summer days

ahhhhh....{long sigh}

my first few weeks of summer vacation have been heavenly. my blood pressure and heart rate have all returned to a respectable range and i can take pleasure in leisure activities that bring me joy. scrapbooking, movies, pool w/ tay, play dates with tay's buddies, watching tv, surfin' the net...it's all good.

so, as i said below, i have been busy getting ready. for what, i'm sure you're still wondering. for a trip to italy!!! and just so we're not confused, i'm talking about /it-ta-lee/, the one where the pope lives and olive oil is made, not italy (pronounced /it-lee/), texas. yeah, i learned of that one during some inservice training activity a few years ago. the instructor distributed papers with a bunch of pictures on them and you had to guess which texan city each picture represented (example, there was a picture of a garland of flowers for the city of garland). talk about "muy difficult" for my hawaiian transplanted ass and my limited knowledge of texan geography. julie can even confirm that with this tidbit: when a student tells me where they're from and i don't instantly recognize the name they've given, my usual follow-up question is: "is that in dallas?"

so back to italy-in-europe and my flying over there to check it out...i'm excited...my first european trip. mere and i leave on thursday and will tour rome and southern italy for almost 2 weeks. i've been running around dallas, plano and allen making sure to get appropriate clothes for touring cathedrals (was told i needed to have tops that covered my shoulders and very modest shorts). what, the pope is not wanting to see me in skanky tops? oh, ok. i certainly would not want to cause him any distress, so i guess i'll leave all that at home. (grandma, i'm just kidding...your granddaughter does not have skanky tops...i think).

in my travel preparations, taylor has developed an affection for northpark mall. she even referenced it when asking where her friends noah and ava lived. no joke. we had a playdate with them this morning and i was telling taylor that they had to drive a long way to come see us. she asked where they lived and i said in dallas. she replied, "by northpark mall?" laughing, i said, "actually, yeah...by northpark mall!". this was quite amazing (and i know due to luck), because she has absolutely no concept of where things are in a big city. but she offered the last place she was in dallas and as a daughter of a shopper, everything's relative to the mall, right?

g'night, guys.