June - Star Wars & Lake Como Baby!

So it appears that we had to come to Belgium to experience a Star Wars exhibition. That’s how we started out June. We went with some State Department friends Jay knew in Lagos, Nigeria – we all have kids within a year of each other. We paid our respects to the Jedi Master Yoda and tried to begin the Star Wars indoctrination of James - at least we just want to make sure he knows the ways of the force and also understands that Jar Jar is lame. June, the month of our much anticipated trip to Lake Como in Italy, turned out to be much better than we expected – and we had pretty high expectations. It’s like Ferris Bueller said, “It’s so choice, if you have the means I highly recommend picking one up.” Ok, so you can’t really pick up a Lake Como but you get the point.

The pictures really don’t do it justice. It’s dotted with quaint little towns that have lovely villas over which you could easily break the 10th commandment. So back to Star Wars, much of the Nabu shots were at Lake Como – that’s where Amidala and Anakin picnicked, married, and delivered some of the most romantic and profound (LAME) lines of the whole series. Click on the Lake Como slide show on the right if you want to see more than what we included here.

We also spent one day in Milan and one day in Verona. Milan has The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci which we got to see, very cool, spiritual, and amazing that it’s lasted all these years. In case you were wondering, John the Beloved does look a bit feminine but so did one of the other apostles – read the Da Vinci Code for details on this one.

So what did James like about the trip? It’s easily the gelato -- preferably mint. He didn’t care that his parents bought him a really cool backpack carrier he just wanted the gelato. I think his dad made an addict out of him. We are also glad to report that he only blew his pants out once, at the apartment where we were staying in Bellagio. Lots of random Italian ladies would come up to him and say, "Bello, bellisimo!"

James has aspirations to join the military – he’s commando crawling everywhere and he’s very speedy at it.


We suspect that he’ll grow up to do something involving electrical cords because we can’t keep him away from them. He held still long enough for Emily to confirm that he knows how to sit. He also likes to roar and will sometimes do it for hours.