Venice painting

It is our goal while here to collect art work from the various places we visit to bring back to the States with us when our term here is finished. We were walking around Venice a few weeks back checking out all the street artists and their work. The picture above caught my eye immediately. We had a chance to meet and talk with the artist about the painting (he knew English fairly well). We purchased the canvas and then brought it back to Bassano to be framed. The owner of the frame shop here in Bassano however, could not speak English at all. After lots of sign language and an attempt to explain with our limited Italian what we wanted, we picked out the frame and then left his shop hoping he understood us. Two weeks later we went back and as you can tell, he did a fantastic job. We will enjoy this both here and back in the US as a reminder of our time in Italy.

The Italian Chuckwagon

The heating costs here in Italy are very high, so we are burning a lot of firewood to keep warm. We decided to use the fireplace as a way to cook and have been loving it every since we discovered how easy it is and how good the food is when you cook over an open fire.

Alan is the main chef and fire starter, while I spend most of the time asking "When will it be ready? I am starving."

The kabobs above were excellent. We average about 3 - 4 meals a week this way. After 3 years of cooking this way, we are pretty sure we are going to want to add a fireplace to our home back in Kansas.

Holidays in Kansas

We have been blessed this year to be able to spend the holidays here in Kansas with our family and friends. I am amazed at how many pictures we took, here are a few of them Grandpa with Mia and Carmen


Mia, Cheyenne and Carmen waiting paitently to open gifts

Alan's parents with all 3 Great-granddaughters

Watching a real flower grow in hot tea is fun at any age.

Making a gingerbread house is fun at any age too

My brothers girls playing with all 3 little ones at once

Reading "The Night before Christmas"

Visit to Florence

Before we returned to the U.S. for the holidays we took a weekend trip to Florence.

Florence or Firenze as it is called in Italy is a MUST see. We did not get a chance to see nearly all of the sites and hope to go back in the near future.This is the Duomo which is the tallest building in Florence. It was finished in 1463. You can climb to the top of the dome and get a birds eye view of Florence. All you have to do is be able to climb over 460 stairs.
Here is a picture of me about half way up. When you get to the top it is well worth the climb.

One of the windows as you are headed to the top of the duomo.



Once back down on the street, we were amazed at the sidewalk art. We spent quite a bit of time watching him paint this picture.



The picture above is just one of the panels on the door into the Florence baptistry also known as the Baptistry of St John. The baptistry was built between 1059 and 1128. We were not able to get inside the day we were there but look forward to seeing it the next time.