Surgically assisted rapid palatal expansion (SARPE)

The joys of getting braces as an adult. I'm having surgery on April 13th. They are cutting up my mouth to spread my maxilla. My teeth are too crowded and the bone is too set. Yesterday I got one of these put in. I'll have it for 6 months. It makes it hard to eat...I think I'm going to lose weight with this diet plan. Anyway, if you talk to me on the phone or in person, yes, I will be talking differently. Having this taken out might be one of the best birthday presents ever.

Aidan

Before we went to Europe, I was able to photograph Aidan. I photographed him last year, he's gotten so big since then. Thanks Peter and Christy for allowing me to take a couple hours of your time, it was fun to see how big he has gotten. We will definitely do it again sometime.

We go to Rome

We got into Rome in the late afternoon, figured out the MetRo and took off for our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express. We got to the bus stop where we thought the shuttle would pick us up. Much to our dismay, it was not running at the time we got there so we stood out in the rain for an hour, hoping we would not miss it. Live and learn. So we hopped on bus 451 and we were on our way. We had to walk a couple blocks to the hotel when we got off but at least we were there. We checked into our room, dried off a little, and headed back to the Ponte Mammolo MetRo station to go downtown Rome. Seeing the coliseum at night is great. They have it lit up and it just looks like a postcard. Everything was closed so we could not actually see any of the coliseum of the forum but it was nice walking around at night.

We had dinner at a big restaurant, we were the only ones there, then we went to a gelato shop for our fix of delicious gelato. I was not as impressed with gelato the first time I went to Rome, but we hit up the best places, most recommended by Rick Steves. He definitely knows where the good places are.
The next day we went back downtown for a very long day of sightseeing. We got to go into the Coliseum and look around. The structures they put up a couple thousand years ago are simply amazing. They had so much detail and thought put into these places, it blows my mind. I can't imagine working on them, it must have been back breaking work. If you ever get a chance to go to Rome, you definitely have to go in, it's worth the 11 or so Euros. It hailed for a few minutes while we were there so everyone was hiding. Luckily it blew over and it didn't start raining again for a few more hours.
This is one of the rock streets outside of the coliseum on your way to the forum where all the government things went on.
Check back on Monday for a few more photos of Rome before our trek to Venice.

On to Pisa

After we finished at Cinque Terre, we headed to Pisa for the night. We got in late and had to walk for about 30 minutes to our hotel. It was well worth it. We were staying a couple blocks from the tower and could see the top of it from our room. There was a tree blocking our view. We had pizza next door to the hotel then took a walk over to the leaning tower to look at it at night.

This was the view from our hotel room.
We got up the next morning and headed over to get our tickets for the 9 a.m. hike up. It's 300 steps and takes about 4-7 minutes to get up, depending on breaks.
And this is from the top. We were up there long enough to get a few photos and look around the city. Definitely worth it if you are passing through, but I don't think there is anything else there to see.
This is Stephanie on the way down.
Come back tomorrow for photos of our time in Rome. We were there for 2 days so it may take a couple posts to cover it all.

On to Zurich and Cinque Terre

After we visited the Rhine River, we headed back to Frankfurt to catch our train to Zurich. It was a quick stay there, came in after dark and left around 7 the next morning. I was only able to grab a couple photos from there.

On our way to Pisa, we stopped off at Cinque Terre. A really neat area where houses have been built on the side of the mountain right by the ocean. It has a lot of character and a very fun place to visit. A lot of tourists go there. Highly recommended. It was a little cold and rainy for us here but we had a good time.


Focus on the cool scenery behind us.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for pictures of Pisa.

The beginning of the trip

I'm going to spread my trip posts out over a few days. I have around 50 photos to share so I don't want to do it all at once. These first few are just some random ones from the beginning of the trip. Nothing too interesting at first, but I'm going in order so bear with me.

Stephanie's parents flight from Washington D.C. was delayed getting into Frankfurt for about 3 hours due to weather so we had some time to kill. This is a shot of the Frankfurt airport. After they got in, we jumped on the train and headed up the Rhine River to look at some castles and scenery. We were supposed to take a tour but we were a little pressed for time so we saw what we could from the train.

It was a comfortable day with overcast skies. We wondered around for maybe 30 minutes or so in a little town before we had to head back to the train station in Frankfurt to catch our next train to Zurich.


We used the Eurorail pass most of the time to get from place to place. If you ever go, I highly recommend it, it's a very comfortable way to get around.
More to come tomorrow.

So much to share

It was a whirlwind 9 days on vacation. I have so many photos to share but I need a little time to go through them all. I have major jetlag. But here is what we did.

Friday - Flew from LAX to ATL to Frankfurt, Germany
Saturday - Spent a little time on the Rhine River looking at castles and beautiful countryside then headed to Switzerland for the night.
Sunday - Left for Pisa. Spent some time in Cinque Terre then the night in Pisa. Our hotel semi overlooked the leaning tower.
Monday - Got to go up the 300 steps to the top of the tower. Then headed for Rome.
Tuesday & Wednesday - Spent a rainy 2 days looking around Rome. What an amazing city with so much history.
Thursday - Left for Venice and spent the night there. Wow, what a beautiful place.
Friday - Took a tour around Salzburg. I'd go back there.
Saturday - Spent some time touring around Dachau, the first concentration camp. Went to the Neuschwanstein Castle then into Munich for the night.
Sunday - We were up way too long flying from Munich, to Paris, to ALT, then finally back to LAX.

I'm very tired now, but will post photos soon. I have about 1,100 to sort through.

I hope your week was good.

Still slacking

I'm still slacking and I won't be adding anything new for a couple weeks. I'm heading out on vacation in the morning and won't be back till the 25th. I hope to have some vacation photos to share with you. I'm excited about our travels so hopefully I will have something good to share with you all.

Have a safe week and check back after the 26th. I will be recovering from our travels so give me a few days after that.

Correction. Here is a random photo taken by my new friend Eddie Bojorquez of www.ebojo.com from our time spent in Pismo Beach at OSPW.

Slacking

Ok, I'm slacking on my blogs. It's been a busy week so I have not had time to post any pictures but I do have some to post, they are just on my memory cards. I promise, I will get some up soon.

I hope you all have a great weekend.