Can't believe we are here!

I feel awful that I haven't updated the family blog for soooo long. Things as always are busy in Timor. We keep saying it will slow down but it never does... until now! We are on R&R in Italy. We made the 23 hour travel from Timor to Singapore, Singapore to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Rome, yesterday and have already done lots of amazing touristy things PLUS (more importantly and way more fun for the kids) has so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa. We arrived in Rome at 8am local time so we had the whole day a head of us. We headed back to their way-bigger-then-I -expected-it-to-be apatment dropped off our stuff, shoveled in some yummy snacks and headed down to the Collesium. Sam was thrilled to take the metro and thought the grafitti was "super cool". When we steped out of the metro we were RIGHT at the collesium, it was nuts. I of course reached behind me for my camera, which is always there, and grabbed air. I had totally left it at the apartment. What the WHAT is wrong with me? Oh yeah, I had been traveling FOREVER with 3 cuties (one who cried so much that she is STILL hoarse) sp I blame it on that :) Luckily Chris had out trusty video camera in his pocket and the batteries didn't die until near the end ha! We are soooo prepared it is inspiring ;) The first thing that struck me, ironically enough, was that there were no cars zooming around the roung about in front. I asked what was up and we discovered that the roads are closed to traffic on Sundays! AWESOME!!! This meant the boys and Abby could chase pigeons to their hearts delight. Which is what they did, while we stood talking about ancient Rome and how when I saw the Arch going up to the cellesium I would have freaked out if I had been a gladiator. That thing is HUGE! It was fabulous weather and the trip was made even better by Gelato!!

People were stopping and taking pictures of the boys. Which was hilarious because I am so immune to their messes now I barely even noticed. I only did when I realized Liam had basically ruined the soccer shirt grandma had given him an hour ago. We cruised up the middle of the street and got some cool pictures that you could not get if there was traffic (I am saving these for later). WE walked past the Palatine, Trajans market etc and then headed home. what is so great about being here for so long is that we can do it bit by bit and really enjoy it. Today we took a nice slow day. We headed to the mall and Jan and Chris were nice enough to take the kids to the kiddie stores while I spent FOREVER in Zara Kids, H&M and some local stores dying over how cute the close were and agonizing over which I could buy. It is almost worse when Chris doesn't give me a limit and just says I trust you. Ughhhh. We had a delicious lunch (picture the boys eating bowls of fruit the size of their heads) and then headed to Ikea. This made me so happy because I immediatly felt like I was home. The boys thought the automatic icecream machine was super cool!

Liam would lick off all the chocolate and then want to watch it work again.

We headed home and took some much needed naps and played around the apartment. Grandma and Grandpa have a gorgeous wrap around balcony that Abby and I really like playing on. The light is so fabulous. This is she and I in the doorway a bit over exposed, but still I love the light pouring in the doors

Abby likes looking at all of Grandmas plants

smelling the one rose

and sneaking up and pulling the clothes off the line. I try to stop her but that girl can hussel right past me

While everyone was sleeping Sammy laid on the bed with me and just looked out the window for a while

Then this evening we were able to attend a fireside with Elder Ballard. It was so uplifting and fantastic to be in a Church listening to an Apostle of the Lord. He and his lovely wife were so cute when they spoke about each other I LOVE it. They have 7 kids like the Crawfords and 43 granchildren so Rick teased that means Robyn and I both have to hav 12 more.... um I don't think we are going to make it ha! Lots more to come!
PS I just clicked spell check and the entire page was highlighted and I couldn't figure out why, until I realized it is not in Italian so nothing is spelled right ha! Sorry if there are a bunch of errors.