Pisa, Italy

Pisa was my favorite city, I think! (There's too many to choose from!)  Pisa is more of the quaint little town where as the other places we went were either totally touristy (Rome) or just too many people (Naples).  We also relaxed a bit more in Pisa since we had just traveled for like 26 hours the day before.  We did have Venice in our plans, but after the lost luggage thing - we decided to cut it out for next time (yes there will be a next, and a next...)

Our hotel was awesome!  It went down hill from here which eased me into the more dirty and weird hotels.  One blessing was just that they gave us slippers, I know that sounds silly, but mine were in Paris and I don't do very well w/out something on my feet in strange places.  And the breakfast also was the best with real pastries, eggs and meat, cereal, fruit, cheese and cookies for later.  Just that made it good.  The first day out (Dec 24th) we took a train to Cinque Terra - the 5 cities along the coast built on 5 different points.  It was so amazing to get out to one point and be able to see a few other cities way up or down the coast!  And the houses were all colorful and built on top of each other - it looked like each was competing to make sure they had ocean view, a place to park their boat, and easy access to the water.

Between the first and second city they have a very easy walk along the mountain wall called the Walk of Love. (below) We planned to go do that, but because of the rain there were possible slides so we just caught the train to the next city instead.  The next city we spent the most time just walking along the mountain for what we could, checking out the houses and just poking around at fun sites.  It really is a different world - I didn't see one car or really anyone out (it was Christmas Eve I guess) but they're all just small towns where everyone just seems to do their own thing, I'd think of a retirement community but a fun one that takes their small boats out and tourists come to swim in the water...

We made it back to Pisa before dinner and had David's famous kebab.  Let me tell you, I didn't know what a kebab was according to Italy.  The Pakastanians or others came to Italy and they roast a huge meat on a stick and when you order some they stick it in the fire while it cooks in like one minute and then they take this shaver to shave off the meat into a tortilla with crazy stuff (fries, salad, rice, cooked salad, etc) or just to eat with the other stuff on the side.  I liked it w/out the fries...  David was raving about this and I just assumed he was having a shiskebab or something very small.  Oh me.

That evening we took a bus - not sure how we survived the buses - they are known to be the best drivers, David says, and I agree, but a bit scary!  We took the bus to the leaning tower and then walked home through the city and over the little river.  It was just a cute little town.

Christmas we woke up, had delicious breakfast, and then headed out to the leaning tower to get a look at it in the day along with the Baptistry and Church next to it.  The leaning tower really wasn't as big as I've imagined or seen on TV, but it really does lean, and actually kind of bows out since they tried to correct it.  Did you know that the ground is actually frozen - that was their way to solve the sinking side! - so it will always be like that - I'm amazed they wanted to keep it rather than just build it up again!

That afternoon we took the 4 hour train back to Rome to have Christmas night there... still without our baggages.  We called Paris a few times and they could mostly just tell us that our bags were somewhere but since the airport had been closed they were more worried about getting the people stranded places.  Well, on to Rome... :)

Traveling to Italy!!!

Our honeymoon #3 was fantastic!!  Yep, we'll be on a honeymoon the rest of our lives :)  Not that we'll be traveling all the time with dental school coming up, but life will still be like a honeymoon.  Although this 24/7 trip is something I will miss as we get back into work and school.

We planned our trip out months ago, and since David had been there, he knew all the cities we should see and sites we should see....  We had our plans all set and hotels booked for the ten day trip.

First - Pisa from Dec 24 - Dec 25

Second - Rome from Dec 25 - Dec 29

Third - Naples from Dec 29 - Jan 1

Fourth - Ostia from Jan 1 - Jan 2

I'll blog about each one separate as it just seems like such a daunting task.

Italy was great, but getting to Italy was another story... We went from Utah to Texas to Paris and then to Italy.  The long flight was actually very nice with pillows, blankets, dinner and breakfast and as many movies/tv that you wanted to watch.  

We finally made it to Italy with about 20 hours of travel.  We waited for our baggage... waited... and no baggage!!  We decided to wait in the luggage service line and I just kept going around and around looking for our bags.  I noticed an airline lady with a list of names on her clipboard and there at the top was "Clark"!  So, hoping she spoke English (because I seriously couldn't understand anyone there) I asked if she knew about bags lost - she did - and ours was one of about 6 that got left behind in France and was headed our way on the next flight.  So, we filed our missing luggage claim and decided to wait the 2ish hours.  We waited, watched several baggage's come off, and nothing.  

The Paris flight never landed!!!  They weren't sure what happened to it and just kept telling us to wait.  We waited 7 hours until we almost missed our train headed to Pisa and finally just gave up!  Ends up that Paris had those crazy snow storms and shut down flights for the night.  

We were lucky to make it to Italy that night, even though we were sad we didn't have our bags.  We did have a few items in our backpacks so that was lucky :)

On to Pisa...

The Birth of our First Stone

So just had to share a crazy, scary moment.  David & I had a wonderful Saturday night date that he planned and surprised me with!  He even sent me out of the house to make dinner secretively and gave me some spending cash :)  Sweet!!  We had some delicious spaghetti, played mario, went ice skating, ice cream, and then crashed.  After falling asleep (or after I fell asleep) David had some stomach pains and threw up several times.  He kept going back to throw up again and I finally woke up and realized he must be sick??  He said that it seemed a lot different than a flu and that his stomach was hurting a lot.  So, I looked up urgent cares and called my mom to research too... the area that was hurting was the right side of his belly button and below - I thought appendix, and starting worrying.  Turns out only the ER is open at 12:30am, so after I got David ready and with a bucket just in case, we got to the Murray IHC ER.  I knew something was really wrong when David said I could take him there anyway - I guess he thought it was just an urgent care until he asked where it was and I said, the ER (figured I'd leave that out in case he wouldn't go) - but he was totally willing and in so much pain.  By the time we got there his face just looked so painful - he's a tough guy and doesn't really make noise or scream with pain, but I could just tell as he was hunched over and going back and forth around the waiting room that he wasn't doing okay.  We had to wait more than an hour which could have been okay except with continuous sharp pain in the stomach, it really wasn't good.  The thing that finally got us in was when David fell onto the floor and was trying to throw up in a trash can around all the other patients waiting.  They promptly called in the back and someone was out pretty quickly!  I should have had him do that an hour earlier!!  So, once in the back we got David an IV and got him hooked to some fluids.  David wasn't looking good at all, I felt so bad for him.  The pain was so bad that he was shaking uncontrollably and just kept saying to put him out of his misery.  Nothing was comfortable and he was going to do anything to stop the pain.   As soon as we got him in the room the nurse suggested that he undress and put on the gown after he left but David heard that and immediately threw his pants off and shirt and I had to help get the gown on while he was wiggling in the bed.  The Dr came in and they said it was either appendix or more likely, KIDNEY STONES!!!  But no matter what, morphine was needed immediately.  That helped immediately and David was pretty out of it.  His body was so exhausted from the pain that he slept most of the time after that (and said some very funny things too that I'll try to remember - I say crazy stuff all the time just when I'm tired, so finally I had something on him!)  I was worried until he finally calmed down a lot and we got him on IV, meds, and a breathing machine because he wasn't doing that too well.  I waited there another hour until we had a CT Scan that would see what was going on.  An hour after that again we did find out it was a kidney stone 3 mm in size, like 1/10 of an inch.  While that is small, I can guarantee it is VERY painful.  They say more painful than labor and delivery.  I totally believe it.  I was just glad it wasn't anything worse.  I didn't sleep all night and finally we were sent home with meds, a strainer, and directions to just wait and drink lots and lots.  I got David in bed and crashed right with him.  Three hours later I had to call all our church people to let them know we both wouldn't be teaching our various classes.  David got up and after the 13 hours of labor... he passed the kidney stone!  His family was on the way to give a blessing so that was perfect timing.  They said we needed to name it :)  hahaha, but David said he'd never name that painful thing!  But I guess we did have our first baby, and now I know I can't ever say that David doesn't know what labor feels like....


I'm just glad he's okay!  He was so strong and I'm glad that I was there to take care of him (and that I didn't pass out or anything! - see David? Maybe I will be able to handle when our future kids get hurt huh???)  That was sure a scary night for us both and we're so glad it's over.  We need another normal weekend.... 

We're back....!

So we just got back from Italy... I'll post about Christmas during the December area and soon to come I'll post our 450+ Italy photos... Okay, I'll definitely cut the # down a bit :) and maybe also give you some fun experiences.  It was a great vacation - honeymoon #3!!  We visited all that we could in the around 11 days that we were there and hopefully I can share a bit of what Italy is like and the memories we made!!


Merry Christmas & Happy 2011 - can you believe it's here?  Crazy me, I put a Christmas CD in this afternoon, I guess I just haven't gotten enough of that wonderful spirit yet!?!?  Lots happening in 2011 I'm sure.  For now just a bunch of snow and work that I get to look forward to here...


Ciao!!

Happy Happy Birthday David Dear!!

(okay you can tell I'm totally a Primary teacher - hah, yeah, 8-11 year old teacher - ahh the flashbacks!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID!!!!

I know I'm a little late on posting this as we were actually in Italy on your birthday... but better late as we kind of celebrated your birthday all through December!!  I tried to spoil David for his birthday - I mean, come on, he's just the best husband ever and age 25 is a big one.  Although the best present could be Italy, I'm glad we did it in the US before too because we actually spent all day in the airport... we'll get to that later.  Here are some of the celebrations:

Bennihanas:
We went to one of our favorite restaurants a week before, David had a free meal, and it's so expensive but a lunch date between work was just great!!  We had our own chef too, such special treatment and the food is so fun to watch and so yummy.

Clark family party:
On the Sunday before we had dinner with the family and had David's choice of Enchiladas and peppermint ice cream!  So, it was great to watch the little kids be excited for David and have us all watch him open his gifts.  Here are a few pics from the evening.

I got david a sled, clothes, and some fun mario figures.  It's great as I said about Christmas, I love shopping for David.  He's mostly on my mind anyway so when I'm at stores I always think - oh, he'd like that!  So to have both b-day and Christmas, I had lots of options :)

Night out:
Monday night the week we left for Italy, I took David out on the town.... sort of.  I wanted to do the sledding activity but the snow wasn't working for me (the one day I needed it!!!) so we're doing that later.  We went to Red Lobster for dinner - and David hasn't stopped saying how great it was!  He hasn't been before, but loves seafood.  I loved watching him try and crack the crab legs and it was just fun to be together.  I think we both liked being there together the best.  It really was a great night for me and I wasn't the one turning older.

Hope you had a great day and have a great year being 25!!  You deserve it all.  I love you so much babe!

Christmas Traditions

So we put together a list of the Christmas activities we wanted to do this year!  And we pretty much got through them all :)  Well, there are a few we left for the Jan/Feb cold months...

• Christmas Utah - There's this great house, I think I mentioned last year, that has it's own radio station and as your sitting in your car you can watch the lights synchronize to the music playing!  It's actually pretty awesome and definitely would take some time and thousands of lights.  David introduced me to it and we did it for year 2 this year... we stopped by quickly on a Sunday night between other new traditions below...
• Gingerbread Cookies - neither of us had made these from scratch before, so this year was the year.  We found a great recipe that kept our cookies so soft and yummy - we actually ended up making a 2nd batch the next week!  I wanted to take them to the older couples in our ward, so we definitely did that and had enough to do for VT's, family, and both of our works!  Who knew we were such bakers?  But it was fun even w/out frosting, next year maybe.  David made me a surprise note to take out of the oven for the last ones, awe...

• Christmas Street - This is another tradition David introduced me to last year... You know you can find those great streets all decked out with lights, so we went and visited this one up in SLC.  It was a warmer night so I enjoyed not being too bundled and getting to walk around and decide what we'll do on our future home... in like 10 years :)

• SLC Temple Lights - We grabbed some hot chocolate (with lots of syrup - oh and I totally spilled all over my hands and burned them! owe!) and headed to temple square.  It was cold, fun to be out together, and just nostalgic to see those lights each year.  Love it!  We randomly ran into a lot of old friends, fun to see...

• Decorating our home - Yep! We finally got the tree up, the outside lights we did before the snow, and all the other fun decorations.  I just love Nativities and plan to get an Italian one soon!!

• Wassail, Sledding, Ice Skating - these were on our list but as we ended Christmas early to go to Italy - we're moving them to Jan/Feb :)

• Presents - we actually had Christmas on 12/20/2010 and opened our gifts to each other, first we celebrated David's birthday (more on that) and then we came home and opened presents to each other.  I loved being able to shop and buy anything for David this whole month - I always have to limit my spending on him because I could just find so many things (mostly food like mint m&m's etc) that he'd just love.  I was excited to watch him open presents.  We both loved what we got and just having our Christmas as marrieds :)

All of these have just been the best!  What a great first Christmas together as the Clark's.  I think we fit in all that we could before our Italy trip... the whole Christmas just came and went and even though we did as much as we could enjoying the season, I wish it was a bit longer.  I love the lights and color and just the happy spirit - and especially the music!  Well, on to next year and I'm sure Christmas will be around the corner before we know it!

Naughty Christmas Tree

We didn't realize how long it could take to put up a Christmas tree... I mean, I have done trees several times, but not for awhile.  And last year we had midget tree (4 feet!)...  We searched and got a good deal on a 7 foot tree.  And we decided to string our own lights (David seemed pretty confident, I wasn't that sure, but figured we could do it each year or try and string them good enough for a few years).


So after our Thanksgiving trip we got out all our boxes, bought our tree, lights, and decided to start decorating.


I unpacked the nativity while David started the tree.  After awhile we checked on each other's work and I started helping David.  The funny thing was that instead of spreading out each branch up and down and left and right.... he had each row flat and spread out flatly.  (Found out this is how his mom does it so that ornaments fit all through the tree)  I thought this was rather silly and so I helped "fluff" up our tree.  Even though I guess that is a style, we haven't flattened our branches yet.  I'd stick with it looking more like a real tree....  We both got poked and all that but finally got our tree all fluffed up.  Lights were for another day.

Next up we started the lights.  David began while I fixed dinner.  After over an hour I checked out the tree but there weren't lights on it yet??!?  David was doing great at trying out HOW to put them on and would put them on and then off and just would keep starting over.  So, after dinner I started over.  I got up a few branches and we realized that one of our new light strands went out!?!!?  And it was on the tree all integrated in the branches.  So there we proceeded for at least 2 hours trying to figure out what light bulb was loose, what fuze broke, etc.  We pulled in and out each light and tested with another one.  Oh my gosh - at that point we were about ready to box up the tree and go buy a pre-lit one!!  Forget saving $$ huh?  But we stuck with it.  We took off the strands and started over again.  Now the tree is almost ready except there's one section missing still since we only bought enough lights exactly for the tree.  I went and exchanged it today but found out it was a white cord - what??  I had no idea there was such a thing!

The frustrations continue.  Someday we'll win and you'll see our wonderfully finished tree, but for now you just see us struggling :).  But it's our First Christmas - and we love it!!!!!