I have such a marvelous teenager!  She is more responsible now than I was at twenty….or thirty.  But she’s also a loving person who is a lot of fun to be around.  Kyla loves her tablet (aka, Audible & OverDrive player), reading the old blog posts about when she and her siblings were really little, being outdoors, and learning.  She’s almost too good to be true, but I have to remember that each of the kids takes their turn of being “the hardest”.  The early elementary years were tough as we got a grip on her dyslexia.  But whatever she’s been through, she has the character of a champion!  

Dear Wesley, 

No candey for you hfdsfuiyhsuifdhsuifydsigfyusgfcyudstfdsg vdstrastdstxtrdytardstsdr tas    dtrsdrytasdtyasrfytdrcfts trfdstdrytsuy love wes

Wow, your spelling is worse than your typing.

Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwto bad mom frum good wesley

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

After our rowing lesson, we meandered slowly to our restaurant of choice, Taverna Al Remer. The “mer” part marks its specialty, seafood, but we loved it at least as much for it’s hole-the-wall, old brick and stone and candle lit alcove atmosphere.

 And we stepped out to this lovely view.  Yep, a perfect evening after a lovely day. 

 Wesley was a wee bit tired and Kyla is an awesome big sister.

It has been eleven consecutive evenings out in beautiful places that we may never make it back to–because there are so many wonderous places to go in the world.  But I have many, many fond memories of this adventure together.  I love traveling with my family!

 ….a non-profit organization of passionate women and expert vogatrici, Venetian by birth and by choice. We are dedicated to the preservation of the traditional Venetian cultura acquea and at its center, the voga alla veneta, the Venetian style of rowing: standing up, facing forward, native to Venice and made iconic by the gondoliers. Many of us are also athletes and regatanti devoted to this Venetian sport that’s as old as the city itself.

Come row like a Venetian with us. Get off the beaten path and onto the Venetian waterways in our beautiful bateline and try it yourself!

A gondola is a boat that is actually slightly curved, like a banana floating on the water.  It’s not obvious when you look at them, but it’s how they can be rowed straight with one rower on one side.  This boat, the bateline, is symmetrical and requires a front and back rower.  Both Dwayne and I got to do the back position of steering and yes, feel free to think it was easy and I was steer us effortlessly in the direction we were supposed to be going.  (Dwayne did great, of course.)

Gelato (Suzo’s is the acknowledged best shop) can create it’s own popular monuments.  

Hey, look another building that stirs Dwayne to lust.  Really, it would save us so much money if he would just take up with women instead of architecture.  

  So happy to be in Venice, even if it signals the final leg of our journey.  More to love about Venice soon.

 …and something like this in our backyard.  You can start placing your bets on whether can Dwayne have the trifecta: columns, arches, and wife.

From top to bottom, Piper, Wes, and Kyla

My only dinner requirement was for a rooftop terrace. I got it,and all my heart’s desires, at the Panorama Restaurant at the top of the gondola. Not only did it allow us to avoid standing in the long line to head back down, but we had the most pleasant dinner–three times as good as anything else at only twice the cost, so a bargain!  This is what the terrace lookes like in daylight–a total grab-pic from Bing images.

And the view only got lovelier.  Dubrovnik, I’m not done with you yet!  I can’t wait to return some day.

This stop had the two best hours and two worst hours of the entire trip–possibly of the year.  I will save the best for tomorrow’s post and survive the retelling of the worst now.

It started really well as we stepped off our catamaran and walked about 30 minutes to Hotel Zagreb.  At first, I was disappointed that we were so far from the Old Town, but a bus that ran every 10 minutes that was just steps from our hotel and Dwayne and I have getting used navigating public transportation in foreign countries.  Also, we quickly figured out that our historic hotel, surrounded by a garden and patio furniture, was right on the pedestrian-only street that was the popular promenade that led right down to Sunset Beach.  

Right away, Dwayne and I left hot, tired children in the hotel and “pedestrian-ed” ourselves out.  When we got down to the sea, we discovered one of the hotels had cleverly installed an inflatable obstacle course swimming distance from the shore, and was charging about $15 per hour.  It was the perfect place to revive our kids and after doing a little more exploring and getting lunch ingredients, we returned to the hotel, fed the kids, and led them to what I solemnly told them would be an afternoon of torture.  

Turns out, it was. But not in the ironic sense I had anticipated.

We have it on good authority that this is The Best Thing EVER!!!  And when their hour was up, they happily came up the beach to swim and play among the rocks.  I was reading another book, and Dwayne grabbed Wesley’s new green floatie to bring him and go swimming himself.  Next time I looked up, Dwayne still had the floatie and was hanging out with the girls.  I went over and did a quick search to make sure Wes was nearby, but I didn’t see him and the others weren’t sure where he was.  It had a been a little while, but this was No Big Deal.  The kids all love the shore and I would just have to look a little further over all the rocky obstacles.  

Still no Wes.  I organized the fam to make a larger radius.  No Wes.  I sent Dwayne and the girls up the beach to really scour the area and I walked the half mile the other way, getting more and more frantic.  Dwayne’s phone was dead, so I had hope that when we met up, they would have Wes with him.

They didn’t.

Wesley is a fish, but he’s not an invincible swimmer and it seemed that he was equally likely to be in the water as land–and I would see him on land.  We split up again and I started using Mom Voice to call for him.  By the time I had walked the entire beach to the road from our starting point–again–I could not find him anywhere.  I was not convinced that we would find him, alive at least.  I wasn’t scared of kidnapping but drowning is the second (unintentional) cause of death in our state.  I helped fundraise for free swim lessons for all 4th graders last spring.  It happened to the 8th grade football player in our district last May.  Drowning was a real possibility that even my life of good fortune could not prevent.

I do not live my life by fear, but for that hour, I was terrified.

At last, with trembling fingers, I was able to text this to my mom.  Of course, my mom.  I needed to write it down and I needed another mom. My mom.