Oi' Vey!

Holy-schmoly! We leave tomorrow for our trip and we will be gone for three weeks! Trying to get everything together has been sooooo hecktic...we are doing most of our "planning" through Ari's mom and she's in L.A. and we don't have any of our info in our hands and I am feeling most agravated at the moment! Phone tag is NOT fun. I keep telling myself that it's all going to be o.k. once we get on that plane, but I just found out that we are flying to Greece with Alice's friend! Woo-hoo, on my honeymoon!

Deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth...aaaaaah, it's all going to be o.k. : ) We are all packed and we are mostly ready to go. Tomorrow we have a few copies to make, a few snacks to pick up and we fly out first thing Sunday morning (from Grand Junction, which is three hours from here so we are going to spend the night down there since we fly out at 6:30 a.m.) Ari says that if I want to find things to stress out about, I will...I told him that I'm not looking. He's not helping me feel any better about it. : ) I am just not the sort of person who deals well with things, especially BIG things being outside my control, and especially THIS close to our travel date. Our tickets are with some woman in L.A. whom we have never met, but Ari's mom is great friends with, (she's the one we are flying over with.) Oh Lord, help me to let it all go! I am certain it will all work out in the end, it's just this middle stuff that I don't care for in the least!

So, we are going to be in Greece for a little over two weeks, and that is really cool! We are going to spend the majority of our time in the south of Greece in the islands so that we can enjoy the sun and hot weather and hopefully some snorkling and white sandy beaches! I really don't have much to complain about, it just all hit me at once as I have been trying to get all of this information nailed down, and just now got all of the phone calls that I have been waiting on, so please forgive my whinning. We will be meeting Jessica and Rob in Athens and staying there for a few days to explore, then heading south, and then north to the little villages that Ari's family live in. I am so looking forward to meeting them even though I don't think that the older ones will speak any english...it will still be wonderful. It has been over ten years since Ari has seen his Grandmother and his aunts and uncles, so that will be really nice for all of them too. I am a little nervous being a very obviously not-greek girl that Ari is "bringing home." Do you remember the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Well, it's very true to life, especially with the older generations...at least I am not a Turk! : ) I do know that I will stick out like a sore thumb with my red hair over there, that should be interesting...I guess it's not as bad as if we were visiting some asian country! : )

Well, that's all for now. If we get the chance to check our e-mail/blog I will try to up-date you all, but no promises. Most likely, we will be far away from any computers for the duration. Love you all!

Robin, this one's for you! Sophie says Hi!

Here is that same patch of Sunflowers with a Sophie in the mix!

This is one of two pictures of where I burried on of my most favorite pets, my old guinea pig "Zappa". Looks as though he is resting in peace! My mom told me that these sunflowers are new and that they just appeared in the precise area that Zappa was laid to rest! 

Here is a goofy picture of my favorite nephew Caleb! He just got his hair cut, doesn't he look handsome? : ) 

Here is another picture of my lovely neice Hannah Grace! Isn't she a doll? 

Greece in T minus ten days and counting

Holy Moly! I just looked at one of those "week at a glance" planners and I panicked! Time has really flown by! This whole trip has seemed so surreal and nebulous to me because I haven't done any of the planning myself, I have not had anything to do with the ticket purchases, etc...It is being all set up for us by Ari's wonderful mom, Alice. She has a place for us to stay on each leg of our journey and she has also made sure that my sister Jessica and her husband Rob are able to stay with us too. Alice has been amazingly wonderful getting everything together for us...not that we couldn't have done it ourselves, it's just that she wanted to be a blessing and set it all up for us. It is going to be great!

By the way, thank you to all of you who sent along your best travel tips, they are all good and I will use them all for sure. We fly out of CO on Oct. 2 and we don't return until the 22. Right now our plans are to fly from here to LA, spend the night and then fly to Greece from there, then we will fly back to LA on the 17th and we will spend a few days hanging out there with Ari's family and, of course, go to Disneyland for a day or two, and then we will fly home on the 22nd. Whew! What a whirlwind trip this will be! I truely have no idea what to expect except that we will be lost in Greece a lot, but I think that I will be o.k. with that simply because everywhere you go in Greece is breath-takingly beautiful and packed with all kinds of history. It's gonna be great!

Well, I love you all and I hope that you are all doing well...I will try to up-date this blog one more time before we go, but no promises...I have know idea how busy and crazy things are going to get! Take care and I will be in touch.

Love, Kristen

Here's Caleb! He's got a mushroom head here from one of those super-squishy pillows. He just turned 5! 

Hannah, Caleb and Tess unwrapping Caleb's birthday presants. I know a lot of you get to see them regularly, but I don't, and I love to look at them every chance I get! 

Thanks for all of the advice

Thank you to everyone who left us advice, it will prove extremely helpful, I am sure. It is always best to prevent problems rather than deal with them as they arise. I really can't believe that we are going to be leaving in just a few weeks! This really is a trip of a life-time. Jessica and I have been talking on the phone, planning what to take, etc...it is a very exciting time for all four of us. When I have a hard time sleeping I think about all of the "things" I need to remember and I try to talk to Ari and he tells me to go back to sleep and stop talking! : ) I guess my timing is poor!

We have been busy this week, our neighhor kids are staying with us while their mom is in Denver for training...(she's my friend Christy that I mention from time to time, she works with Ari as a deputy.) Tenae is 13 and Sierra is 9. We have had a lot of fun hanging out together, doing homework when they get home from school in the afternoons, making bead necklaces, etc...

Tonight we rode the gondola down into town and I accidentally left my brand-new cell phone on it and some Hispanic guy tried to steal it! We got off the gondola, realized I had left it, ran strait back and rode up just two cars behind it. (The gondola has three separate stations where it slows down and you can get on and off it.) When it stopped next I ran ahead and asked the car if they had found a cell phone...they looked like an honest bunch, plus the gondola operators had already asked them, they denied it both times! I called my phone and the hispanic guy answered and when he realized it was the phone's owner, he promptly hung up. I called back about twenty times before he finally answered it again, plus I had all of the gondola workers on the look out for it...he hardly spoke any english, so I did my best with the spanish and figured out that he would bring it to us with in five or ten minutes. I had already called the local police to report the guy after he first hung up on me, and they showed up right after he told me he'd return it, so I felt really stupid, especially because this officer knows Ari, etc... So, we waited for about a half an hour, the nice police officer said he doubted if I'd ever see my phone again. I called Ari and he called my phone and talked to the guy to find out where the heck he was...I called the guy back, again and asked where he was and then I asked what he was wearing so that I could find him when I found him and he told me that he was wearing a "blue car." No joke! : ) Talk about a language barrier! Ari finally tracked him down about two miles from where he said he was and got my phone back, thank God! The End!

We finally got to go eat dinner, and boy was it good! I have been craving a "diner" burger for a while now...something like an "old fashioned maid" or "top burger" sounded so good, so I found a little place in Telluride called "The Sweet Life" and boy was it ever! Yum. So, a happy ending to a stressful few hours. I am suddenly really glad that Ari's mom doesn't have means to read our blog because she is the one who bought us the phones and I would feel really badly if she knew that I had almost lost her gift. : )

Well, that's all folks! Thanks for sticking with my long story...it felt very dramatic as it happened, but not so much when I re-read what I wrote, sorry! : ) Hope all it well in blogger land.