Dear Friends and Family: The time is drawing near. After eight years of dreaming, two of planning, and four months of panic-driven planning, we will be leaving September 2 (make that 02 Settembre;-) for Il nostro anno italiano--our Italian year. We found what looks like a wonderful place to stay--Villa Ciarpaglini (
http://www.ciarpaglini.net/) in the Chianti hills 18 km outside Florence. We have leased the Tower Study and will have one double and one single bed available for you if you are able to make it over. To coordinate all this, please send us an email and we will send you an invitation to our Google calendar. There you can check to see what dates are available, then email us again with the dates you have chosen and we will put you on the calendar! Before coming, check with us to see if you can bring something we need, for example, when Gary is jonesing for corn tortillas.
Our accomplishments so far, besides finding our place to stay, include renting a car (not easy!), buying our airline tickets, and arranging health insurance. We have been taking Italian lessons and cannot yet carry on a conversation, but hopefully we will have enough of a head start to pick it up rapidly. Carmen has decided to take up photography to give her stay there a ...focus;-) She acquired a serious camera, a Nikon 5200, based on Doug Anderson's recommendation. She has been snapping pictures like crazy. We took a road trip last month to see her sister Tanya in Colorado, and we stopped off at Arches National Park along the way. We will post some from that trip soon.
To wrap this post, we want to thank again all of our friends in Action Ski and Snowboard Club for the send-off they gave us as part of the end-of-the-year party. Here are a few photos from that:
