Italy: Day 13 - Villa near Florence

Today was pretty much a 'stay at home' day. Jo and Liz took the car and went into Firenze to do some Christmas shopping. They were gone for the better part of the morning and half of the afternoon. John and I were home with the 6 kids. I took several of the older kids for a hike where we saw some crews harvesting olives in the fields. It was interesting to watch - they spread out some tarps on the ground under the tree, prune the tree and manually strip the olives and leaves onto the tarp. When they are done, they bundle up the tarp into bags. I was amazed at the amount of time and labor that must be. No wonder good olive oil costs so much in the store! I did not take too many pictures today - but here are some more pictures from around our villa:
Here is a picture that I took while we were on our hike. No - it was not a long hike - and it was a fairly warm day. The scenery was wonderful - no surprize there - we were in Tuscany. Caleb thought that he knew of a trail that took the back way to our villa. We could not find it easily.

After our hike, all of the boys were in our part of the villa. Our TV picked up local Italian stations, and the satellite picked up only German stations. In this picture the boys are all watching Sponge Bob Square Pants in German. It was interesting to see the kids all watching intently - but not knowing the words. (Do you really need to understand the words to enjoy Sponge Bob?)