Trips, Bumps and other things.

When we got to the house that we were staying in for a week, we unpacked and Mom and Dad left to go and find food for dinner. When Mom and Dad got back it was, 6:45pm and we had dinner at 7pm. Taco Salad! After dinner we talked and then went to bed. It had been a long day on the road, over 5 and a half hours, I think. :) On the way to Spain we stopped in Carcassonne to see the old city, but we did not find the old city. Instead we walked around the new Carcassonne for about 45 minutes. Then as we were leaving Carcassonne we saw up on the high hill the old city of Carcassonne, it has 50 towers around it!! Now you may ask how I know if we did not find the old Carcassonne? Well, our host that we had just left the night before, Pascal, had invited us over one night for a 'welcoming drink'. It was great fun! We were all invited. :) Jack, Briana, Landon, and I did not get to drink any wine or whiskey or whatever was there, but we had a couple different kinds of snacks and orange juice. :) OK, I am getting off track. :) Back to the towers, our host had asked many, many question! And one of his questions was, "Are you going to Carcassonne?" We said we hoped to go there, on our way to Spain. He then mentioned that the old town has 50 towers, so I guess we will believe him since we didn't get to count them ourselves. The game Carcassonne is why we wanted to see Carcassonne. In Carcassonne we got 2 baguettes for lunch. Their baguettes were really good! I wish like anything that Pennsylvania would make baguettes like they do here in Europe! They are the best kind of bread ever!

Our second day in Spain we spent at home. It was Sunday. In the evening we watched two Rick Steves' videos and then went to bed.

The third day we also stayed home and did school. This includes watching a History At Our House. This is the history course that we are doing on our trip, we get to watch a video of a guy who talks about European history. And we also did Math. Mom and I went to the store to get groceries for a couple days. Dad had two phone calls to make in the afternoon so we had to be super quiet!! In that time, Briana and I made a fort out of our bedding, and we played in our fort for the times that Dad was on the phone. :) We read books, listened to music, looked for good Christmas books to read, and talked. Then about 4pm Mom said that she and the boys were going to the playground that was very near by. So mom and the boys and Briana left, I had to stay home so that if they were not back by 5:15pm I had to start dinner. ;( I did not want to go to the park anyway. :)

About 30 mins after they left I was reading and Dad was working when the phone rang, it was mom. "...just broke his arm, can you come?" Landon broke his right arm. He was trying to get across some really high monkey bars and fell, landing on his right hand. Mom heard a snap, thud, and a scream! When she looked at Landon's arm the two bones had both snapped and shifted into a Z position. :P
25 mins later Landon was in the hospital. His arm was in such bad shape that they had to do surgery. :( I am not going to say anymore because Landon himself wrote a blog post on the day. :)

Saturday, the 12th, we left Spain and headed to Italy. On the way we stayed for one night in France and then the next day we had a 7+ hour drive to get to Verona, Italy. We got there and found our house. In the evening we called Grandma Miller (Ann) and Grandma and Grandpa Nyveldt (Bert and Joan). Then we went to bed. The next morning our host, Margerita, came and gave us croissants and helped us with getting Landon's doctor visit stuff figured out. Her Dad and Mom are both doctors, and so she knows a lot of procedure. She called her Dad and asked him some questions. Then she took pictures of the papers that the doctors are going to need to understand what to do, she is going to translate them from Catalan to Italian so that her Dad can read the paper. The night that we got here she also warned us that Italian people don't readily speak English! So, she is going to take us to her Dads place of work, Tuesday, and she and he can help us.