Some photos I took of these cuties on my trip to Italy with their family back in July. And yes, they are sweet inside and out.

This is me packing....

Well that's what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Which obviously I am not. I have the hardest time getting started when it's time to pack. Once I get going I can do it fairly quickly, it's just the getting started part that I can never do. So I'm blogging instead. Since I'm fairly depressed to be leaving Prague tomorrow and I have other vacations to catch this little blog up on , this is me productively procrastinating.

So vacation number two with the Krseks:

Corvara, Italy! This town is in South Tyrol, which is a region in Italy that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Read: is basically Austria... with Italian speakers. It made me feel like I was back in Vienna almost, so I was already in love with the place as soon as we got there. The hotel we stayed at was super nice, but in a relaxed, comfy kind of way. Here's the room I got all to myself:

 

We flew to Innsbruck, Austria on Saturday and then took a three hour car ride to Corvara. As soon as we got to the hotel we ate lunch and then we went on a "walk". I'm not sure if the Krsek's understand there's a difference between a "hike" and a "walk", or if my version of a hike is a nice little stroll through the park for them.... they do take their ten and eight year old daughters rock climbing up sheer cliff faces that most adults wouldn't even attempt to brave, so I could be the one who's mistaken. All the same, the hike was gorgeous. We took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain behind the hotel and walked all around as we made our way back to the hotel. Here's some photos of our little excursion:

Magda is hilarious. I can't get over how much I love this girl. And we're name buddies (her full name is Magdalena, which is the Czech version of Madeline). So that automatically makes her cool.

Above is the view from my hotel room.

Wake me up, this must have just been a dream.

The next day we hiked up through the pass from the valley that Corvara is situated in over to the next one. It was some tough going at some points, but how could you be miserable when you are hiking through the Italian Alps with the sun out and shining.

Barbara got her own little backpack at a sports outfitter shop near the hotel, since the older two girls had backpacks and she felt left out. It came with a leash, and so she spent the rest of the day attaching it to everyone's backpacks and commanding them like dogs. Hahaha.

Just some cows chilling in the middle of the main thoroughfare...

At the top of the pass/mountain we stopped for lunch at Jimmy's Hütte (hut). We had this delicious bean and vegetable soup and apfel strüdel with vanilla sauce. German food is, as my grandpa would call it, larapin (did I spell that right grandpa?). Or you could say delicious, but I think larapin is a better word.

Tomas finally got the leash on Barbara, haha. Below is our view as we ate lunch at the "hut".

Me with Martina and the girls (left to right: Magda, Anna, and Barbara).

One day the older girls went with Martina and Tomas to do some serious rock climbing, so Barbara and I stayed behind in the town. We went to the park in the morning and then explored around the town. She didn't want to go into town at first, but after I looked in the first store, she wanted to go into everyone after that and buy everything they had. I told her she could get one thing, but that didn't stop her from asking for something each time we stepped foot in another shop. Haha. She finally decided on a coloring book with models that you could design and draw clothes on. I, of course, got some yarn from the area, a postcard, and a new swiss army knife. Haha. I just realized how the only normal souvenir I got was a postcard. Oh well. Here is Barbara proudly holding up her purchase:

The next day the kids got to decide what we did ("Kids day!"), so we went to the ropes courses. I hate heights, but I bravely decided to give it a try with Anna and Magda, and I actually really enjoyed it! Anna enjoyed it so much that we did it three more times throughout the week. I'll have to admit that we got the blue level course down to a science by the time we left.

The day after Kids Day, Martina and Tomas took the older girls rock climbing again, so Barbara and I stayed down below near where they were climbing and explored around there. There were lots of exquisite little wildflowers up there, so I practiced using my nifty fifty in reverse to take some macros. I should probably get a reversing ring so I don't have to just hold the lens backwards in front of my camera, but I'm cheap, so what can I say?

Hahahaha, this photo cracks me up. Barbara breakin' it down on the mountain top, yo.

There was also this really cool place where people had taken rocks and written their name or some other message. Barbara and I tried to right her name, but she got bored after "Bar" so we moved on.

And we found snow! Pink snow, actually. I wish I knew why it was pink, but to Barbara the only thing that mattered was that it was her favorite color and she could touch it. As soon as her parents left us she zeroed in on a patch of this pink snow in the distance and made it very apparent that she wanted to go there. For the next hour. Oh boy. She reminds me of Chloe in so many ways, both bad and good. We finally made it to a good patch of snow and so I snatched a few photos and a video:

We got some hot chocolate and a Ritter Sport at this little hut on the mountain top before heading back to meet up with her sisters and parents.

Some seriously steep ski lifts around this valley. And a pretty church in the center of town.

Below is the main street of Corvara. I'm too lazy to edit out that corner of the building in the top left corner. Pretend it's not there.

Playing with each other in the park:

We also went into the forest one day and took photos of the girls in dresses and flower crowns (which I very handily made by myself. I'm such a domestic goddess). When they said they wanted to model for me and be fairies, the photographer in me did leaps of excitement. I'll leave those for another post though, because this one is already overloaded with photos.  I also took some when we went up to their cabin in the Sumova mountains, so hopefully I will finish those soon and post them on here as well. Till then!

Disclaimer: this is a pretty personal post and I don't even know why I'm posting it on my blog, because that's generally what I keep a journal for. But I just felt like I needed to post this one. So feel free to just skip along to the next post, unless you want to read about my love affair with Arkansas. Because I really think that's what it's become... that's a bit embarrassing. But only a bit.

For some reason I have been feeling homesick lately for the last few weeks. Homesick for Arkansas. For a while I couldn't figure out why that would be, because I don't usually get homesick too badly and I actually just saw my family about two weeks ago. That definitely doesn't mean I don't like my family, though. I'm just the kind of person who is either there or I'm not. I tend to focus on the people I'm with, more so than the people I'm not with. Which is why I'm terrible at calling, skyping, and generally keeping in touch with people. I should probably be better about that.

 I realized, though, that this is the first time I haven't been in Arkansas for the summer. No wonder I'm feeling like this! I think it also doesn't help that I've been spending my summer doing things that remind me so much of home, but don't quite make up for it. I'm reading a series right now that takes place in South Carolina with the wonderful language only the South can call its own: "yes ma'am", "praise the Lord the almighty Redeemer, hallelujah", and "bless her heart". I've been up in the forest with the family for the past week to go biking and hiking and swimming in lakes. But it's not the Ozarks. Having a bonfire and roasting marshmallows, but with no graham crackers or Hershey's chocolate. Eating watermelon, but without my grandpa sitting across the table from me at the dinner table, slurping his half of the watermelon down. Swimming in a tiny pond, not Beaver Lake (although the poisonous snake did make his appearance all the way over here in the Czech Republic as well). 

And I'm not saying I never appreciated Arkansas and that I'm finally doing so now, because Arkansas has always been my favorite place when people have asked (and I get that question a LOT). But I think I've just started appreciating my home even more. There are so many memories in those forests and rivers and lakes and there can be no substitutes for the place where someone has had such a wonderful childhood.

So I guess this post was just an excuse for me to go find all of the photos of the place I love best and to reminisce for a little while. 

I swear those dead trees in the background have been there since the dawn of time. My cousin Stephen told me once, in typical big brother trying to scare little sister fashion, that people were tied to the trees a long time ago and now their skeletons are still tied at the bottom of the lake to those trunks. I guess it worked though, because I'm still a little spooked to venture over there.

Flying in grandpa's plane and seeing a side of Northwest Arkansas not a whole lot of other people get a chance to see. The lake sure is even prettier from up above. Flying with my grandpa, even the stone quarries around his house look prettier, especially where they've dug so deep that crystal clear springs have created small little aquamarine lakes.

The view out grandma and grandpa's kitchen window. When I was a little girl, I always loved waking up at their house in the morning and watching the sun sparkle off of the surface of the lake down below as I smelled grandma cooking her buttermilk pancakes. There was always a cooking show on the tv in the background, too.

Swinging on the back porch in this swing, looking out at the trees. Listening to them at night as the wind rustled through the leaves in the summer, almost sounding like the ocean waves. Holding hands with boyfriends, talking with my mom, reading a new or old book. Listening to the birds.

And of course Bentonville Square. With our beloved Confederate Soldier and Walton's 5-10. The Farmer's Market every Saturday morning. Christmas lights with friends when I was in high school. Getting kicked out of the Station Cafe because we were younger than 18 and naturally would get up to all sorts of trouble...

My back yard. Green. Forests. Life. Comfort and protection.

And of course, Southern food. I miss pulled pork, funnel cakes, shaved ice from Frozen Tung, fried chicken, barbeque. Anything that could make you gain ten pounds in one sitting and come one step closer to a heart attack. Nothing else like it.

So I guess to add on to all the sap that has been going on here, here is one more:

Arkansas, you will always be home to me.

So I mentioned in my last post that we went to Fountain's Abbey and took photos of the kids. Here are those photos. I'm not feeling super word-y right now, maybe because of the massive amount of photos I have waiting for me to finish up, so I'll just leave you to it.