Business Trip to Italy

Brett had a conference in Pisa for about a week, so we decided to make a trip of it.  We booked a nice little place that looked like this:

    

Yeah, pretty much beautiful. 

The kids spent almost all day every day in the pool.  Even after multiple applications of sunscreen, they became very red and crisp.

 

When they had to, they retired to the [uncomfortable] couch and read.

Talmage enjoyed the little mattress.  He almost fell asleep on it once.

Once Ethne got waterwings on she was a little fish.  She and Hazel did awesome cannonballs.  Seeing a little skinny thing like Ethne doing a cannonball is pretty awesome.

 

Also, there were two pretty German teenage girls-Hetty and Charlie- also staying at the apartment, and Ethne and Hazel became fast friends with them.  That was actually pretty great, because they really kept them entertained a lot of the time, swimming and talking and sharing treats, and Ethne even came away with some mascara from one of them. hmmm. 

I did Hazel’s hair in two pretty tight french braids the first day, and we just left them in for about 3 or 4 days, and every day they got more and more condensed and they pulled up and curled out on the bottom.  It was pretty awesome.

The first afternoon we got there we went to the beach.  It was fairly crowded and not the very nicest beach ever in the world, but the kids had fun.

Another night that we could rip Brett away from work we went to find a geocache.  At first we parked and started walking…

and then we realized that we had a LOOOONG way to go, so we got back in the van and drove over some awesome dirt roads to this cool foresty place.

And then we came out of it to the beach.  It was a much cooler beach than the one we had gone to earlier, and we wished we had come here first.  We never found the geocache, which was fine since we had just wanted to go see a cool place, and we did. 

Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay too long because we hadn’t fed the kids dinner yet and it was getting close to bedtime.  So sad.

Now, looking at the pictures I’m positive you think we had an enchanting time.  And, I think the kids did.  I, however, was not so impressed with business/pleasure mixing.  When I go on vacation, I want to PLAY!  Brett had to be at the conference quite a bit, and when he wasn’t at the conference he was working on his talk for it (which was the last morning).  Which means that I was in charge of watching all the kids at the pool in the heat (it was realllly hot!) all day long, but not really able to get in myself or do much else.  I did read quite a bit, which is always good of course, but whenever Orrin was awake, I couldn’t because I didn’t want him to drown.  (Not that I wasn’t always watching all the kids, but most particularly Orrin.)  Anyway, I know that sounds completely whiny when it was as beautiful as it was, and sitting at a pool reading a book isn’t a hardship, but I just wanted to explore more and play more. 

Anyway, we got gelato before we left and it was delicious, although it was RUNNING down my hands because Brett had stayed by the van while I went around the corner to get it.  Luckily there was a fountain where we could wash all the kids off, since it was rather like soup for them.  Mmmm, gelato is good.