Holy Cannolis and St. Anthony

Once again, Brandon and Becca were kind enough to go along with one of my hair-brained schemes involving random "cultural" events happening around the greater Boston area. (I think the last major excursion involved a highly publicized pancake breakfast at a maple sugar farm.) But, they decided to give me the benefit of the doubt on this one, and accompanied Rob and me to the festival of St. Anthony in the North End.

St. Anthony, officially "St. Anthony of Padua (or Lisbon)," is the patron saint for lost things. Long ago, he lost his favorite prayer book--which had actually been stolen by a younger friar--then prayed for it to be returned. Shortly after the prayer, the thieving friar had a change of heart and returned the prayerbook. Nowadays, whenever those pesky car keys go missing, this common prayer can call St. Anthony to help, "Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found."

Here we are in front of the shrine to St. Anthony. It was littered with dollar bills, watches, rings, and other misplaced items. It was pretty neat; kind of like a holy lost-and-found.

After walking around the North End for awhile, enjoying all of the wonderful Italian culture, it was unanimously decided (Ok, everyone else actually got tired of me oggling all of the food) that we should stop so I could try my very first cannoli. Of course it had to be "Boston's Best Cannoli", so we went to a booth set up by Mike's Pastry to buy one. I wasn't expecting much...but...WOW. It was a fantasmic explosion of flavor in my mouth. Seriously A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Looking at that picture is making my mouth water.

And here we see that we can just leave it to Rob to make beautiful photographs out of a fresh produce stand on the street. I love it!

Before going back to Cambridge, we were all thoroughly entertained by a few thoroughly entertaining old Italian men rocking out to hits from the past 40 years.

More good times in Beantown.

So I married a... GOLFER! (who knew??)

After we got back from Brazil, Rob and I drove down to Myrtle Beach, SC for a week vacation with my family before Jacqueline went off to college.

Myrtle Beach has about 150 golf courses within 30 minutes of anywhere in the town, so it's pretty much a golfer's paradise. Rob took a golf class his last semester at BYU (over a year ago) just so he would be able to join my parents during golf vacations like this--and that's gotta be pretty much the definition of true love!

Anyway, when it came time to play we (of course) had no time to warm-up, but Rob totally rose to the challenge and we all had a blast! He's just a natural...I mean, look how good he looks holding that golf club!

And here's me being happy...and very cool...