Every day this week, I’ve driven by this beautiful tree on the way home, and wished I had my camera! Today I came home early from work to meet Brandon after school, then he and I we went downtown so that I could take some tree pictures. I love this tree with the sunlight behind it! We’ve had a very colorful fall, since we haven’t had much rain. As soon as the rain starts, all of these pretty leaves will be on the ground. But until then, it’s a beautiful season…

This week it’s starting to feel like we might actually get to Italy someday! I received word at work that the upper management approval for the transfer has been granted, so that is good news. We figured it would be approved but you never know sometimes!

Patrick is going up Friday to pick up the document translations and to meet with the consulate to get them legalized. So by Monday we should have our documents off for the work visa application and that will be officially in progress. At this point, we are planning for January at the earliest for the move.

I will be traveling to Italy for two weeks in November, leaving Nov 8 and returning Nov 21. It’s mostly work but I do plan to visit some schools for Brandon and see what they are like, and I hope to explore some more neighborhoods. It should be interesting!

Happy birthday to my friends Rainie, Cassandra and Barbara today! And happy birthday to me yesterday!

We’re in Arizona for the weekend, visiting my Mom. We had a fun day yesterday visiting lots of relatives. First we stopped by my Great Aunt Edna’s house for a little visit, she lives in a neighborhood near my Mom. Aunt Edna is 89 years old and living on her own! Pretty amazing lady.

From there we drove down to Tucson for lunch at my Mom’s cousin Ellen’s house. My Great Aunt Mernie (Edna’s sister), Uncle Dan (Mom’s brother) and Aunt Cynthia, Ellen’s son Andrew and husband Richard were all there. And of course, us and Mom. I haven’t seen Andrew since our wedding, which was 15 years ago, and had never met Richard. We had a nice lunch! Ellen has lots of kid-friendly foods, Brandon chowed down. Ellen’s a first grade teacher so she must have known what would be popular. There was even a birthday cake and some singing for my birthday!

We had a very nice visit, and stayed longer than planned. It was great to see Aunt Mernie, but she was very self-conscious of her nose. She had just had some cancer removed the day before. She is doing fabulous at 86!

On our way back north out of Tucson, we first had to stop for me to take some pictures in the beautiful sunset light. The light was almost gone when we finally found a Saguaro cactus for the foreground in front of the Catalina mountains. Thanks to Mom for driving on the shoulder of the road trying to find me a cactus for the photograph!

We stopped quickly in Oro Valley to see Uncle Dan and Aunt Cyn’s house, and then were hustled out by Mom because we were late for dinner. Lillian (Mom’s roommate) had cooked us a wonderful dinner and Aunt Edna came over. We chatted for a while before calling it a day. Brandon had an exciting dinner, he lost another tooth! This one on the bottom. I’ll have to get a picture of that sometime today.

There was a lot of visiting, and Brandon did really well. We stopped at Target in Tucson to get him some Legos, because he just needed some kid stuff with all of the adults around.

A fun birthday overall. It was nice to be on a little break from work and to be in some warm weather again. Sandals and cropped pants – woohoo!

The Columbians welcomed us to their country in fine style, with a long music and dance presentation on the dock that we watched from Deck 4 before we were allowed off the ship. It was a little after 9:30 before we were able to get off of the ship. We walked out to gifts of pinwheels for the kids, fruit, and candy. Quite the welcome to the port!

Since we didn’t have an excursion we walked to the terminal, a short little walk with a great view of the Disney Magic. At the terminal – more gifts! They gave us each a maraca as a souvenir and then we walked through the shop on the way out of the port. Then came the big question – what to do – a white shirted tour guide? Or a taxi driver? From my research, I knew we were supposed to go all the way out of the port entrance, but we couldn’t tell where we were and ended up with a taxi just to go to the old town. Fernando was his name, and he kept correcting my pronunciation of anything Spanish.

On the way he talked us into 3 hours for $50. That seemed fine, compared to the prices we saw posted at the port, so we thought it would be handy to have a taxi available. We first stopped at Fort San Philippe. We wanted to go in but they would not take our US Dollars – the lady didn’t speak any English and told the guys translating for us that she didn’t have change. We didn’t want to get any Columbian Pesos – since we were only here for a day! So we just walked up the ramp to the entrance and back to look around.

From there we wanted to go to the old city. I wanted to start at the Clock Tower, but our taxi driver first took us to Las Bovedas – the old dungeons – converted into shops. Of course he took us to one shop and insisted that we go in. We should have left him right there! It became obvious over the course of the next couple of hours that he was trying to get us into certain shops and was going to get some sort of kickback, even from the street vendors he seemed to invite up to us. We said “No Gracias” in this town a thousand times!!

We did have a nice walk around the old city after we pretty much insisted on what we wanted to see, and I enjoyed taking pictures of the architecture. The old city is very beautiful – with the narrow streets, colorful buildings and balconies with all of their flowers. It is hard to get some good pictures since it’s so tight – even with my 24mm lens. Except for the annoyance of our taxi driver wanting us to go a certain way, and all of the street peddlers trying to sell us sunglasses, hats and maracas, and the ladies with fruit on their hats wanting us to take a picture with them, it was a nice visit. Partway through the walk around the city, Patrick gave Brandon the camera to take pictures and he enjoyed being the “photographer” like me. So now the taxi driver was annoyed with having to wait for two of us, but hey, we were paying him.

After walking through the parts of the old city I wanted to see, we went up to La Popa Monastery, on the hill above the city (again, our taxi driver seemed annoyed, probably less shopping up there!). The monastery was supposed to have the best views of the whole area. It was an interesting drive through other parts of the city. There is a definite difference between the rich houses (block size beautiful homes) and the small shanties that we saw on the hill on the drive up to La Popa. The houses were all tiny, with no real windows or doors, corrugated metal roofs, laundry hanging out. There were lots of cabs picking up and dropping people off, it looked like no one had cars.

Up at La Popa, again there were the peddlers with their wares, as soon as we got out of the car. This time there was even someone wanting us to pay for a picture with a sloth, no thank you (although it was interesting to see a sloth in real life!). By this time we were hot and Patrick was hungry and La Popa was a nice respite. Once we were inside, it was quiet and peaceful with a gorgeous view all around the city. The new city, old city, all of the water, the Disney Magic – gorgeous view. We paused for an ice cream in the little refreshment stand, sat in the shade with a breeze and looked out at the city. That was nice.

We walked around the inside of the convent for a little while, enjoyed and photographed the courtyard, and then figured our 3 hours with our “tour guide” were up and went back to the ship. We were hot and hungry by this time, and felt we had seen what we wanted to of the city. We wished that we had gotten a tour guide, but by this time we were done. When we got back to the terminal I paid the taxi driver and he tried to tell us no, it was $50 for the car and $20 for him and we said we only agreed to $50 and got out of the cab. Trying to rip us off! We were probably the most disappointing American tourists ever – we didn’t want to shop, we wouldn’t go where he wanted us to, and we didn’t fall for the extra $20.

Later, Brandon and I watched us sail out of Cartagena as the sun set. We heard the horn from the very front of the ship (that is LOUD) and Brandon the photographer took some pictures of the sunset behind the new city. A pretty exit from a pretty city.

Last night, Brandon sat down at “his” computer (Patrick’s old laptop, we just got a new one) and typed out this poem:

October, October, October
Leaves, leaves, leaves
Red, orange, brown
Pumpkins, colder, Halloween
October, October, October

We’ve never seen him do this before! The poem along with the picture I took yesterday of him without his two front teeth inspired me to create a scrapbook page tonight, the first one I’ve made in a long while, maybe since April. Fun!

The second front tooth is finally out! And just in time for picture day too, woohoo! We had tried and tried to get this tooth to come out. It’s been wiggly for MONTHS and just wouldn’t come out. We tried on the cruise, first to make it a “Panama Canal Tooth” (since his first tooth came out in Grand Teton National Park, we thought that would be appropriate). No such luck. Then a Cartagena, Aruba, Castaway Cay or just a plain cruise tooth. No more luck. Since coming home Brandon has been wiggling and wiggling. We’ve bribed him a couple of times to let us try to pull it out… with dental floss, our fingers and – get this – needlenose pliers. Nothing.

So how did it finally come out? An Oreo! Munching on a cookie Friday night it finally came out. So it’s a “cookie tooth” and he looks awfully cute! His speech immediately changed and Patrick got a kick out of listening to him talk. He said “CBS Sports” this weekend which came out as “Thee-bee-eth Thporth” and gave us a good laugh. He seems to have compensated and the lisp is going away, but we’ll be singing “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!” in December for sure.