Preparing for our next trip

My next trip isn't until May 2013.  Sharon, Kris, Jeanne, Joyce and I are going to join a Rick Steves tour to Italy.  Venice, Florence and Rome in 10 days.  We are tacking on 2 days at both ends of the tour.  We have our hotel reservations and our airline tickets.  Now is the time of the fun stuff.  Planning - what will we do when we are in Italy?  To follow along I will hope to blog our trip.  That is if, I can solve the Wifi situation.  If all goes according to plan feel free to check out my blog at http://art-walk-eat-travels.blogspot.com/ starting May 16, 2013.    We are very excited.

blogging

Because I was putting a bunch of pictures up and the internet is slow I did the entries in segments.  You may want to start back on "Sunday" to get the entries in order.  We had a great time. Always great connecting with family and friends.

The wedding

 Steve and Jennifer

 Lia

 Ashley

 The kiss

 a tender moment

 Yeah

 gorgeous dress

 Ashley and Dave

The wedding - some odds and ends

 The decorated chairs. After the wedding the chairs were moved to the tables.

 Sitting under a grape arbor.

 The cake

 The nibbles.

 This is what I drank.  There were several other choices.

 Our table was the hardest to get to so we were last with most everything.

 The salad.  Clever the way they made it look like a bowl by using cucumber.  Very tasty.

Magical as the evening progressed and the lights came on.

Candle reflection with my wine glass.

Chicken, potato and green beans.

The wedding - some people shots

 Lia (Ashley's younger sister and the maid of honor) and Ross

 Rachel and Andy

Perry and her boyfriend, Jarred

 Perry and Timothy

 A family shot

 Perry and Jarred

 Perry and Ross

 Steve and Jennifer

 Jim and Pam (it was starting to get chilly)

Ross and Jim

The wedding venue

 The Inn at Paradise.  What a gorgeous magical place for a wedding.  I decided to make several entries.   You could not ask for a nicer place.  Luckily the weather cooperated.  The wedding was at 5pm.  We did not leave until about 9:30pm and the party was going on strong when we left.

Sunday

 I am having trouble with the blog today.  It has reverse the order of event and I don't want to mess with changing it so you will have to adjust.  After breakfast we drove out to Country Line BBQ to watch Perry come in from her half marathon.  I hear it was one of the most difficult courses in NM.

 We are waiting

 Rachel with here iPad "camera"

 Here she comes.

 Yeah!!

 a cool building decoration.

 Mario's Pizza for lunch.  Yummy.  It was great.

I had a delicious spinach chicken salad.

 Now we are at breakfast at Wecks.  It was very tasty.  They had very generous portions.  Called everything "bellybusters"  They have not heard of WW portion control..

 Rachel and Andy joined us.  Timothy and Rebecca were sleeping in.

 I started the morning watching several hot air balloons go up.  That was cool.  This should be picture number 1.

Wecks was a fun restaurant with great diner decor.  It was a fun day.  Rebecca did not join us for most of the day because she was packing up and going over to the Menaul School to move in.  We picked her up on our way to the wedding.  I hope my wedding picture load better than these did.