Happy Birthday Dad

We hope you have a wonderful day and get lots of ice cream. We love you!
Layne & Jen

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Happy Birthday!

Its Brad's birthday,He is now 15,and looking forward to getting his permit :0S

The Final Days

Since Taryn requested the ending to our trip here it is. The final days were slow compared to the rest of the trip. They included meeting spiderman!

Going to IKEA on the bus. It was our first time going to IKEA and the place is INCREDIBLE!

More subway rides and buss rides!

Playing with toys in our hotel room!

Our last taste of the delicious Tichy Gelato! Yum yumm!!

A HUGE rain storm that soak us through! We had to run from the bus stop down a block into the hotel and we were soaked by the time we got to the lobby!

And finally great seats on the plane home that let us use this great baby seat for when Jarom was sleeping! The trip was so long, but equally amazing!

OK...

... so, I want to know how you LOVED the trip aunt Stef!:) And what you did the last couple days, and where you were, that you did not post! :)

-taryn

Thank you

Lewis and I want to thank everyone who came to the wedding. We know it was a sacrifice of time and money and it is deeply appreciated.

We also wanted you to know that our family updates get posted to the other blog. I guess some of you did not know that Lauren and Tyler had reconciled. It was announced on the other blog.

Thanks again. Pictures will be posted on the other blog and facebook.

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Pictures!

Hey.. I wasn't able to go to James's wedding... :0( , so are you able to post some pictures?? :-/ if comfortable :0s

Actually its an aMAYzing RACE

Hailey was named after her mothers Mom Maze. So we are now in the process of changing up our logo. To incorporate our logo with their Phrase. We will be called The aMAYZing Race
Valley of Fire Marathon
Half marathon, 10k, 5k, and kids fun run.
I miss it already. November will see us on a flight to Nevada for the race.

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An A-MAZING Weekend

Thursday was filled with more palaces that look similar to what we have already posted. We also went to a couple museums that were fantastic. We visited Mozart's apartment and took an audio tour. Walking through some of the streets you run into street performers. These two were very impressive. Paisley put some coins in their cup and they came to life and took a picture with her. It was pretty cute.

Friday Jason had a half day. We met up with him after a tasty lunch at subway. It was nice to eat something familiar.

Then we went to a music museum that was pretty fantastic. Paisley loved the interactive exhibits. After the museum it was recommended that we hit the amusement park. It was free to walk around, you just pay for rides. It was fun to see all the things they had there. Paisley drove this jeep.

Jason came across a type of ride he has always wanted to ride so we went for it. It was kind of expensive, but well worth it. You lay flat in the cars like your flying. It was fun, and a little scary.

Saturday after getting the rental (which was an adventure in itself) we were off to Italy!! We all crammed into a "7 passenger" car and headed for Mestre, Italy.
We parked in Mestre and took a train into Venice. Venice was AMAZING! We were there for 22 hours. It took a total of 11 hours round trip driving to get there, but completely worth all the effort. This beautiful bride was the bridge over a canal to our hotel.
Standing in front of the Grand Canal.
The famous Rialto Bridge. Disappointed with the graffiti but it is still beautiful.
This is the beautiful canal in front of our hotel.
Standing on the Academia bridge.
We ate incredible lasagna at a cafe on the Grand Canal. It was beautiful and amazing.
Jason in his handsome Italian hat.
Once again the pretty canal in front of the hotel.
We took water buses around to the island of Murano to get some famous Murano glass.
In front of the grand Canal down the walkway from our hotel.
One last shot before we got back on the train to Mestre.

Goodbye Venice. Wish we didn't have to drive 5 hours back to Vienna now!!

Venice was incredible. I'm having a hard time convincing myself it wasn't all a dream. It was so beautiful. Completely worth the extra effort, time and money involved in going. I'm so happy we did it. It was a little scary to get a car and drive that long through two foreign countries, but it was fantastic. Marvelous! It really is a grand place.

School

Hi again!... school starts tomorrow for Brad and me! I will be starting 8th grade and Brad will be a freshman! So, because Brad is now in highschool, he is going to start seminary on Wednesday wich starts at 6:00. We are all excited.. well I atleast think so.
-taryn

Sleeping Arrangements

Mom and Dad, I need to know if you would like to stay in Ogden with the Spencers on Friday night, the day before the wedding. There is no longer a wedding breakfast the morning of the 14th, so we no longer need to be in Logan at 9:00am. Leslee, Rebecca and Shelley will be stayingwith them and we are invited also.
I hope you are having a wonderful time and have a safe flight home.

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Taryn the Blogging Machine

I didn't realize that Taryn was a regular contributor on multiple blogs. Taryn, do you do your homework or just bluff aol day?

:)

Fun Activities

(Something happened while posting picture so the order is reversed, pictures are Wednesday-Monday)
We travel every where by taking a bus to the subway station, once the subway hits our right stop we walk to where we want to be. We are now regulars on the trains!

Eating more gelato. This is a daily occurrence, on good days more than once.

Tonight we met my parents' friend's cousin who lives here. She has helped us with a few things. We met her in a big plaza and had Chinese food. It was really good!!

For lunch we stopped at a street cafe. We thought it was so fun having lunch on the streets of Vienna.

This is the Hofburg. The same people lived here that lived in Schobrunn Palace that I posted before. We all agree they had way too much money to build two extravagant homes.

This is the parliament building. The buildings here are just beautiful!!

More gelato, surprise, surprise! Luckily we are walking enough to burn the calories!!

Our original hotel had a pool. It was freezing, but fun. On Tuesday we moved from that hotel to a Holiday Inn. It was fun to have an authentic experience, but we are glad to be in the Holiday Inn where we now enoy air conditioning and a more American breakfast. Jason's colleague really hated our first hotel and since he wanted to move we also needed to move so all the company people stayed together. It was a good change.

Paisley has been having a hard time with the Austrian food, so to have a little more normal experience we went to McDonald's. The best part was the balloons!

More gelato!

The gardens at Shonbrunn Palace.

Waiting for our tour time to come up at the Schonbrunn Palace.

On the bus!

Things are still going great. It is seeming more normal to be here. We don't use maps anymore when using the bus, subway, or street car system. We have also started calling elevators lifts like the locals and use a word or German here or there to help people understand us. It's fun! there is still lots to see, and lots of time to see it in. Until next time... guten nacht.

Sleeping Arrangements

Hello,

Martissa sent out an email last night wanting to know if we would like to... well, I'll just post the email message. Please reply to the blog and let us know what you would like to do. The only issue I see with it is my sanity and the fact that the wedding breakfast is at 9:00am and we all have to shower, and that is a lot of showers.

Dear Rebec, Leslee, Layne, Jen, Mom and Dad,

You are all invited to stay at Dorothy (my lovely mother-in-law) Spencer's home in South Ogden on Friday and Saturday nights, August 13 and 14th, the weekend of James' wedding. S. Ogden is a 45 minute drive to Logan. Dorothy has beds to sleep all of us and I'd love to have us all together for a little while. She has offered to provide food and a kitchen for us to use. She just can't do the cooking or the clean up. If we want it, Jim is ready to provide a Tri Tip dinner for us. (It is heavenly.)

Please let me know by Sunday night if you are or are not staying at Dorothy's house. I need time to make plans with her.

Love,
Martissa

Calling on Taryn

Taryn,

Mom and Dad got an email asking if everyone was ok because of fires in Palmdale? Are there fires in Palmdale? Is our house still there? Please give us all the info!!

Thanks!

Stef

The First Few Days!

Wednesday was a very long day of traveling. Everyone started out happy on the plane.This is our second flight. British Airways gave us a package that included this sleeping mask. Paisley has been using it ever since. We are so happy to be on that plane because we only made it there by minutes!

This picture was taken in the London Heathrow airport. We were definitely starting to wilt at this point. Jarom's face is how we really feel.

Finally on the last flight!!

Airhead time!! We had gone through all of Jarom's snack options and he wasn't having any of them so desperate times call for sugary snacks! He liked showing off his green tongue after the airhead.

We hung out at the hotel waiting for Mom and Dad to arrive. One of their planes was a couple hours late and we didn't know when they would show up, so we walked around outside. This pretty courtyard is in the front of our hotel.

Breakfast time! European breakfast is gross! Who wants meat, cheese, warm juice and milk and other non-breakfasty things for breakfast? Not this group! We now have some cereal and our own COLD milk so we are surviving.

On a bridge over the Danube River.

Riding in a streetcar.

Dinner this second night was an adventure. We haven't had luck finding people that speak english. The menu was also in German and our phrase books didn't help us translate it, so we decided to just go for it. The cordon bleu was in English so we shared that, the hamburger was in English so Dad got that, but Jason was brave and ordered something in German. He ended up getting 5 grilled sausage links with fries. Mmmmm! (not so much)

Getting on the train heading to Budapest! 3 Hours later we'd be in Hungary.

On the train.

When we got to Budapest we took a bus tour all throughout the city. While driving we would listen to a narration about buildings and facts about Budapest. We could get on and off at any stop we wanted to. This is after a couple stops. The narration wasn't enough to keep her awake!

Part of our tour included a boat ride on the Danube river. It was lots of fun!

The train ride home from Budapest.

We have been loving having gelato everyday! It is sooo good! Ice cream will never be the same for me.

Schonbrunn Palace. They have huge grounds. Today we went to the zoo, later we will go in the palace and some of the other buildings on the grounds.

The hat girls!

Jarom loved that girafee, he must have gotten that from MB!

Jarom was happy to be going back to the hotel after a hot day at the zoo.

So far so good. I can't believe all we have packed into the 5 days we have been gone. I also can't believe we have 12 more to go!! It is super late here so guten nacht!