2 days of our time in Switzerland. It was your classic expensive skier town. The hotels were glamorous, the food was delicious, the shopping was extravagant, and we didn't fit in at all. Our favorite foods we ate in Switzerland was cheese fondue, and rosti's. Rosti's were basically hash browns, so if you ordered the sausage and leek rosti it came in a small cast iron skillet with hash browns, leeks, and sausage all together. They were so yummy. In Zermatt, we slept in until 9:00am and then walked up and down the streets drooling at all the things for sale in the shop windows. Like for example the $85,000.00 watch for sale. Who buys something so expensive, even if you do have that kind of money?!! Blake thinks that the people who frequently visit Zermatt must fart and gold coins come out. We will definitely go back when that starts to happen to us. Otherwise that town or even the country of Switzerland robs poor fools like us. After Switzerland we had to visit Poland so that we could save money.

Bern, Switzerland

Bern was place I was the most excited to visit before coming on our trip. My grandma's parents both traveled to the United States from Bern. I had heard so many great things about it from my grandma, that I felt it was a place I needed to see in my lifetime. My grandma passed away a year ago, and at that time Blake and I weren't planning a trip to Europe. If I had known then, I would have asked her so many things about Bern; places to see, relatives to meet. Instead I relied on one of her photo albums from the last time she visited Bern, which was in 1983. I brought it with me on this trip and used it often to see all the places she had visited, so that I could see those places as well. It was such a great feeling to know that I was standing in the same place as she had been almost 30 years ago on her trip to Bern. Some of the things we saw while in Bern were the Bear Pits. The legend of the bear pits is that the city of Bern was given it's name back in 1191 when the first animal hunted and killed was a bear. The bear pits have been in the town since 1513, and now they're in more of a park setting rather than a pit. Other things we saw were the apartment of Albert Einstein, the town clock, the Parliament House, the Rose Garden (it didn't have any roses blooming, but it did have an amazing view of the city), and we did a session in the Bern, Switzerland Temple. We loved the food in Bern, and the people as well. The food was a lot heavier than what we had been eating in other countries, but it was so delicious.



The bear pits, minus the bears (they were in hibernation).




This is the Parliament House. My grandma had this identical picture in her photo album.

Paris, France cont'd

Sorry to make our stay in Paris several posts, but I can't post nearly as many pictures as I would like to on one. Other things we saw while in Paris included the Arc de Triumphe which is right in the center of downtown which is called the Champs Elysee, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was fun to walk down the Champs Elysee and see all the places to shop. I remember my French teacher in high school talking about that part of town so much, and to finally be able to see it first hand was great. The Seine River is also a large river that runs right down through Paris. Paris was so much fun and Blake and I both agreed it was one of our favorite places we visited on our trip.



This is us on a bridge overlooking the Seine River



The statue of Venus. They don't know who the artist is, but they believe it is of the Greek Goddess of Love, Aphrodite.

Paris, France

Paris was the best! It was such a big town, with so many large monuments to see. We were able to stay in the same hotel the entire time in Paris, which was nice for a change. The first thing we found while in Paris was an excellent bakery, which we frequented every morning, and sometimes in the evenings. The French girl that worked in the mornings was the cheeriest little thing I had seen on all of our vacation. She was always greeting us with a peppy "Bonjour" when we arrived (which means hello) and "Merci" when we left (goodbye). In Paris it was nice to be able to take our time sightseeing, since we didn't have anywhere else in France to visit. We had hoped to go down to Normandy, France to see the battlefields, but once we were in Europe and talked with some people it was going to be a far distance for a lot of money, so we decided to cut it from our plans. The Eiffel Tower was so much larger in real life than I had pictured it being. We took an elevator ride up to almost the top and then you could take the stairs to go up even higher. I decided to stop at the level the elevator takes you, but Blake went all the way. I don't loves heights, and it's not even enjoyable for me to be in that situation for even a quick glance. The Louvre museum, if I could use any phrase to describe that place it would be "oh my gosh." Not necessarily because of all the wonderful things to see, but because of the size of the museum. It's divided into 3 wings and there are 4 levels to each wing, which doesn't sound like a lot until you see how much there is to see on each level. I think if you wanted to see everything in that museum you would need to do a wing a day and take 3 days to see it all. We did see the Mona Lisa which was cool.