Junior/Senior Prom In Rome

Trevor is a happy young man but you'd never know it from looking at photos of him.... It took a good 30 minutes to warm up his face muscles.

Exhibit 1: No smile

Exhibit 2: The edges are curving upward ever so slightly
Danielle Maldonado, a great friend, and his date, knew just how to get Trevor to smile for the camera.

Exhibit 3: The limo showed up, and Trevor's buddy Omri got him to grin a bit.

Exhibit 4: Trevor shows of his Black & White Spat shoes

The cool facade comes back out again

But the smile reappeared in Exhibit 5: when they stopped at the Spanish Steps and Italians and tourists were taking their pictures like they were famous because they pulled up in a white stretch limo.

It was a memorable night. Trevor bought the girls long stem roses, (as corsages are not know here) he danced and laughed and returned home after a hair-raising taxi ride--you got it--- still smiling :0)

Girl Power

Out of the 500 boys soccer teams/clubs in Rome, there are only two available for girls. Italian mentality is that girls cannot play soccer. Thank goodness we go to an American school so girls can play!
There are 4 middle school girls teams in the International school league.
And they only play each other 2 times a year in a half-day competition. (Natalie is #3)
Here she is getting ready to bounce the soccer ball off her head ("heading it")
They won one of the 4 games despite missing half their teammates. They had to run the whole time without substitutions.

They were a bit exhausted and Natalie had a headache, but they left all smiles. Tell a girl she "can't" and she will prove she CAN!

Spring Break in Holland

There is a little child in all of us that needs to run free in fields of flowers

It happens to big and little children alike

Since I was a little girl I wanted to do just this: be surrounded by flowers in the fields and smell the heavenly scent. Knowing this, Steve planned a wonderful vacation soI could live out my dream of visiting fields of flowers in the Netherlands (These hyacinths smelled so good!)

Surprisingly the guys they started off the day in good spirits
We drove to Keukenhof, where they plant 6 million bulbs every year.

Kids tried out the wooden shoes.

It was warm and sunny--the perfect day to wander around 39 acres and catch "tulipmania" fever


There was even a fun petting zoo with all the newly born animals



This was a real working windmill behind Natalie.
We had to make an ice cream stop as the thrill was starting to wear off
From google earth you can see the colored fields. These are yellow daffodils. It was an especially cold winter and it delayed the blooming of the red Tulips, white narcissi and violet hyacinths . If we were two weeks later this would have been a rainbow.

We took a climb up into this grain mill that was built in 1829
I thought these "chairs" were clever. Pitch forks with backs. Mom needs these on her logs beside the camp fire.

They had glass and shrubbery mazes scattered throughout the park as well.



I am on cloud nine and I look up
and see....
" the can we go already" look....

On our way back we stopped by the seaside to see Noordwijk and the sand dunes