BLOCK LEAVE HIGHLIGHTS

Before Ben left for Afghanistan, we were able to take a 2 week vacation down in Italy. We had such a crazy and fun time, the weather was blazing hot and we took over a thousand pictures. It was amazing! We stopped in Salzburg, Austria, and then visited Venice, Verona, Rome, Vatican City, Cinque Terra, Pisa, and Milan ITALY. We didn't rush around like crazy people trying to see everything, we slept in, would go swimming with the kids, and then see the city in the evening if that is what we wanted.

When we got home our laptop was loaded with the pictures and it was starting to slow down. So we transferred all the pictures onto a hard drive, re-booted the laptop and went to get our pictures onto our other computer to blog and relive the trip once more.

The moment I plugged in the hard drive cord and didn't see it register right away I began to worry. Surely this will work if I try it again and I will be able to see my pictures, right? Unplug... plug... unplug... plug.

NOTHING.

It is as if the hard drive sizzled up and died taking all of our vacation photos with it. I am so sad. All the places we went and photos memories gone.

We have had different people look at it. They plug it in: it clicks, maybe hums for a minute like it is trying to work- but our pictures haven't been recovered...yet.

We still hold onto the "non-working" memory disk in case we can have someone look at it.

So in the mean time, here is a "Google" photo search of all the places we saw. Just cut and paste our crazy family in the best locations and we are all SMILING!

VENICE, Italy (hot hot hot) we spent one day at Lido Beach, nice to build sand castles and play in the water





ROME, ITALY and the VATICAN (awesome to go into St. Peter's Square and the museums- the Sistine Chapel was packed, but awesome!)

Pisa, ITALY (below) fun to see the leaning tower- we should have walked up to the top

CINQUE TERRA (below)

Cael and Ben were jumping off of the rocks into the ocean to the right. There were teenagers who were afraid to jump, but when they saw a 7 year-old Cael do it they got more courage.
 

 

Milan, ITALY (by the time we made it here we were ready to be home)

We tried to see the famous "last supper" by Leonard Di Vinci, but the tickets were booked for the whole time. We did go into the Museum with many of the replicas and blueprints for Di Vinci's machines. Very interesting to see how this incredible man and the ideas he had regarding flight, machines, and bridges.