Jet Lag...

I don't think I have ever truly appreciated the difficulties of jet lag until dealing with jet lag in a toddler.  Usually coming back I have done pretty well, just sleeping an extra few hours the night that we get back and then getting back to a pretty regular routine, however Madelyn has had more struggles today than anticipated.  We all crashed when we got back from the airport at about 8:30 last night and all was well until 2:30 am when Madelyn appeared to think "it's 9:30 am in Italy - isn't it time to get up?"  After getting her to go back to sleep off and on I finally gave up at 6:30 when Justin left for work and figured we were probably both most awake in the morning so we should try to get laundry and grocery shopping done early before we crashed.  I think in part her difficulty adjusting was because she slept so much of the flight home - she slept for about 5 hours, but I figured that it was easier to deal with her asleep on the plane and cranky and awake at home, and retrospectively I still think that was the best solution.   As well as she handled the long flight on the way to Europe, she was even better on the way home.  She was happy and engaged while she was awake and she slept for a lot of the flight.  She had about a 5 minute meltdown about 7 hours into the flight but then decided to go back to sleep, and then again cried for about 5 minutes when we began our initial descent and her ears hurt.  She was so tired that she wasn't accepting anything we gave her to swallow to help with her ears, but as she woke up she calmed down.   Overall we had less then 20 minutes of real fussiness on the flight, which is pretty good for a nine hour flight.  I let her go to bed about an hour early tonight - she wasn't really functioning any longer and just kept pointing to her room and saying "night night."  She made her desires pretty clear.

To combat the very strong urge to go to sleep I thought I would post some of the other pictures from our trip.  Hopefully this will help me reach my goal of making it until at least 8:30 before I crash tonight.

I only managed a post after Messina (in Sicily) and I will post pictures from our other stops, but with the time crunch this picture of Becci got left out and I thought that it captured her feelings on all of my picture taking well, besides having a nice glimpse of the area surrounding the port.

ATHENS, GREECE
After stopping in Messina (in Sicily) our next port was Athens, Greece.  I was really looking forward to Athens - the Parthenon and the Acropolis are things you grow up seeing and learning about in history books and it was pretty amazing to actually see it in person.  Madelyn had a somewhat rough morning in part due to the fact that we were up and off the ship by 7:30 for this tour and also in part because it was over 90 degrees and humid that day as well.  Then, my parents were going to head back to the ship with Madelyn and Becci, Micah, Justin and I were going to get off the bus to do some shopping and exploring of Athens on our own, but somehow we missed the opportunity and ended up back at the ship with everyone else.  It ended up being nice to spend the afternoon relaxing with a pool and air conditioning instead of out in the heat of the afternoon.

These two pictures are of Dad, Madelyn, and Micah on Mars Hill (which is incidentally actually a hill) where Paul gave his famous sermon where he referenced the idol to an unknown god.  The guys and Madelyn took this side trip without Mom, Becci, and I.  It was hot and a long way up...

EPHESUS, TURKEY
I had the fewest expectations about Ephesus I think, maybe because I didn't really know what to expect.  However, it was definitely my favorite tour and made me very interested in getting back to Turkey some day.  Fortunately, Justin is pretty sure that we need to go back as well.  In the morning we saw the ancient ruins from the Ephesus of Biblical times (the city has actually been moved several times; it was near the sea when it was built but is now five miles away)  Then we had lunch and went shopping in a village near Ephesus, and finally ended the day at a place where they make carpets by hand.  We found out that for a mere $35,000 we could own a silk handmade Turkish carpet that would be big enough to cover the floor in a large room.  We didn't come home with any carpets.  That is also where we got to have Turkish coffee which was amazing.  The day was a good mix of relaxing and sight seeing.  Here are a few pictures from Ephesus.

This was a symbol that was used by Christians to signal houses where other Christians were welcome to gather.

 In the upper left of this picture you can see what is left of the library of Celsus, which was one of the great ancient libraries.

The morning light made it tough to get a picture of the ampitheater, but hopefully this captures it a little bit.

This is already a pretty long post and my ability to keep my eyes open is rapidly dwindling.  I will finish posting about the trip another night when my eyes aren't so heavy and hopefully we have all readjusted to Minnesota time :)