Well, I thought I’d sneak in here between pupdates and tell you a little bit about our family “break”aka vacation.

If you’ve been following the blog for any length of time, you know we really don’t go on vacations. If one of us leaves the farm (hubby to go backpacking, for instance) then the other one stays home and takes care of things. Or if we do leave together it’s just off to another state for a few days to visit family. Thankfully, my SIL (Sally’s “mom”) has been willing to watch the animals if the two of us ever get away together. But I know how much work it is, so I don’t like to ask her often.

A few years ago, my kids planned a trip to Scotland and graciously asked me to go. That was my first ever big trip and I loved it! I do love seeing new places and going on adventures, but I would probably never plan something and go on my own. (And hubby isn’t a traveler or planner either.) But since my kids are all seasoned travelers and are great about planning and arranging all the details, when they mentioned doing a family trip over a year ago, how could we refuse!

When your kids are all grown with lives of their own and living in different towns, you have to plan way ahead to coordinate work and school schedules. And also, I had to plan way ahead with dog schedules too. I wanted to make sure that all the pups we had earlier in the year would be going home before we left, and that there would be no puppies here or being born while we were gone. With the life cycle of dogs/puppies, I basically had to take four months off of dog “work”. But I’m so thankful I was able to do that and spend this special time with my whole family; hubby, the two oldest and their wives and the youngest and his girlfriend. We had a fabulous time traveling, seeing new sights, eating yummy food and being together.

And where did we go? We went to Italy! My DIL spent her teen years there and her mom, sisters and nephew still live in Italy. Our son and his wife have been married eight years and this is the first time we’ve gotten to meet her family!

They met us at the airport and were so warm and welcoming, bringing gifts and sharing special food with us all! Unfortunately, we really didn’t get to spend any more time with them. Except at the very end of our trip when we were switching trains and leaving our son and his wife at a certain point so they could spend more time with her family. Her mom ran to our  train platform (in her red high heels, I might add), boarded the train and hugged us each good-bye.

Please enjoy some of the sights that we saw on our trip! We mainly visited Como and Venice.

 We made good memories and enjoyed our special family time together!❤️ Hope you enjoyed a mini tour of our trip!