Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 10 – Barcelona, Spain

Yesterday, we had a port of call in Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona is a busy cruise port and there may be many cruise ships in at one time. At the dock we were located at, we were sandwiched between the Grand Princess and the Azamara Journey. It was my first look at one of the new […]

Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 6 – Last Full Day In Rome

Yesterday was our last full day in Rome on this wonderful vacation. This morning we will be boarding the Celebrity Solstice for our Transatlantic cruise back to the US. We decided to scale back our ambitious site seeing yesterday and take in a few of the larger piazzas. We got a slow start on the […]

Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 5 – More Touring Rome

Yesterday we continued our wonderful, albeit tiring experience in Rome. The previous day we logged nearly 7 miles walking and touring in the city. Yesterday we logged about another 6 miles. We are certainly getting our exercise. I guess it makes us feel less guilty about the awesome food we are eating. Suzanne and I […]

Smoking and Super Heroes

Yesterday I put my new Christmas present, a smoker to the test. We also decided to have a Super Hero movie marathon to watch three relatively new movies that we hadn’t yet seen. I spent a fair amount of time yesterday getting the meats ready to smoke. I had decided to smoke a top loin […]

Christmas Fun

Well, another Christmas has come and gone, though it joyfully continues to linger in the household. Mr Papa’s World celebrated another great Christmas. It started a bit more than a week ago when Suzanne’s parents came to town for a visit. They timed the visit so they could be home for Christmas, but more importantly […]

Barcelona and Transatlantic Cruise 2008 – Day 18 – St Maarten

[image title=”img_5193″ size=”thumbnail” id=”2128″ align=”none” linkto=”viewer” ] Today was the last day of the cruise with a port of call in St Maarten in the Netherland Antilles. It was also my first visit to a Caribbean port of call as I have always cruised the Pacific Ocean prior. It was kind of a rude welcome […]

I’m In Love With Frankenmuth and Bronner’s

What a great day we had in Frankenmuth, Michigan. First, we visited the World’s Largest Christmas Market, Bronner’s! I have been bugging Mr. Papa to get an artificial tree for safety reasons for years. Our real trees are beautiful for about a week, and then no matter how careful I am to water the tree […]

Vacation Finally Here!

Well, finally its here! A vacation. Right about now, we are jetting our way to Michigan for a little family reunion. I am in desperate need of a vacation as this will essentially be my first of the year. We did take a week back in March for a Pechuls family reunion, but I was […]

The Kids As Elves

You might remember my post about the our local community’s Christmas party. At that party, our kids were lucky enough to be Santa’s Helpers. The best part for them was riding in the fire truck. Anyways, I thought I would post a picture of them and the other kids dressed up as elves.

New Board Games

For Christmas this year, the kids received a whole bunch of new board games. As a family that plays a lot of board games, Christmas is always a chance for us to try out some new games. This year, the kids also got some of the old favorites redone. Amongst the new games they got […]