from castles to canals

while my mom and niece were here, we dropped by the cinderella castle in germany.

then we took the train over to the water-filled streets of venice and melted faster than you can say 'lemon gelato'.

i have a crush on these suspended chairs.  

stumbled upon a bank that has been in business since 1472.  no one seemed to find this quite as fascinating as i did.

celebrated my mom's bday with a hive-shaped cake.  i couldn't fit (2) regular size cake pans in our standard european oven, so we had to improvise.  

explored some mountain towns in switzerland.

it took several attempts with the car's gps to try and access this little town, but we finally figured out that the town of wengen could only be accessed by train.  i didn't love it at 2 am when we kept hearing the nav say, "you've reached your destination" when in fact we were on a dead-end road, but once up there the tranquility was superb.

the male in the mid-ground of this picture is my favorite.  i watched and tried to covertly document as he proceeded to do a little middle of the day, center of town workout.  

modern take on classic shutters.

and finally back home.  my niece had the tune 'happy birthday' stuck in her head the entire 3-1/2 weeks she was here and was singing it constantly, so i'm glad that we were able to put it to good use with the celebration of brady's 32nd.  happy birthday, brady!

btw, am i the only one who has formatting issues with blogspot?  what's up?!