How living in Italy really is!

Cool video of life in Italy. This is SO TRUE!

Florence

So I think that Florence might be my new favorite city.... I know that I have been saying that about every city and I know that I will say that about the next city we visit, but it really is so amazing! We went to the Duomo, the Baptistry, the Galleria del'Accedemia, the market, shopping and did a ton of walking around the city. One thing I'm not sure we want to do again is drive in downtown Florence! It was so stressful! There are enough pedestrians and scooters and one-way roads to make you go crazy. Though now that we know the city a little better it might be easier next time.

Standing in front of the Duomo

The Bell Tower at night. The sky had a reddish haze to it and it looked stunning against the white of the tower.

Florence is the birthplace of GUCCI!

Inside the Galleria del'Accedemia

We snuck a picture of the famous "David"

The gold Baptistry doors.

Crazy statue of a guy holding a head. You can even see the guts coming out!

The ceiling of the Baptistry

It Snowed!

This is what we woke up to on Saturday morning....SNOW! It totally feels like winter now. Let the holidays begin! I guess this area rarely gets snow and my Italian neighbor said it had been many years since they had seen snow this far down in the valley, usually we just see it in the mountains. Our winters are usually just a lot of rain and then the rain freezes into ice. Dustin and I both loved seeing the snow and it totally felt like home!

Looking out our front window.

I had to take a picture of all the palm trees covered in snow. It's just funny to see and I figured my dad would like it :)

This is our Italian neighbor trying to shovel is walkway with his plastic dust pan. It was hilarious.

Merry Christmas!

This year I was kind of a slacker about getting our Christmas stuff up. I think it was because we just got done unpacking and putting our house together. Also, since our house is pretty small, I didn't want to have to move furniture out of the living room to the garage just to put up the tree. So instead we bought a small three foot tree and put it on our end table. It worked out great! I think that it is going to work out perfect while we are living in Europe.

Our Tree

My Korean Nativity that I bought last January in Osan

My new Santa that I bought at the Christmas market in Austria. You are supposed to put an incense cone in the bottom and he smokes out of his mouth. I'm not sure that I'm going to use it though because I don't want his beard to turn black.

Willow Tree Nativity that Dustin bought me for Christmas two years ago.

So these are pictures of our third trip to Venice. We love Venice because every time that you go there, there is something new to see and a different path to wonder.

Rialto Bridge

We came across a cool area that was evidence of Venice sinking. This building had a make-shift bridge to the door because it was flooded.

Just around the other side of that building

Standing in nasty water! (believe me Venice does not have crystal blue clean water!) But we still love it here.