Off to Cusco

This girl totally ripped me off, she charged way too much for letting me take her picture.  That's okay though, I really didn't care that much.  And she has a cute baby llama.

As you can see we went to Peru for our 15th wedding anniversary.  Leo picked the destination, and we've been planning it for about two years.  We stayed at my cousin's Clay's house on Friday night--his daughter Hannah was watching the kids the first week and then we flew out Saturday morning.  Had a seven hour layover in Mexico City--which if we had known that we had to go through immigration just for a connecting flight, we would have planned on doing something in those seven hours.  As it was, we hung out at the airport, ate lunch, and tried on perfumes and colognes at the duty free stores.  I discovered (I've only ever owned one bottle of perfume) that I like floral scents with slight bit of fruitiness and a little bit of sweetness and that I like on Leo fresh scents with woodsy undertones.  Yep, we spent a lot of time smelling perfumes.  Anyway, after watching two late couples beg to be let on a plane that had already unhooked and was heading to Italy, we headed out on our flight and got to Cusco about 11 AM Sunday morning.  Cusco's airport is tiny--there's not even one store or restaurant. It really would have no industry at all without tourism.  But I really loved it.  It's easy to understand why it is such a popular destination--even without Machu Picchu, Cusco is so charming.  Well, the part that's the touristy section anyway.  The rest is kind of a dump.  Someone told Leo that they have to pay more taxes if the building is finished so most people leave their businesses/homes partially unfinished.  I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly looked that way.  And there was litter and trash everywhere (outside of the tourist sections).  Stray dogs are everywhere so you constantly have to watch your step even in the tourist section.  But despite all that it really was wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone.

 This was in the main square, the Plaza de Armas. A lot of Incas were excuted there.  Crazy history.  

This is the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin--also a UNESCO World Heritage site.  We did go in at the end of mass one day, and looked around.  Leo and I aren't very found of Catholic religious art though, so we spent about three minutes looking around.  That was enough for us.

Leo was my lovely model in the rain.


Yes, I am posting a million pictures of city streets but I LOVE the balconies and the blue balconies and white walls and the cobbled streets and well just everything.






 This was at the Qorikancha Inca temple that the Spaniards built a church on top of.  (Well, almost all the Spanish churches were built on top of Inca temples/palaces--asserting dominance and all that).  I have more pictures of the inside later.  But it was pretty fascinating the juxtaposition of two very different cultures/architecture.


This was the inside of our hostel--El Grial.

And the outside of it.

 
Blue was THE Inka color so all the balconies, doors, etc are either wood colored or blue.  It was lovely.



The sales lady dressed us up trying to get us to buy more.

 Random kid, but she was adorable.





 We spent some time just browsing around a local outdoor market.

September in a Nutshell

September was crazy mad.  I was trying to pack and trying to keep the kids busy, and trying to finish my nieces wedding dress, and it was just miserable.  We were supposed to close on a house on the 14th, and we were going to move in the weekend before that (so the kids could start school sooner) but Thursday before we were moving in Leo went to sign some paperwork at the loan office, and they  off-handedly asked him when we were closing on the sale of our house.  And we haven't sold our house, and so Leo told them that, and so the whole buying a house thing collapsed because basically we have too much debt (thank you piloting loans, yes, we will be in debt forever....).  And why didn't they ask us that three weeks earlier when our offer was accepted??!??!  We obviously were fairly ignorant.  Anyway, so then we scrambled and Leo was amazing and ended up finding us a townhouse by Saturday.  So Sunday we went to Leo's bed and breakfast he'd been staying at all summer, and I went to sign up the kids to different schools that Monday morning.  (I had already registered them and took them to the open houses of the schools the house was in--but the townhouse was in a different zone.)  So here they are in front of the bed and breakfast on their first day of school.  

Only Elena was the only one that actually started that day because the elementary (despite the numerous calls I had received letting me know I would be reported because my kids weren't in school) wanted to delay the start time by two days so the teachers had a chance to put their names on their desks, etc.  That kind of stunk because I was stuck in a little bed and breakfast where the kids couldn't touch anything or be loud and also I had brought sewing stuff so hopefully I could work on the wedding dress for two day before moving into the townhouse and being crazy busy with moving.  So I took them to Walmart that day and we got flu shots. 

  

And the next day we went to Bear River State Park to see the bison and elk and have a picnic.  Then Wednesday I moved our stuff (we had loaded our van with essentials) into the townhouse while Leo was at work.  And the kids started school for reals.  

 Cute Efraim in his new winter boots.

Efraim tried to fall the rest of the boys to school.

 In the back of the townhouse, the previous tenants had left a desk, which worked out perfect because our desk is massive and we didn't really have room for it.  Then that Friday, Myles (my nephew) came out to Evanston and we drove with Efraim and Jubal to Rawlins and he spent the afternoon taking down beds and I packed like mad. That evening after work/school Leo drove out in a moving van and we worked till 1 or 2 in the morning--I think Myles went to bed around midnight--but Leo and I stayed up later, packing stuff up. Leo and Myles loaded the van the next morning while I continued to pack more stuff while they loaded it.  Then we headed back to our townhouse.  Jared and Kiersten and Anders met us and we all helped unload the van (it only took two hours or less) and then Myles stayed till 2 AM that night helping Leo set back up all the beds.  Myles was awesome.  He also helped throw our piano over our deck (we didn't have a way to get it down--the deck stairs were too rickety and our new bannister prevented us from going that way.)

Also back in August the girls finished tying the quilt they made with their friends Sophie and Bri, and I bound it in Sept, and then they donated it.  They did a great job.  It was all fabric people had given me--I only bought the batting.  Sweet, eh?

Leo and I went to the temple the next weekend and out to dinner at Peach City.  It was so nice.  And then the next weekend I had to have Olivia's dress almost done for the last fitting and I met up with my mom and sisters and Olivia at Taggarts and had a wedding shower for Olivia and then went to Lynnaea's drill dance thing at halftime at the Morgan High School's homecoming football game halftime.  And then I went and tried the dress on Olivia at Megan's.  Also in September I drove to Draper to buy a rug and pouf, and I drove to Ogden to visit Andrea and doing some shopping. And I basically continued to drive non stop and go crazy.