aloha

we just got back from our trip to Hawaii.. we took lots of pictures, check them out at:

http://funkyphotos.shutterfly.com/200808hawaii

there are 196 pictures.. enjoy!!

they are back!

finally, nancy and taylor came back from taiwan today. it's been tough for not having them home for the past 10 days. congrats to scott (nancy's bro) and mandy who had their wedding banquet sunday oct 14th in taiwan.



i have posted the taiwan pictures on our shutterfly website:
http://funkyketchup.shutterfly.com/

i have transferred most of the recent pictures from imagestation to shutterfly. if you haven't joined facebook yet - why wait. i am thinking i may start posting my random and useless blogs on facebook.

practice part ii

last weekend we went out of town again.. this time to charleston. we found out that we couldn't do much on vacation with taylor this young, other than finding time to eat out and shopping between her feedings. all we wanted was a relaxing trip, so we didn't mind that we didn't do much.

there are definitely many things to do in charleston for young families. many sight-seeing places and many good southern and seafood. we were gonna try to take the boat ride to fort sumter tour on the last day before we drive home, but we didn't want to rush and figured we would come back to charleston again in the future.

on the first day, we were going to go to Hyman's Seafood place, but it was packed on a friday nite, so we parked downtown and nancy chose Charleston Crab House. it was nothing special. Sat lunch we tried Magnolia. it was good fancy southern food. definitely go there for the cheaper lunch menu. if you ever go to charleston downtown, park at the free magnolia parking lot but you would have to tell the attendant that you are eating there. sat nite somehow we found a Grand Buffet near the tanger outlet. near the end of the dinner i was shocked when nancy asked me "if we'd come back again", but she was referring to charleston. before we came home on sunday we got to try Hominy Grill for brunch. nancy wanted to try that place b/c rachel ray on food network did a thing on her $40 a day show.



is this a diaper bag or stealing free drinks bag, nancy?




you can view the rest of the pictures on funkyketchup.shutterfly.com.

out of town

last weekend we took taylor "out of town" for the first time. nancy said it was her practice for going to taiwan with taylor in mid oct. first my church had a jbed (joint board of elders and deacons) retreat on friday night. then we were off to knoxville for sunday nite to see my college buddy neal. we had a chance to drive thru the great smoky mtn on the way back to atlanta.

babymoon

above are a couple of pictures of nancy's 23rd week. in Feb we took our last real vacation (or mary calls it the 'babymoon') before our newborn. we went to italy for 8 nights! see below for some of our favorite pics. Venice is our favorite as we are amazed at how the city is built around water. of course Rome is incredible with all the history and monuments there. by the end of the trip we were ready to come back home as we were both tired of eating spaghetti and pizza everyday!


baby or not.. no problem for jeff. thank God the timer was only 10 seconds.



we spent our first 3 nights in Rome. we did a ton of sightseeing, trying all kinds of italian food and gelato, and walking! we went all over Rome sightseeing the colosseum, paletine hill, forum, spanish steps, trevi fountain, vatican museum, st. peters, borghese gallery, pantheon, campo di fiori, jewish ghetto..



we made one quick stop at Pisa on our way to Florence. rick steve's guide book calls Pisa a touristy quickie! did you know the other 2 buildings next to pisa tower lean as well, just not as much.



while we only spent one night in Florence, we did both Uffizi Gallery and Academia (David). and a big florentine t-bone steak.



venice was celebrating the carnivale (similar to mardi gras in new orleans) while we were there. it was real festive and lots of ppl dressed up! we spent 2 nights there. frommer's recommended to try the squid ink spaghetti - nancy didn't try it as we were afraid our baby will have purple skin!! haha.



our last stop in italy was Milan. pic on the left: check out the columns inside 'Duomo'. pic on the right: you thought phipps plaza was nice in Atlanta. other than the Duomo and the Last Supper, there are not much to do in Milan other than designer shopping.

check out the rest of the picture album. link on the right.

Where Dreams Come True..

last week a few of our friends came with us to orlando. we stayed at a 2 bedroom villa very close to disney. when jeff checked in they thought mike was his son. dang, we got grand kids! the weather was so nice and warm, even a week before Christmas. jeff doesn't remember the last time he went to the magic kingdom or epcot, but it was definitely fun for the kids and all of us. disney was getting crowded but alex got all of us FASTPASS. the highlight of the trip is when mike made fun of the ppl waiting in line (prob about 2 hour wait) while we fastpassing through for the spacemountain ride. also, mike needs to make more of "executive decision" (inside joke-ask v about it). here are a few pictures:




to see the rest of the album, see picture links on the right.