11-11-12

As I indicated Phil's Birthday kicked off a busy season for us.  

It was followed by another big milestone - our one year anniversary.

We had planned a four day trip to Garmisch, Germany. I was supposed to be there for work the following week anyway, and it is only about 4 hours away so we figured it would be a good relaxing spot.  Plus the Disney Castle is only a short drive away so it would be romantic too...

Unfortunately it was slightly I mean completely interrupted by two things.

First of all I had a court-martial that replaced my week training in Germany so that meant I had to prepare most of the weekend.  We would not be deterred we could do some nice stuff around our own area.

Oops wrong again problem number two Vicenza (our home town) decided to flood.  Causing a lot of roads to be closed around our house as well as surrounding towns. 

We explored the town to see how bad it really was... 

The first floor of the houses on the other side
of the river are under water. 

This is a bridge - that you can't even see under.
The truck is pulling debris, tree branches, washed brush etc
from the bottom in hopes of making the water flow more.
We watched for 20 minutes while it wasn't raining and saw no change.

The water is usually about 20 feet below the center wall. 

For those of you who have not seen already - there are pictures on the internet of people swimming in St. Mark's square in Venice from this same set of storms. 

Luckily the water receded very quickly - by Tuesday you could only see the debris - no more high waters. 

Well we weathered this storm as well as all the others during our first year and while I can't speak for Phil I think it was a pretty great year.  I can't wait to see what the next year brings. 

View from our Balcony of the only sun all weekend.