United Kingdom Tour 2008!

I've been super busy with homeschooling and playing travel agent. Some of you may remember us planning a trip for London back in June? Well, tickets bought, plans made...Bud was unable to take vacation due to an important inspection at work (we were told it was going to be at a different time.) ; - (

Then the boys and I went to New Hampshire for the month of July. Yes, I know I still need to blog about our trip and post pictures. We flew Space-A into Dover, Del. via Rota, Spain and saved a ton of money. However, I spent a ton of money on a rental car and shopping!

We have finally recovered from the summer and purchasing school work. I was wanting to plan a fall trip, maybe northern Italy, but was still really wanting to visit England. After about three weeks of work we are finally set ; - ) We are sooooo excited!!!

We depart Catania on Thursday, Oct. 9 in the morning. Arrive in London by 11. We will be staying at the Lord Baden Powell Hotel for 4 nights tooling around London. I purchased the 3 day London Pass and tickets to the London Eye. We have some friends, another homeschooling family, that will be visiting England at the same time and we may meet them in Windsor for dinner. They are visiting Legoland for a few days. We decided to see Windsor Castle instead.

On Monday, Oct. 13, we head to Ireland. We are flying into Shannon Airport, pick up our car and head up the Travelodge in Galway for the night. Along the way we will be stopping at the Cliffs of Moher.

On Tuesday, Oct. 14, we'll be driving up to Northern Ireland to visit the Giants Causeway. I'm sure the boys will play a quick game of Heroscape. Do you see the resemblance? That night we'll be staying at the Sunbeam House B&B in Londonderry.

Wednesday, Oct. 15, we'll spend the morning driving south to Dublin. We'll be at the Abbey Apartments for the night and in the morning heading to the Dublin Airport. We arrive in London Luton by 9:30. Pick up our car and head north to RAF Lakenheath Lodge for the next 4 nights.

From Lakenheath we would like to explore Hadrian's Wall and maybe drive up to Dumfries, Scotland? South to Stonehedge and Avebury and drive thru the Cotswolds.

We head home on Monday, Oct. 20. Ready to get back to school and work. ; - )

I know Bud will have lots of great photos to share.

Ciao,

Heather

Look What We Found!

We went for a drive today looking for new bike rides and found a Canadian WWII Cemetery in Sicily! It's about an hour away in the town of Agira. Nice drive...a bit of a climb so I'm not sure that we'll do it on the bikes (not yet, anyway.) Agira is the town on top of this hill. We stopped for a cappuccino and some gelato.

The drive home took us through a windmill farm. Those things are huge! There's a little white car on the bottom of the picture to give you an idea of how honkin' they are!

We did 43 miles on the bikes yesterday. We're still beginners with our hill training...one was 760' elevation gain. A handful of others before that. Nothing to brag about...but the scenery! Some of the roads are in pretty bad shape, so you really have to watch your descents.

Later that evening we went to a big sporting goods store about an hour south near Siracusa. You would think you can never get used to getting stuck in traffic because of geep (sheep that look like goats) but you do...yes, that's geep poop all over the road.

Ciao...

Bud

Back to School

The boys are back to school and doing great. They are enrolled in the A-Beka DVD Academy. It's an accredited school out of Pensacola, FL. We get all the curriculum for 5th and 7th grade as well as DVD's mailed to us every couple months. The boys watch the DVD for whichever lesson they're on while Heather gets all their lesson plans in notebooks prepared each day. They enjoy it so far and seem to be doing much better in all subjects.

We were supposed to start Sep 2nd, but we started a week early. We're taking a trip to London in October and wanted to be a bit ahead of schedule before we put school on hold for a week or two.

Soccer season has started and only Nick signed up this year. He's just about done with the Italian baseball team until spring. He also has a "job" during the week. Every day he goes down the street to a neighbor's house and checks on their dog. They pay weekly ($25 week) to check the dog's food and water and let him out of the house for a few minutes. Not a bad gig. He's already started shopping for all the coins he plans to buy for his collection.

Tom is Tom. Playing video games, terrorizing the playgrounds, catching frogs and Cub Scouting.

Heather has been appointed an Ombudsman for the Navy base. She just went through three days of refresher training and had an appreciation luncheon today. She also did her first 50 mile ride (all by herself) last week.

I'm trying to survive another year of Cub Scouting (which starts this month.) I have more adult leaders signed up and plan to putting them all to good use!

Gotta go...we just put in "Batman" (the 1989 movie with Michael Keaton.) I need to go make some popcorn...

Ciao,
Bud