Last day in Milan

On our last day in Milan Keith and I went downtown with Federica and her roommate, Marco, to explore the Duomo and do a little shopping. Afterwards we visited a former investigator that Keith taught on his mission (Marco Passerini) and then a family he baptized (the di Libertos). We slept at the di Liberto's house and then went to the airport at 6am the next morning. Unfortunately our plane was delayed for 6 hours so we got to know Malpensa airport really well before flying home. Luckily we had planned for a long layover at JFK so we were able to make our connecting flight back to San Francisco.
I'm so sad that our vacation is over. We had an amazing time with friends and I'm am completely in love with Rome. We'll have to go back soon and I hope that you can join us next time!
I do have to say that it was wonderful to sleep in my own bed and take a good long hot shower. I'll just put off thinking about work for a little bit longer...

Rome, Day 4 and Milan Days 1 and 2

We loved touring St Peter's Basilica in Rome before we headed to Milan on the train. Once in Milan we went out to dinner with Nadia and Federica and had some of the best pizza I've ever had in my life (with parmigiana, prosciutto di parma, arugala, and tomatoes). The next day we took a day trip to Mantova (about 2 hours outside of Milan) with Guisi, her son Gabriele, Nadia and Federica. The following day we went to Lake Como and Lugano Switzerland with Federica. Everything was so beautiful!!

Rome - Day 3

On our third day in Rome we visited the Colosseum, the Vatican Museum and Keith was on an Italian Radio show. You'll have to ask Keith for the full story of how he ended up on the radio. :) The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel were amazing. What a great day!

Rome - Day 2

On our second day in Rome we went to Trevi Fountain, Palantino and saw the Colosseum. It was a great day!

Rome - Day 1

I intended to post photos along the way, but the internet connection was always painfully slow. Here is the album from our first day in Rome. This is unedited so there are lots of duplicates and things. I LOVED Rome!! Our friends Federico (who Keith met at a concert in NYC last month) and his wife Carla made our visit so easy and fun. What great friends! They took us on a whirlwind tour of Rome our first night. It was a cold 5 or 6 hours walking around Rome but we saw almost ALL of the spectacular sights of Rome that night. Click on the album below to see larger pictures and read the descriptions.

Magic-al Day!

My most recent Facebook update has got WAY more attention than any other things I've ever posted.  The second most popular status update I've posted was me declaring myself to be a great "cook" after eating my first attempt at homemade ice cream.  A lot of people had opinions on that.  Anyway, since it was so popular, I thought I'd blog my photos of my day with Magic Johnson.  

Magic Johnson is 6'9".  I am not.  I've never felt smaller.  Look at how big his hand is on my shoulder!!  :)  Magic was at my work to give a talk about his new book and his work building up innercity communities and neighborhoods.  I helped host him (introduced him to all the executives, walked him around, etc) and got to listen to all his cool stories.  He's a seriously funny and nice guy.    

He was so sweet and took a million photos with people.  I think it's so funny that I could stand right in front of Magic is this group photo and you can still see the top third of him.  I'm barely up to his chest.  That's why everyone in the photo is laughing. 

All in a day's work...  :)

Old married couple?

I think the universe is trying to tell me something - and I don't want to hear it.  It's telling me I'm old.  Well, maybe not old... but it definitely wants me to know I'm not getting any younger.  First we got moved over to the University Ward where (almost) everyone is younger than us AND they look at me with big eyes when they learn that we've been married for 8 YEARS.  When even my church friends think that's a long time, I know I'm into the big numbers.   My next clue was when I went to a dance class at the gym at work and enjoyed every minute of making a fool of myself - until the next day when I literally limped trying to walk or go down stairs.  I limped for days!!  Also, somehow along the way Keith has become more flexible than I am - which I cannot explain.  

Then the final straw came yesterday when our new toaster arrived in the mail in a smiling Amazon box.  Our old toaster has started sparking and threatening to burn down our house each time we use it (and toast is NOT worth the drama!).  As I was unpacking our shiny new toaster I suddenly realized that the toaster I was throwing away had been a wedding present!  A wedding present!?!?!   I am old enough to be replacing wedding presents?  Oh wow.  It felt kind of sad to get rid of it, even though I can't remember who was cliche enough to give me a toaster for my wedding.  But then I had a proud realization.  My marriage to Keith has outlasted a toaster.  Then I felt happy.  That is no small feat!  

So I'd like to offer a toast (pun intended!) and a big thank you to Keith for staying with me longer than the toaster.  I love you Keith! Goodbye old toaster.  

By the way - we literally took 21 photos of us with our old toaster trying to get a usable picture.  I guess this is as good as we get.  ;)

Ski Trip!

I know I've been a bad blogger lately.  I thought I'd show you a bit of what has kept me so busy.  Last week I planned a huge ski trip for 350 of my coworkers (thanks to the help of LaDawn and many of my fellow assistants who made such a huge task possible).  I'm happy to say that everyone had a great time and no one got seriously injured - which unfortunately is a huge improvement over our last team offsite (a whole other story).  I wanted to post this picture as proof that I had all 350 of them smiling at once at our party, but I can't figure out how to make this bigger, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  

I coordinated everything from the shuttles, hotels, food, party, entertainment, skiing, rental equipment and lessons.  It was an enormous job.  The worst part was that I got really sick right before the trip - and I never get sick!  I got this cold/flu thing that's been going around.  I was really congested, had serious body/headaches and a very soar throat and cough.  It made it hard to have the strength to get my work done AND hard to get any sleep.  By the end of the trip I was beat!  I worked from home on Friday and slept almost the entire weekend.  I would sleep about 9 hours at night and then be up for a few hours before I would have to take a nap and sleep for another 5 hours!  Thankfully I feel much better now.   Here's a picture of LaDawn and I at the ski trip party.  We had a great time.  :)