I fell behind on my photo-a-day resolution -- a certain puppy has a taste for external hard drive cords. So I owe the blog several photos this time. Today's theme is Italy, where I visited my sister a few months ago.

The photo above is of a street in Pompeii. At the time, we were a little bit lost (our Rick Steves audio tour didn't have the best directions) and we were scrambling to get out of the city's ruins before 6, when we'd have to pay an extra 20 Euro for our car's parking spot -- which, I want to mention, seemed to be directly on the patio of a pizza place.

This photo below is of a very convincing Michael Jackson impersonator in Rome. My sister was concerned that he might have been a victim of human trafficking. Regardless, he was a fantastic dancer with cleverly orchestrated costume changes.



Here's my nephew Elliott, playing with his cars, which he was doing maybe 80 percent of the time I was visiting.



Here's roly-poly, smiley Marshall...


My sister with my nephew on their balcony in Naples:


My pretty sister in windy Sorrento:


And, finally, Napoli at sunset, with bonus toddler and trike:

My nephew, Marshall

Terrible Tooz

As it turns out, moving to a new apartment and taking a vacation to Italy simultaneously is a difficult task. I hadn't meant to have the two events run so close together, but it just worked out that way.

Suffice to say in the last four weeks, despite the fact that I went on vacation, I've noticed two new grooves in the skin of my forehead that I don't think were there before.

While I wasn't being stressed out about moving and setting up cable/Internet/electricity/etc. from overseas or worrying that I might die in the Atlantic in a plane crash, I was relaxing with my nephews, the older of which is pictured below.

He doesn't say a lot of words, but he did call me Tooz, which I love. I also really love this picture, because I didn't realize until later that he was mischievously holding Spaghetti-Os in his mouth to spit out at a really inappropriate moment later.

Italia

I just got back from a trip to Italy to visit my sister, brother-in-law and two of my nephews, and I spent so much time relaxing, reading and taking in the sights that I definitely didn't take enough photos. But I do have some, so I'll be posting those over the next several days. A tease:

Napoli in the morning, from my bedroom balcony. That castle-like building in the lower left corner is a single-family home!