Holbrook Family Reunion

Just a few days after Julie's family left, we had the Holbrook family reunion at Westgate. I spent 2 days doing laundry and cleaning up the housing and packing, and then midway through Monday, we drove up to Park City. We had a fun week! Daniel worked a tiny bit, but nothing compared to last time we had the reunion, when he basically worked the whole time. So he got to do a lot more mountain biking. He even took Jennie up a couple of times to try it, and he took Brooke one time, too. 

We spent the week swimming, mostly. And hanging out with cousins. One day, a bunch of people took a long walk down to the big barn on the side of the highway, and they took my kids with them. It ended up being an almost 4 mile walk, and they said my kids managed very well. Sawyer, it seems, was carried by various people for about half the time. But they had fun! I walked down to meet up with them after my workout. 

Camille really struggled with her broken arm and wanting to swim. We got her this cast bag to put over her arm so she could swim, but it was damaged and didn't do a great job. We double bagged it, but it still got wet several times, and we kept having to tell her to get out of the pool to let it dry and to stop playing so hard in the pool. We ended up getting her another one, which worked better. But it was quite a frustration to her all week. 

Brooke and I went on a long hike up in the mountains above Park City with Jennie, Aleah, Harrison, Brixton, Brooklyn, and Bekah. It was strenuous for a lot of the uphill, and we were quite tired before we were all the way done. At the top, Aleah took Brooklyn, Harrison and Brixton down on the ski lift because they were done hiking and didn't want to walk back down. We had a good time. 

On Friday, our last day there, we went to the kids activity center to do crafts and play games. We had a couple of rousing games of giant jenga and twister, which my kids and the cousins all loved. 

This reunion was a little different than others in that we didn't hang out much with people in the evening after dinners. We used to get together more to play games at night, but no one seemed particularly interested this time. A bunch of the adult ladies and Brooklyn and Bailey came to our room one night to play games. But we didn't stay up very late, and that was the only game night we had. I think because everyone was in their own rooms and didn't have to share as much as in times past that it didn't force us to be together as much in the evening. I also ended up staying the room at nights after the kids were in bed while Daniel did things like biking and visiting with his siblings. I just read a lot, and it was good. 

All in all, we love the family reunion every other year, getting together and making memories and building relationships. It's the best! 

Julie's Visit

 A mere week and a half after we got back from Europe, Julie and her boys came to visit us. That week and a half was busy. Daniel and I were trying to get back into the swing of things, and we were recovering from jet lag. That took at least a few days. 

I had a bunco night a couple days after getting home. We just got together and went out to dinner together and chatted. It was a perfect low-key girls night out to start off the summer. 

Then the next night, Daniel's work threw a big party for families. It took place at the aquarium and the park just outside. It was so fun! We didn't even make it into the aquarium, there were so many activities to go outside. The kids got their faces painted, Daniel and I had our caricature drawn, and Camille and Daniel participated in some group games. Camille even won a crumbl gift card. There was so much food and drinks and treats that we ate (they had hired a bunch of food trucks and other food businesses to come feed us), the boys played on the playground, and the kids did some fun ocean themed crafts. It was actually so fun. We had a great time and stayed much later than we planned, and the kids all moaned when it was time to go. 

The next week, Daniel went to California to meet with some of his team based out there. I was left with the kids by myself, but it was fine. I went to the temple one day, while the kids went up Sarah's house. I had book club one night. Sarah and DeAnna and I had a lunch play date at a park that had a splash pad for the kids. Brooke started cheer class at the legacy center. I got a pedicure done (mom and dad had given me a gift card for Christmas and it was about to expire, so I got a babysitter for the kids so I could go use the gift card. 😅). We also spent a lot of time cleaning up our house and getting it ready to have guests.

On Friday, we had plans to go camping with our friends, the Smiths and the Rubens. We went to a campground that's right here in the middle of Lehi. It's actually a nice little campground. We packed up and went in the late afternoon, set up camp and had dinner by the campfire: tin foil dinners, watermelon, dips and chips, and s'mores. It was way fun. Sawyer and I came home for bedtime around 8, and Daniel stayed with the rest of the kids to camp overnight. 

The other reason I came home early was that Julie and her boys arrived that night after driving all day. They came close to 10pm, and I got them all set for bed, and then we all slept.

It was so fun having Julie and the boys visit! I think one of the highlights of their trip here was going to the Saratoga Springs Temple open house on Monday. We went first thing in the morning to walk through the temple, and it was such a great experience. My boys liked it for about half of the walk through. But I think the girls were thrilled with the whole thing. Their favorite part was the celestial room, of course. It's a beautiful temple. I'm excited to start going there when it's dedicated. 

What's funny is that when the big boys (Roman and Ares) saw the temple and the area around it, the nice houses right next to the temple, they started talking about how cool it would be to live right next to the temple. And then they both said that they wanted to move to Utah! They started looking at houses on Zillow and making plans to move here. It was mostly just talk; but they were actually serious! They all want to move to Utah, and I, of course, tried my best to convince them to come. Julie wants a fresh start somewhere new and to escape the craziness that is happening in Oregon, politically. And the boys like it here. I think it'd be awesome if they moved here. For us, but also for them. This looking for houses and talking about moving to Utah was something we did for the rest of their visit. 

The rest of the week went by too quickly. We ate really well, sometimes getting takeout. We got swig at least 4 times, and Julie bought me a nice swig cup that I've been using exclusively ever since. We went to the butterfly biosphere one day. We had Brian and Sammy over for dinner a couple of times, and went to their house to play one afternoon (bringing a couple boxes of Krispy Kreme, which we consumed before we left 😆). The cousins played a ton. Julie and I started watching a new Korean show. We had a great time with them, and we were all so sad when they had to leave the following Friday. 

Italy: Part 3

Day 9                          Rome                    May 28

Our Sunday in Rome was a little more low key. We got up and took public transport to church in a completely different part of the city. It was so interesting to go to church there. I love going to church in different places. It's the same, but very different, too. We talked a little bit with the missionaries there. They asked us where we were visiting from and told us we could use headphones if we needed. There was someone translating the meeting into English. We figured that attendance there was boosted quite a lot because of visitors. Singing hymns in Italian was fun, and then we listened to the meeting in English. I had a very hard time staying awake. We were quite tired by this point in our trip. 

After church, we walked to a bus stop and waited for a bus to take us back into the central part of the city. We had to wait a while, and then we had to change busses a couple of times and wait some more, and eventually just decided to walk it from where we were just outside of the Vatican. 

We did a walking tour of the central, historical part of the city, which was great. We walked all over the city, learning things and seeing things and I loved it. When our tour was over, we went back to the airbnb to snack and rest. We were beat. It had been such a busy trip, we had traveled and played super hard, just walking everywhere and seeing everything. We had surely packed it in. So I feel asleep soon after I lay down. I had a little nap, we ate a little of our groceries, and then we went back out to the city. 

Our last thing we did that day was go to this huge garden in the middle of the city and walked around it. We read scriptures together on a park bench, and just took it easy. Our walk was lovely, and Rome looked beautiful that night. We decided we weren't really hungry for dinner. So we went to get another gelato, probably my favorite flavor of the trip, buontalenti, and then went back to the airbnb and ate what we had and went to bed. 

Day 10              Rome ---> Zurich               May 29

Our last day in Rome was another packed one. We were flying to Zurich at the end of the day, and our main event was going to the Vatican. 

We spent the morning checking out of our airbnb and dropping our luggage with a luggage company. Then we walked over to the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica from the outside and finish our souvenir shopping for my parents. We got Dad a t-shirt and Mom really wanted a replica of the Pieta. The lady in the store was really pushing me hard to buy a big fancy Pieta that cost like $300. But we bought something a little smaller and more modest. I hope mom likes it. 

We did a walking tour of the pantheon quickly, which was really cool, and found a bakery and tried cannoli, which I'd wanted to try while we were in Italy. Daniel wasn't a fan, because it was kind of like a donut and a cupcake had a baby, and it was too sweet. But I thought they were good! Much better than normal donuts. 

Our tour of the Vatican was very cool. We had a cute Italian girl tour guide. She was very nice and told really cool stories. She walked us through the Vatican museums to mostly the highlights (like the "marble zoo", which was a room consisting mainly of animal statues; and the hall of maps), and then took us to the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was incredible! We were required to be completely silent when we went in; there were guards all around the walls telling everyone to be quiet. And we couldn't take pictures at all. The crowd of people inside of the Sistine Chapel was crazy -- there were so many people! And we only had 15 or 20 minutes to look around. It's crazy to think of Michelangelo up there painting the ceiling. 

Our last stop on the tour was the Basilica. St. Peter's Basilica is enormous. It's hard to comprehend and take in how big it is. We continued with our tour to the Pieta, which was amazing. Two interesting facts about the Pieta: 1) it's the only piece of work that Michelangelo signed (you can see it on Mary's sash), and whatever pope had commissioned the piece was really irritated with Michelangelo about it; 2) sometime in the 1970s, a criminal came into the basilica and smashed Mary's face to pieces (I gaped loudly when she told us this, I can't imagine someone smashing up Michelangelo's work! That is absolute blasphemy!) -- it has since been restored -- and the Pieta now sits behind a plastic panel to protect it. 

Daniel and I left the tour at this point to explore the church before running to catch our bus to the airport. We walked around in complete awe at the grandeur of it. It was so detailed and intricate and beautiful. I admit, I got a little emotional again walking around in there. 

Day 11                 Zurich ---> Home          May 30

Our journey back home was uneventful. We flew to Zurich from Rome and arrived there late in the night. It was after midnight when we finally got to our hotel to sleep. And we had to get up at, like, 5am to catch our flight to Paris. And from Paris, it was another long flight back to Salt Lake. We tried to sleep. But mostly we watched movies, and I read my book a bit. We survived another long flight. 

It was so wonderful to come home to our babies! Mom Holbrook picked us up at the airport, and she had all the kids with her. It was so nice to see them. We told them about our trip and showed them some pictures and gave each of them their souvenirs. We were very tired, and it was such an incredible, fully packed trip! But there's no place like home. 

Italy: Part 2

 Day 8                Florence                   May 26

Going to see David at L'Academia was our first adventure this day. Daniel had reservations early in the morning, which meant we got to skip all the lines to get in. 

Seeing the David is something I have looked forward to for years, since my art history class at BYU. Combine my fascination with the human body and my love of good art, and you've created the perfect circumstances in which I would be completely in love with the David.

Our audio tour took us around other parts of the museum first, to see some paintings and the statue The rape of the Sabine women, which is incredible to see in real life. We went to see an exhibit of musical instruments, which was kind of fun to see. There were some really interesting instruments, some that I'd never seen or heard of before.

Eventually we made our way towards the David. The hallway leading to him is lined with others of Michelangelo's works, his prisoners series -- a number of statues that look like they are trying to break out of the rock in which they're entrapped. They're very cool. When we finally made our way up to the David, I got really emotional. I was totally tearing up, trying not to cry seeing him, because that would definitely be weird. What kind of psycho cries at seeing a statue? 😂😅 Daniel would have made fun of me. 

David is absolutely awe inspiring, majestic and incredible. He's massive, like 17 feet tall, and so life like. As you walk around him, his facial expression appears to change, and you can see actual emotion on his face. It really seems like he's real almost. The detail that Michelangelo used in his body is hard to fathom. You can see veins and tendons, tension in his muscles and actual individual hairs. It's insane. I would've spent way more time there walking around him and hanging out with him than we actually did. 😂 We wandered the rest of the museum and looked at the art, every now and then going back to the David. It was one of the highlights of the trip. 

We spent the first part of the morning at L'Academia, and we still had the whole day left. We walked to the outdoor market, which was close by, where booths and tents were set up to sell souvenirs and leather goods to tourists. We bought some souvenirs for our parents and the kids there, and Daniel was convinced to go try on some leather jackets. There was a tent set up seeking leather jackets, and the guys working there snagged Daniel to try on some jackets. They led us behind the tent to a shop front, where this cute little Italian guy worked really hard to sell Daniel on a jacket. He told Daniel to just try one on for fun. And Daniel really went with it! He tried on probably 4 or 5 jackets and found one that he really liked... but it would have been $250 euros. He looked very hot, and that guy definitely thought he had a sale in Daniel. But Daniel said no, and, as is his way, he was very firm in his no. We walked out and the guy was super bugged about it. And the guys at the tent were bugged. It was all kind of humorous. 

One thing that I found interesting about shopping in Italy was that, even if someone was trying to sell something to Daniel, they directed all of their comments and sales talk to me. They would extol the virtues of whatever product it was, to me, instead of Daniel, who was the one thinking of buying it. It was very funny. I wonder if that's a cultural thing, like the women do most of the shopping or have pickier taste or something. 

After our shopping, we went to the indoor market. It's this crazy big warehouse that housed a bunch of vendors selling all kinds of food things: meats and cheeses, olives, fruits and vegetables, oils and vinegars, bread and pastries and pastas. There were even a few restaurants set up inside. We walked around for a while trying to decide what to buy. It was hard to decide! Eventually we bought bread and rolls, fruit and veggies and tomatoes. Then we walked upstairs, where there was a large seating area for dining and a bunch more restaurants, and we ate our little simple lunch. It was delish. 

We walked down to the Catedral di Santa Maria del Fiori, or what people basically just call the Duomo. The church is BEAUTIFUL, and gigantic. The dome is incredible, and massive, and I was just in awe standing in front of it, walking around it and taking it all in. We went into the baptistry first, but it was a little disappointing because they had a big scaffold in the center and were doing some restoration work on it. So we only got to see part of it. 

We had reservations to climb up the Duomo, so we got at the end of a long line to do that. It was quite a workout to climb all the way to the top, and there were narrow stairways and tightly coiled staircases that made me dizzy walking up and down them. The climb up the dome has a section on the inside of the dome, so that we could see the painting on the ceiling, and Final Judgment depiction by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari. The hell portion of that painting is the creepiest. 

When we finally got up to the top, I was sweating. It was a warm day already, and the stairs and tiny hallways up there were very stuffy. But the view was incredible! We could see all around, not just over the top of Florence, but the surrounding hills and towns. I could've stayed up there longer than we were allowed. 

After the Duomo, we did a walking tour (another Rick Steves) around the heart of Florence, stopping by a lot of the things we'd already seen, all the way to the Arno River and the Ponte Vecchio, which we walked across. I loved all the history we heard as listened to all our tours on this trip. 

There was one moment during our walking tour when we were looking at the facade of a church, surrounded by so many beautiful buildings and so much art, feeling the charm of Florence and getting vibes from just the oldness of the place. We rounded the corner, and an Italian man was singing opera in the square in front of the church, surrounded by crowds of people. It was beautiful. And the combination of all these things, plus realizing that I was living one of my dreams, took my breath away. And I started crying. It was just such a beautiful moment for me. I tried not to let Daniel see... I think he would've laughed at me for crying. 😆

We walked across the Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the river and just walked that part of the city for a while. We didn't do anything really noteworthy over there. There was an old palace that would've been great to see, but it was closed by the time we got there. So we just wandered a lot. We ended up going to a very popular eating place on that side of the river. We got there some minutes before it opened, and it already had a line down the street and around the corner. The line went fast, so we didn't have to wait too long, and we played a game on Daniel's phone while we waited. The food was good! We had a ravioli dish, fried garbanzo beans, spaghetti and ragu, and the roast beef. I think the pasta dishes were our favorite. 

We had a beautiful sunset on our walk back across the river to our airbnb. We didn't stay out too much longer after dinner. We'd done a ton of walking and we were pretty tired.

Day 9              Florence ---> Rome             May 27

First thing in the morning, we packed up and walked to the train station. I requested that we leave with enough time that we didn't have to run. Which we didn't. 😂 We even had time to walk to and around a little piazza in front of another cute church, right next to the train station. 

The train ride was uneventful, thank the heavens. And we got to Rome sometime in the middle of the day. The first thing we did was walk to a luggage drop company. We paid them to take our bags for the day and then deliver them to us at our airbnb in the evening. It was such a relief to NOT have our bags on us the whole day. 

Then, we only had a little bit of time to make it to the Colosseum, and it was, like, a 25 minute walk. So, we decided to hop on these motorized scooters that were by the station that you could just rent, and we made our way to the Colosseum. Was it the safest way to travel? For sure no. Was it fun as heck?? YES!! I mean, I at least had fun. We had to drive kind of in the road with all the traffic, because the sidewalks had too many people, it was hard to navigate around them. And Daniel kept having to stop us so that he could check the map and make sure we were going the right way. We made sharp turns and went down side streets and tried not to get hit by cars. 😂 It was so fun! 

It took a bit of time to find an acceptable place to ditch the scooters before we could go to the Colosseum. And then we walked over there, got in line and started our audio tour. It was very cool to see and learn about. But man! It was hot, and very crowded. The sun was right overhead, and there was very little shade in the place. In glad we got to see it, though. 

We walked across the street to a little shaded staircase to eat. We just ate what was left of our fruit and bread and tomatoes that we'd bought in Florence. And then headed to the Roman Forum, just right down the street from the Colosseum, which is a huge area with a ton of old ruins. It was amazing! 

We headed to our airbnb at this point in the day, just walking through the city, stopping by the Trevi Fountain on the way.  It was gorgeous, seriously impressive. But so crowded. There were hundreds of people there, so it was hard to get a really good look at it, or a picture of it. It kind of makes me feel bad for the people that live there, who can't enjoy their city as much for the crowds of people. 

We were both none too impressed with Rome in general. It's just another city, but with a ton of history and lots of ruins. People go for the history and ruins; that's why we went. But aside from that, it's just another huge city. Lots of people, lots of traffic, buildings, weird smells.

After getting settled in our place and resting a bit, we went out for some food and to a grocery store. We found a place on Google maps that looked good, and then when we went to find it, we had the hardest time. We walked around the block where it was supposed to be, like, 3 times trying to find it, and eventually found the place where it was supposed to be. It was closed. The gate was down, and the sign was super tiny. No wonder we had completely missed it! The guy at the restaurant just a few paces away told us it was closed down when we finally found it. We went to another restaurant and had pastas for dinner: Daniel had another lasagna (not as good as the first we had) and I got a seafood pasta that was good, but not great. 

We found a little interesting grocery store to buy groceries for the next day. It was on the ground floor of a huge building, and it had these little rooms with food: a pasta room and a household supplies room, a hallway with meats and cheeses, another room for drinks, a hallway for treats. It was so different and interesting. There was also a basement with more household supplies and laundry things. We bought fruit and veggies, olives, crackers and yogurt and cheese. Just things we could eat quickly. I also convinced Daniel to buy some fun treats, what we called Italian twinkies. They were packaged croissants with chocolate cream in the middle. They were pretty good. Daniel liked them quite a lot, more than he thought he would for sure. 

Then it was back to airbnb and off to bed. It was another packed day.