Amy O on the Go...

Sorry for the delay, but I'm back to finish my blog about our trip! Now, we go to Egypt...our port was Alexandria, and we took an excursion to Cairo for the night to see all the sights. Of course, the week before, 8 European tourists were kidnapped in southern Egypt, so they were trying to make us all feel welcome by lots of tourist police with guns and a motorcade of 12 buses.

Our first stop was the archeological museum...and while yes, it was amazing to see all the treasures of King Tut and the actual artifacts in the tombs, but it also gave us our first introduction to "Egyptian Hospitality." Cory was shaken down for a few Euros from the very cordial tourist police, and a nice lady in the bathroom sold me some toilet paper. Everyone wanted a little sumtin' sumtin' for anything, so we had to get used to that quick.

Our next stop was the Alabaster Mosque, or the Mosque of Mohammad Ali. It was gorgeous, inside and out! Plus, great views of Cairo and the pyramids in the background...

The ceiling of the mosque

Pyramids in the distance, from the Alabaster Mosque

I don't have too many pictures of the evening, but it's not high on the list of things we want to remember...we did this really cheesy "sound and light show" at the pyramids - it was our first up close look at them and the sphinx, but it was super cheezy -- imagine bad music and bad narration. After that, we went on a Nile dinner cruise, with unknown food flavored with diesel fumes, and terribly Barry Manilow and Celine Dion songs sung by out of tune entertainers. I'm pretty sure it was this food that I subsequently had to rid from my system (I'm trying to think of a delicate way to explain this...) the following day at lunch, hence making the second half of the trip not quite as enjoyable since my tummy was a bit rumbly (as Pooh Bear would say). But anyway, I did make it through the next morning and the touring of the pyramids relatively unscathed...

Lots of guys with camels...our guide said it was free to get on a camel, but 20 euros to get off...

Cory made me do it...

And I made him do this...

I love this picture...

So, we made it back to the ship and said goodbye to Egypt... it was mixed emotions, we were very happy we saw everything, but it certainly wasn't quite as made for tourists as a lot of places. We're not the most rugged of travelers (my stomach, to be specific), so I was happy to be going back to Greece!

This is our next port, Corfu -- we rented a car again to get out across the island.

Shopping!!

Gorgeous countryside...

These are the hills of Albania, which was right across the water... never thought I'd see Albania in person!

And that's pretty much it... we did have one more port, but we elected not to get off the ship - we spent the day in the spa and relaxing on the ship, which is just what we needed! Here's a pic of me relaxing on our suite...

And that's it! A great trip, but I'm super excited to be home and gettin' serious about potty training. ;) I'm sure I'll blog about that a lot in a bit...

I know, it's been two months! What can I say... the last two months have been split into "BT" and "AT" ... before trip and after trip. Cory and I went on a two week cruise to Turkey, Greece & Egypt the second half of September, and never before have I had to do so much preparation and deal with so much anxiety before a trip! But we did it, and it was awesome, and we're absolutely thrilled to have it be over with. ;) So, shockingly, I'm going to be blogging some pictures that aren't of Audrey! I don't know if i've ever done that before... Audrey had a great time, by the way, with her two grandma's who stepped in to shower her with love and attention while we were gone. We missed her tons, and since we got back last Thursday, we've been spoiling her even more than they did!

Anyway, for the whole 318 pictures, you can see my flickr album at this link But I'll blog a few with descriptions and all...

We started out in Istanbul; this is the Blue Mosque. We finally found it (after hours just wandering the streets), and were disappointed when we couldn't go in because it was prayer time. We were visiting in the middle of Ramadan, so tourist access was limited. It's supposed to be gorgeous inside! But the outside was just as impressive.

This is the Grand Bazaar, a maze of shops in Istanbul - you'd think I'd be in shopping heaven, but every other shop is a carpet place that gives you complimentary apple tea and Turkish delight, trying to get you to spend thousands on a carpet which they'll ship for free! We spent too much time avoiding these guys...

Our next port was Izmir in Turkey. We took a cruise excursion to see some ancient ruins about 30 mi outside the port. This is me learning something...

Us at the ruins of Pergamon... it was a very interesting trip, although we had to deal with more carpet strongman tactics on the way back , since that's where our bus stopped for us to go potty. Then, the driver got lost on the way back to the ship, so we were winding through the narrow streets of Izmir, and the bus actually got stuck on a turn. It was entertaining!

Our next port was Mykonos, and we rented a scooter to shoot around the island all day. It was awesome!!

Here's the beach we hung out at for a few hours... since it was the first beach we hit, we hadn't purchased sun screen yet, so we thought we'd just find a hut on the beach that would have some. Yeah, it was 23 Euros!! For those of you that don't know how much the dollar has been sucking, that's like $30. for suncreen. Well, we didn't get sunburned, so I guess it was worth it.

As you can tell, Mykonos was gorgeous, and the main town was awesome - cute little boutiques and great food. The streets are all narrow little alleyways that you immediately get lost in, so we literally walked for hours just trying to find our way out. It took us forever to find out where we parked our scooter! Our ship stayed in port that night till 11:30pm, so we got the chance to go out to dinner and really enjoy the town!

Our next port was Santorini, another awesome Greek island. On our side of the island, all of the towns are on the tops of these huge clifs, so our choices were to take a tram up (which, luckily, we were the first people off the ship this morning, so we avoided the long lines!), or you could ride a donkey up the switchback trail on the right. On our way back to the ship, the line to take the tram down was so long, that we opted to walk the trail down the hill. It just smelled of donkey excrement, plus we had to deal with a group of Japanese tourists on donkeys that couldn't control them very well!

This is the gorgeous town of Oia, on the cliffs of Santorini. More great shopping and food, not to mention the scenery!

We rented a convertible bug on Santorni to see the sites - the first place we went was this black sand beach to have a swim before seeing the rest of the island.

Cliff walkin' Cory...

Alrighty folks, I'm going to have to do the rest later. I haven't even gotten to Egypt, and that's gonna take a while! The country definately had some stuff to see, and we took pictures of it all since we're pretty certain we'll never be back. Ever. Despite all precautions, we both got sick, and up until yesterday I was still dealing with the aftermath. I can forgive a country for having different parasites and bugs than we do, but that on top of getting shook down for money every time you go to the bathroom (which is often when you get sick!) as well as the Giza mobs selling postcards and lame headresses at all the sites, it kinda soured the whole trip. But it was sumtin to see, I know. I'll post those pics later... I've got to get my rest, since my vacation will officially be over tomorrow as I enter the wild world of Revolution Foods again!!

There must've been 10 times in the last few weeks something would happen and I'd think "I can't wait to blog about that!!" Well, I've forgotten all those times. So I really have nothing of interest to say. I'll share a few pictures we took at the portrait studio - I finally got Audrey's 2 year pictures. I had to wait through several face bruises before I could take her in. And we finally did it! Our summer has been rolling along - swim class is over, but we went to the zoo last weekend and enjoyed seeing the animals. We've just been hanging out with friends and relaxing! Which is good, because our fall is shaping up to be quite busy...from about mid August through Christmas, it seems like we've got a lot going on! But it's all fun stuff, so that's good. Okay, enough babble, here's a few pics...

sorry they're kinda small... I must tout my super-mom-ness, though...after I got her all dressed up and looking cute, I took her to Babies R Us because that's the only place you don't need an appointment. Well, of course, they said they were booked all day and I'd have to come back tomorrow, so I said okay, but that we'd stick around for a little while to see if anything opened up. 20 minutes later they squeezed us in!! Ha! It's the little things that excite me, really...

We toured around the Monterey Bay this morning in Grandpa's boat, and had a blast! Here's a pic, just before Audrey got sick of her life vest and decided to risk it by not wearing it. I guess 4 days of swim lessons emboldened her, but luckily Grandpa didn't step on the gas so fast that we had no reason to test the theory.

Well, it must be summer and we must have a lot of fun, exciting things going on, because this is my second post in twenty four hours! My mother in law will be so happy with me. ;) We had our first day of swimming class, and I was nervous... last summer, Audrey went from kind of enjoying the swimming pool to crying and being terrified of it, so I thought we might have a few days of warm up. But luckily, she was all jazzed from the get go! It helped that she got to wear her new Dora bathing suit that she got for her birthday. As we all gathered around to listen to the teachers' instructions, Audrey went from yelling "Swimming! Yay swimming!" to "Mommy's boobies, ooh, Mommy's boobies..." Okay, I'm exaggerating, she wasn't yelling it, but she did say it like 10 times. Anyway, we got in the pool and she liked it, but it still took about 25 minutes of our 30 minute class to get her to detach from me in any way. This swim class is every evening for the next two weeks, so I think we'll be a pro! Here's a few pictures daddy took...

Getting ready...

Twirling!

Splashing mommy in the face...

Floating & kicking

Investigating the pool toys

For a long time, Audrey was the girl who had to wear pink dresses, pretty sandals, and whenever her hands got a speck of dirt on them, it was "Mommy, dirty!!" and we couldn't move on until they were clean. Well, those days are past...preschool has gotten us to embrace the dirty, and every evening she's come home with stains all over her clothes and dirt smudges from head to toe! It's actually quite lovely - she's so enjoying being outdoors since the weather is so nice, so I don't mind the fact that we've moved to baths every night instead of every other night.

We had a great holiday weekend...Audrey had a marathon 4 hour nap on Friday, she was encouraging us to let her stay up to watch the fireworks, which is exactly what we did. After burgers and fries at home, we jetted down to Jack London Square at around 8pm to foolishly look for a parking spot. There was of course nothing, so we headed over to Alameda and found that at the ferry terminal, we could see the fireworks both off the Hornet in Alameda and JLSq, so we were set! Audrey made friends with the other tots there, and enjoyed her second fireworks show (we got her up briefly at D-land to watch them from our hotel room.) She really enjoyed her 10pm bedtime, so much that she gave us a hard time on Saturday night...

Today we decided to pack Turks up and head to the beach for a little frolicky fun! I took some pictures, without realizing that Cory had set it to black and white (and blue), but it turned out to have some cool effects.

We went from 72 degrees in Oakland to about 60 in SF - could've been worse, and we were expecting the summer fog!

A very happy Turkey...

A science lesson from Daddy.

This is the hole that Turkey dug.

C'Mon Turkey!!! Get it!!

Woah! A wave is chasing me!!

I'm experimenting with video right now...enough moms I know have sent me you tube videos, so I'm feeling very low-tech with only pictures. Hopefully soon I'll have Audrey up here in live action!

So, while most kids get excited about summer because it means no school, my little one is excited because she just started school! We just enrolled Audrey at a Montessori school; she's a "Honeybee" with other 2 to 3 year olds, and so far she's loving it. On her first day last week, I spent a half hour there with her in the morning. When I started to prepare her for my leaving by saying "Honey, mommy's going to leave in 10 minutes..." she gave me a kiss, grabbed my hand led me to the door, saying "Bye Mommy!" And that was that! Not a tear shed, until I picked her in the afternoon - they had just gotten out to the playground, so she didn't want to leave yet! I'm sad she's growing up so fast, but happy she's so independent and outgoing that she doesn't get frazzled in new situations. Even though sometimes it's hard leaving her every day, I feel like she is always well cared for and she is learning from all of the experiences she has, even if they aren't 100% with me. The plight of a working mom... Well, my ice cream just arrived...what a good husband I have!