Italy - Happy 10 years to us!

Dave and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary in Italy! We spent 10 days traveling between Rome, Tuscany, Pisa, Florence and Venice. Dave did lots of work planning it for us and my parents were kind enough to come watch our kids while we enjoyed some much needed time away.

Rome

The Vatican was our first stop in Rome. Jet lag is real, people. I think I remember most of our tour...let's just say lots and lots of marble, statues, artwork and people.

This is the Sistine Chapel. Dave was naughty and took a picture of it despite the signs and guards all around. There were so many scenes and vignettes that it was quite overwhelming to try and understand all of it. 

One of my favorite places in the Vatican city was St. Peter's Basilica. The pure scale of everything inside was astounding. For example - do you see the letters at the far end near the top of the picture? Those letters are 9 feet tall each - bigger than any of the tiny people in the foreground. And everything was done in Mosaics, so it looks like a painting but it's really tiny pieces of marble or stone.

Michelangelo's first famous sculpture also resides in St. Peter's Basilica - the Pieta , or The Pity. I think it's a beautiful piece.

The walls around the Vatican city are pretty impressive, as is the whole history of the country itself.

The brand new temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was also one of our early stops in Rome. The difference between going through the Vatican and the Temple (what we believe to be the House of The Lord) was palpable. I'm grateful for the knowledge of Christ's restored gospel and the peace we can find in the Temple.

Next stop - the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. Again, the scale of everything was just insane. We could not get over how old some of the ruins actually were. Neither of us had ever seen anything that was preserved for that long.

The Trevi Fountain was spectacular. It was amazing how parts of the sea shore were built into the building behind it, making it look like it was overtaking the building. Lots of tourists for good reason!

The Capuchin Crypt was one of the most memorable/disturbing things we saw. Underneath the Capuchin Chapel are several tiny chapels decorated solely with bones from the Capuchin Friars. They also had soil from the Holy Land there that Friars are honorarily buried in. The walls and ceilings were covered in bone art - definitely a little creepy. Apparently they view skeletal remains and bones as a was to look forward to the resurrection. These were the only crypts we saw in Rome, but it was enough for me.

The Spanish Steps

Tuscany countryside

After Rome we rented a car and drove though the Tuscany countryside to get to these amazing hot springs tucked away in the hills. The water was crystal clear, steamy warm, and absolutely beautiful. I could have done without the old European men in their loose Speedos though.

And of course Dave found the only guy offering "white-water rafting" in Italy. It was definitely a scenic boat ride down the river, but not many rapids. It felt like we were somewhere tropical, with the bamboo and vines everywhere.

Dave and the guide jumped in at a small rapid. If you can't tell by the look on his face, the water was very cold. No thank you.

Seafood on the Coast. Shrimp with everything still intact is about as adventurous as I get with seafood.

Pisa

Next we drove up to Pisa to see the leaning tower of Pisa. Pisa itself was absolutely beautiful, and their leaning bell tower was as magnificent as it looks.

We climbed to the top of the leaning tower, and it was extremely disorienting. The minute we walked into the building (even just on the ground floor) I started getting nauseous and motion sick. Climbing the stairs was like walking through a fun house that had different angle floors that kept switching back and forth. I was glad to be back on the flat, level ground when we were done.

The baptistry in the same square as the bell tower was also quite spectacular.

Florence

We ditched the car in Florence and opted for Segways instead. It was a first for both of us and a fun way to take a city tour. We didn't even fall!

There is a big beautiful river running through the middle of Florence, and the bridge in the background is particularly famous. Apparently the Medici Family built passages above the streets connecting buildings so they didn't have to mingle with the commoners. There were several of these overhead passages throughout the city. This is also where we saw a Dolce and Gabbana model during her photo shoot (who we later saw on posters all over Venice).

Dave signed us up for a cooking class in Florence to mix things up - it was so fun! We learned how to make pizza the Italian way and how to make Gelato (as if we weren't already eating way too much of both of those things).

These guys greeted us as we climbed to the top of the dome in the middle of the city. There were great views once we got to the top.

Apparently the architect of the dome was not planning on tall Americans using his passageways. It was a tight squeeze to get up there!

Venice

Here is my hero/"beast of burden" (as the Italians like to call work animals), carrying most of our luggage up and down the bridges crossing the canals in Venice.

One of our first stops was St. Mark's Basilica, and it turned out to be one of Dave's favorite places.

He liked it so much because of the story of how it came about. Apparently the city was looking for a new patron saint and the people at the time really valued any sort of relics from the saints. A group of Venetians went down to Egypt (where St. Mark's remains were), stole most of his bones, and smuggled them back to Venice. They knew the Egyptians wouldn't let them cross their borders with his bones, so they hid them in the bottom of a barrel filled with Pork. They used pork because they knew the Muslims did not want to even see pork, let alone touch it, so they wouldn't search through that barrel. This whole story is depicted in the Mosaic below. Can you believe that all of the artwork is actually mosaics?!

Seeing the canals and the waterways throughout the city in person was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I have been to a lot of places around the world, but I've never seen anything like this. It was truly amazing.

I was so interested in the fact that the water was actually creeping up over the front steps of many of the homes that had doorways onto the canal. In many cases the water was actually overtaking the first floor and people simply moved up a floor.

On the day of our 10-year anniversary, May 9th, Dave set up a gondola ride for us through the canals with a couple Italian men serenading us and all. I sure love him and am grateful every day we found each other.

Dave's favorite part of our anniversary was dinner. The food was everything.

A different day in Venice we took a boat tour around to several of the various islands. Murano is the island famous for it's hand-blown glass and we were able to watch one of the masters make a stallion right in front of us. I was in awe of how much skill it took to make something so intricate when they had to work so quickly with such hot material.

We stayed in one of the bed and breakfasts in Venice proper and our room came complete with a hand-blown glass chandelier. Not exactly my style, but very cool to see.

This was Burano, where they are famous for making lace. I learned that each of the houses is painted a different color for each family. The same colored homes were in the same family. I thought they just painted their house their favorite color. ;-)

Venice is also apparently famous for it's beautiful masks. Unfortunately I couldn't take this one home so we snapped a picture.

Here's to many, many more years together!

April 2019

We had an opportunity to take all of our children to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' temple in Denver for a short tour of the grounds with a guide. We talked about how it is a sacred place because it is God's house where we make covenants with him, and the kids could really feel the spirit and knew it was special. It is particularly neat to see Cole feel the spirit and start to develop his own testimony of Jesus Christ and his gospel.

On a lighter note, we have been outside much more this month and Macy's new favorite thing is her swing. She's even learned how to say "Weeeee!" when you push her - cutest thing ever.

A close second to her swing is the push car. She can climb and fall out of this one though, so not one of my favorites right now.

This smile and happy girl are always on my favorites list.

Another happy girl.

Macy found one of the dolly bottles and knew exactly what to do with it. Unfortunately for Clara, her aim was not quite on... 😂

Macy has recently discovered the kitchen windows and loves standing on the counters and telling me all about everything she sees. I love her chatter.

This has been a more common occurrence at our house than I would like. Poor girl is teething something mad and has had a cold, making both of us lose a lot of sleep.

I finally mastered baking cinnamon rolls in Colorado Springs! Between the high altitude and the bad oven in our rental house it has taken me quite a while to figure it out, but here's to many more good batches!

I found this valentine from Cole from last year stuck to my notebook the other day and it made my heart happy. I sure love that boy and I think the feeling is mutual. ❤

Clara recently started taking a gymnastics class at the same time as Lexi and this was her first time in the harness on the trampoline. I'm not sure she really understood how it worked, but she was pretty proud of herself afterward.

I'm learning that this is going to be a regular occurrence at our house during the months of April and May. We have beautiful, warm spring days followed by amazing drops in temperature and snow. Our inventory of big buckets has tripled this month, and the small cement bricks are perfect for keeping them in place with the wind. 

Lexi still managed to fit into Macy's car seat and Macy thought it was pretty funny.

Cole lost one of his teeth at school this month, and he came home defiantly proclaiming (in front of his three little sisters) that he knew that the tooth fairy was not real and that Mom and Dad were the ones who put money under his pillow. I told him he better be careful what he says or the tooth fairy might not come. The next morning he sheepishly told me (after quite a while) that he still believed in the tooth fairy. I asked him why and he said that she had left him a few quarters with a note. It took him even longer to tell me what the note said - he was definitely put back in his place by her. 😂

Lexi finally lost her first tooth at the end of her kindergarten year! After Cole's experience with the tooth fairy earlier in the week she was a true believer in the tooth fairy and was thrilled to find her tooth gone and money under her pillow in the morning.

Clara dressing up in half her mermaid costume and Grandpa Blacker's boots. She thought she was pretty cute.

Grandma and Grandpa Blacker came up for a visit and brought some Easter candy for the kids. This was Macy's first time having a piece of chocolate candy. Needless to say, she loves chocolate as much as her mama.

Happy Easter!

Lexi's primary teacher gave her this sign to color for Easter - she was so proud of it that we had to laminate it for her to put in her bedroom.

Easter baskets and egg hunts are a favorite at our house. As the kids get older the hidden eggs are getting trickier to find, meaning we're finding them for days after the initial hunt. I love it.

The older kids loved their Easter egg hunt this year, but Macy was more fascinated by the plethora of open eggs than she was anything else.

Cole participated in his first pinewood derby this year. Thanks to Grandpa Blacker for lots of help in designing and carving his car, and Dad for helping him paint it, he had a pretty fancy looking car (#8).

Unfortunately for him the other boys had some pretty fast cars and his didn't do so well in the races. He was a little frustrated at the end, but overall a happy kid.

Cole had his second piano recital this month and played, "The way you look tonight". He had the whole thing memorized are really did quite well. We love his teacher, Mrs. Howe.

Our fishies at swim lessons.

Dave and I had a rare night on the town to go see the comedian Jim Gaffigan when he came to The Springs.

Macy has discovered the stairs in the bunk bed room and was so proud that she could get up on the bed herself. I found her reading a little book all by herself.

Cole has been working on this Pokemon with our iron beads for about a month and a half, and he finally finished (thank goodness!). His attention span is not the greatest for big projects, but he was proud to finally finish it.