How Much Cute?

Matthew, Julia, and I are taking a mini-vacation in the Alsace region of France. Dispite the look on Matthew's face, we are enjoying the concentration of cute that saturates the Vosges Mountains and villages. Albert Sweitzer was born in this little village. I think that is why he was so smart, and good. He grew up in a fairy tale.

You would have to be smart and good if you played in this street--and there were no video games to keep you indoors eating corn based food product and running dangerously low on vitamin D.

And this street: Petite Venise in Colmar. I love all those colors. And the fact that the buildings lean charmingly into each other.

M & J shared a sausage roll shaped like a pig from the corner Charcuterie in Eguisheim.

And ate it gazing on this square. Notice the Stork nest? They are everywhere in this region. Who knew? And I don't know that squares get much better than this.

Which makes me wonder...how much cute can one day hold? Quite a bit, I think.

Summer

Meet Cole. He is my nephew. He and his twin brother Brent are like Fred and George Weasley in 5 year old flesh and blood. He was painted up all fierce by Matthew at my Uncle Jim's lake. The cousins 12 and under were mining clay from the bottom of the lake and stashing it in storage depots guarded by the girls. I guess they got tired of storing and started embellishing.

Summer perfection.

Commencement

I love that graduations are called commencements. It is true that Sarah is finally finished with High School (can you hear the cheers from all the way over here?), but the real significance of finishing is getting to start something new. So goodbye ISB. Goodbye HS Drama. Goodbye Family.

And Hello the rest of my life...

love that smile!

The End

This is the Acropolis. I think the scaffolding has been there since ancient times. Everywhere you go in Europe you find scaffolding. I know it really shouldn't affect the wonder of a place, but it really does. It means that something needs to be fixed, and wonders of the world shouldn't need to be fixed. They should just be. This is a temple. I don't remember whose, but it is a nice view. The whole ancient complex including the Acropolis is just surrounded by a sea of modernity and cheerful chaos.
We had to cut our visit short. One member of our party made a mad dash down the hill looking desperately for a bathroom.

The site was thereafter dubbed "The Acrapolis." Nice, huh?

Our last stop was the small fishing village of Katakalon. We decided to skip Olympia and the final wonder in favor of strolling, baklava, and internet. Fabulous baklava.

Everyone was pretty happy to sit in the sun and rest. We loved it.

The End.

Remember that Cruise?

Ok, I know it was two months ago, but I can't let the last three stops fade into oblivion. So here are the absolute hightlights from the grand finale: This is the amplitheater at ancient Ephesus. Built in the first century AD, it could hold 25,000 spectators.
I was really into the columns. One of the craziest things about these ancient sites is that they pretty much let you crawl all over everything. I guess they figure that if it has withstood 2000 years of weather and plunder, it can hold up to the Passeys.

Anna and Sarah fit right in with the Greek Goddesses.

This was my favorite building--the Ancient Library of Celsus. Look and those columns. I could have been really smart in there.

The Temple of Artemis, one of the ancient wonders was destroyed by Goths around 400AD. We liked Ephesus anyway.

Two more wonders to go...

Back to Work

Have you ever noticed how important momentum is? There are definitely some physics laws that explain this phenomenon. But physics aside, I find momentum an important aspect of blogging. When I get in a good groove I find something to post about pretty much every day. However, you may have noticed that I have been struggling with inertia lately. My kids are starting to bug me about the absence of new pictures. I was informed last week that I needed to get the pigs off the blog. I hear and I obey.

Tomorrow...

Further Morning Wonders...

Last week we had lovely swirling petals on our way to school.

This week, pork.

The back streets are getting more and more interesting all the time.
Happy Tuesday