Family Blog 2

A lot has happened in the in the last few weeks. Here's an update. Sarah needed to get her labs drawn. Since I was at work and Sarah is almost an adult she wanted to go and get them done herself. Since she was not 18 yet, the registration clerk had to call me to get permission for her to get her labs drawn. Luckily, I was able to take the call while I was at work and give verbal permission. Here is Sarah after she got her labs--very proud of her 'adulting' ability.

Matthew had a birthday amongst all the chaos that was happening in our family from Daniel coming home from his mission, planning his homecoming, Josh coming home from FSY, getting Sarah prepared for her mission, we decided to celebrate with dinner out at Red Robin--Matthew's choice. We all had a yummy dinner and were able to watch Matthew open his presents. Red Robin doesn't do anything special for birthdays anymore, but our server went above and beyond and made him a special birthday sundae which he thoroughly enjoyed. Here he is unwrapping his presents:

Happy birthday Matthew!

Matthew always loves celebrating his birthday. Matthew's new house manager wanted to help support that and planned a big birthday party celebration for Matthew. Matthew was so excited about his party. He loves law enforcement and has gotten to know the law enforcement officers in his new city. The reason why he has gotten to know them is because he loves going to the railroad tracks to watch the trains when he has some free time. Some aware and concerned citizens who don't know Matthew were concerned for his mental well being and have called the police to do a welfare check on him. This has happened enough times that they now know Matthew and know that he just loves watching the trains and does not want to do anything else besides just watch them. Since Matthew loves everyone and wants everyone to celebrate his birthday he emailed the police chief 5 different times requesting that they come to his birthday party. Matthew also emailed all the special olympics Utah people to invite them as well. His poor house manager did not have any idea Matthew did any of that, but he rolled with the punches. They cooked up hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone that came. Matthew was in heaven. Two police officers even showed up with their lights on to celebrate Matthew. They gave him these cool items--a custom patch and pin:

Matthew was so excited to see them come:

A lot of the people from his special needs programs came as well as the CEO, CFO of Northern Utah Special Olympics. It was fun. After eating hamburgers and hot dogs we got to watch Matthew open his presents and play a trivia game about Matthew. I am grateful his new house manager did so much for him.

Daniel had his missionary homecoming. He spoke at our church then we had a family and friends get together afterward at a city park. It was a great day. It was nice hearing Daniel speak about experiences he had on his mission and then catch up with friends and family. We did have a bit of crazy morning that Sunday though. Josh had just gotten back from FSY the day before. Had had been dealing with a head cold at the beginning of the week and it had gotten better, but got drastically worse Sunday morning. He had a pink, goopy eye with a terrible cough and felt miserable. I had to go to meetings so Aaron took Josh into the Urgent Care to be seen. Josh ended up having bacterial pink eye and bronchitis. The doctor gave him antibiotic drops for his eye, an inhaler to help loosen up the tightness in his chest so he could breath easier, a 5 day course of steroid pills, a shot of Rocephin antibiotic to help with the bronchitis as well as a round of oral antibiotics for 10 days. Poor guy. He was not doing super. Josh stayed home from all the homecoming stuff, but he slept most of the day anyway, because he felt so bad. Anyway we are glad Daniel is home.

Here is everyone at the park for the luncheon:

The Tuesday after Daniel's homecoming we had a trip planned. Aaron and I had found a great price on airfare to Italy back in December and decided to purchase them thinking August was a ways away from December. It came up faster than we had planned, but we were ready. We flew out of Provo airport. We had to leave our house at 3:30am so we were all pretty tired when we got to the airport. The fun things about flying out of a small airport is walking outside to board the plane:

We did have a six hour layover in the DFW (Dallas, Fort Worth airport) before we caught our plane to Rome. During that time we rented a car. We ate lunch at Taco Bueno (or Taco No Bueno as a few people refer to it--haha!). This is where Aaron ate school lunch all throughout high school.

Anyway after a quick lunch we drove over to visit G&G Mancil at Grandpa Mancil's assisted living facility:

Then we went to visit Aunt Jill and Lila. It was great to visit with them.

Then we returned the rental car, went back through security and boarded our 10 hour 20 minute flight to Rome with not much extra time.

It was an overnight flight, but as always, sleeping on the plane is not easy. We landed at noon in Rome. We dropped off our luggage at our Air BnB and set out to walk around. That first day the jet lag is killer, but if you keep walking and stay active until that evening it makes the transition to that local time zone easier. That meant we had been up for 32 hours until we could go to sleep. All of us were so tired, but we persevered. We saw a lot of fun highlights like the Trevi Fountain:

The Spanish Steps:

We even climbed up them and visited the cathedral at the top:

Around Rome they have these cool public drinking fountains called Nasoni (Italian for Big Nose) that continuously put out fresh, cool, clean drinking water from an aquifer that was used anciently. It was so hot that used these often to refill our water bottles.

We went to the top of Piazza Del Popolo to see the views in the corner of the Villa Borghesa gardens:

Then we walked down the stairs to see it up close:

They have cobblestones all throughout the city roads. They reflect the heat and were hot, but cool to see and walk on.

They have quite a few obelisks around the city. This one is called The Flaminio Obelisk. It was built in 1300BC in Egypt and brought to Rome in 10 BC.

We stopped by a pasta place for a quick dinner. It was yummy!

Refilling our water bottles. It was unseasonably hot while we were there--about 15 degrees hotter than normal. It ran about 99 degrees every day with high humidity. We refilled our water bottles often!

Here's a few different things we walked by until we gave up to go back to the Air BnB to go to bed because we were all exhausted.

We kind of slept through the night. There is an 8 hour difference between Utah and Rome time so it took some adjusting with sleep. We got up early the next morning and headed over to our scheduled time at the Colosseum. We walked around the outside to get a good view.

Then we used our tickets and got to see it from the inside:

I got a guide book and read about the history and significance of the Colosseum:

Then we headed over the Roman Forum (Rome ancient downtown) and Palatine Hill. Rome is located over 7 hills. Palatine Hill is the centermost hill of those seven hills.

Here is the Arch of Constantine:

Temple of Venus:

After the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill we stopped by to try a street food called Suppli. It is a piece of mozzarella cheese wrapped with rice and tomato sauce, breaded and deep fried. It was yummy!

We then walked over the the Vittoriano Monument to check it out. It is a monument started in in 1885 and finished in 1935 to honor King Victor Emmanuel II.

The views of the Roman Forum from the top were amazing!

Next to the Vittoriano was a really cool really plain looking church called Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. It has A LOT of steps to get up to it, but it was worth it. Here is Sarah and Aaron hiking up the steps to get inside.

Despite being so plain on the outside the inside is beautiful. We sat down for a few minutes to admire the inside (as well as catch our breath from going up all the stairs).

Here's the altar:

The ceiling:

There were a bunch of mini chapels around the edges of the church that we looked at as well. After that we headed over to the Piazza Aracoeli. Then we started heading back to our Air BnB, but stopped for gelato on our way. YUM!! Daniel had to be extra careful while we were in Rome because he has a severe allergy to pistachios and they are in EVERYTHING there. We made sure to bring his Epi pens and other meds just in case. It was anxiety inducing, but he stayed safe. The gelato was good! This was one time of many that we got some.

After making a pit stop at our Air BnB we headed back out. We stopped by the top of Piazzo del Popolo again to take a sunset picture:

Then we went down to meet up with our Golf Cart Tour driver at the piazza. Last year when Aaron and I were in Rome we did a golf cart tour and it was one of the funnest things we did on that whole trip. They can zip in and out of traffic and get you into see places you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Since it was such a fun experience last time we wanted to do it with the kids this time. Unfortunately, things did not go super smooth. Our golf cart driver did not show up. After repeated attempts to contact the company they finally got back to Aaron and sent a different driver to get started. We were 30 minutes late, but at least we were able to start the tour. The driver took us past the U.S. Embassy:

We got to drive past the Colosseum at night:

He took us to a cool lookout spot where you could see a panorama of Rome with St. Peter's Basilica dome in the Vatican on the background. In the picture St. Peter's Basilica dome is the small bright spot right above Josh's head:

You can see the dome a bit better in this picture:

We stopped by to see a cool church as well:

Then we stopped by the Keyhole of Malta. At this time our golf cart was having some issues. Our driver had stopped it earlier to trouble shoot why it was making a grinding noise, but couldn't quite figure out the problem. He had called the company mechanic and they couldn't figure out the problem so they let him keep driving. We stopped at the Keyhole so the driver could really look at everything because the cart was driving rough and making a grinding noise. We were here for about 20 minutes. The line to look through the keyhole was long. By the time our driver figured anything out and it was time to go we hadn't even gotten close to the front of the line to look through the keyhole. We got out of line and jumped back into the golf cart to continue our tour.

We stopped by the Circus Maximus. It was an arena for slaves to compete with their chariots for a chance at freedom. You can't see it very well in the picture, but here is an old oval racing track behind us.

Then our driver took us over to the Piazza Novona to look at the cool fountains and over the piazza.

Our next stop was the Pantheon. It was cool to see it lit up at night. Our cart was having serious issues at this point so we were stuck here for about 30 minutes when our driver came over to let us know the wheels on the cart are stuck and aren't turning anymore and that our tour was now over. He was going to order a cab for us to get back to our Air BnB, but after waiting another 30 minutes the cab never showed up. We decided to walk back since we weren't too far away (30 minute walk) from our Air BnB.

On our walk back we stopped by the Sant 'Ignazio of Loyola Cathedral. They have a really cool painted ceiling. They have a mirror at the base where if you pay one Euro it will allow you to see the entire lit up ceiling. We paid the Euro and enjoyed the lit up ceiling for the 2 minutes it allows per Euro.