Oklahoma Update

Hello lovely friends and bloggers! How is everyone? I can't believe it is already Christmas Eve..... can you??? I awoke this morning to snow/sleet in Oklahoma and boy is it COLD! BRRRR..... Now it's snowing and it is coming down pretty hard. We will definitely be having a white Christmas! We are having a fantastic time here, eating loads of wonderful food, and spending time with our families and some great friends! We are so happy to be home.

I just wanted to pop in and show a few pictures of our trip thus far.

Me with my mother and great friend Lisha.

Lisha, Jon, and me.

My beautiful and goofy niece Preslie and me.

My cousins Maranda and Rachel. And my brother and me.

My brother, my dad and me. Jon and I with Brian.

I'll be back with more pictures of our Oklahoma adventure soon!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Festivites and Festivals

Well hello lovely bloggers! How was your Thanksgiving? I hope you all had a blessed holiday and it was spent filled with family and friends. Even though we are away from our families, we were so blessed this year to spend Thanksgiving with friends. It was a wonderful time!

Our cousin Matt just returned from a tour in Iraq and was able to spend all day Saturday with us, so I made a huge Thanksgiving lunch for him. We were so thankful he was able to spend the day with us and thankful that he made it back from Iraq safe and sound.

There is a huge Christmas festival going on right now in our town so of course we took Matt to see the festivities and to drink some Gluwein.

The Christmas Festival

Drinking lots of Gluwein, as you can see by my purple teeth! ;)

Pretty ornaments they had for sale.We are so glad we got to see Matt and spend some time with him!

We also had a chance to put up our Christmas decorations this weekend. We went to a tree lot, picked out a great tree and decorated it together. This is the third year in a row that we've decorated together so it has become a tradition. And every year I get to put the star on top of the tree ;)

2007, 2008, and 2009

A BIG THANKS to S&D for having us over for Thanksgiving! It was wonderful!!

I hope you all have a fantastic Monday!

4 Days in Tuscany

Hello lovely blogging buddies! How are you all today?

I'm LOVING this weather. The leaves are changing, it's getting cooler outside, and I'm pulling out our fall clothing! What a fantastic time of year. Last night we had the leftover chili that I made Sunday night and it was EVEN better than it was the first night we had it. I also baked a pumpkin pie and it was A-mazing. I went crazy yesterday looking through all of my old recipes and finding new recipes for stews, pumpkin treats and chilis! I love cooking Fall foods. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Anyway.... on with our trip of Italy.
Thanks so much for letting me share our adventures and pictures with you all!

Note: If you're not a picture lover, you might not want to continue reading this post.

Day 3: Tuscany

We hopped on a train from Venice and headed to Florence. We found a great villa, 7km from Florence in a town called Sesto Fiorentino, which is in the middle of the country side. Once we arrived at the train station we rented a car and drove to Via Di Castiglioni, (the name of the villa). Of course we got lost a couple of times because the villa could not be found on the Garmin! But we made it. We stopped a long the way and I snapped a couple of pictures.

The view

Our villa was surrounded by olive orchardsThe house we stayed in is the yellow one.
Here are pictures of the villa in Sesto Fiorentino

Steve and Jon! and the view from our porch.

When we arrived, the family owning the villa was waiting with fresh fruits and vegetables, a homemade pie and homemade pizza! HELLO, I wanted to move in and become their adopted child. That was the most incredible welcome ever. I was so impressed by their hospitality. I will definitely be visiting them in the future.

We unpacked and took it easy, then headed to a near by grocery store to grab some food for the next couple of days. Sadly, the grocery store was closed. But, there was a restaurant just a couple of steps away so stopped in there for dinner. Holy goodness, this place was incredible! We ate way too much food and drank far too much wine, but it was totally worth it. Then we headed back to the villa and crashed for the night.

The next four days were very busy filled with loads of traveling and site seeing, so instead of boring you with every detail, I'll just show a couple of pictures ;) Mind you, I had OVER 800 pictures from our trip.

Lucca

Pisa

Siena




Florence
We saw the Accademia and The David,
but of course were not allowed to take any pictures.

Tomorrow I'll be back with our trip of Rome!
Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!