Italy Selfies

Robert and I just got back from a trip to Italy. We visited Venice, Florence, half-day in Pisa, and Rome, all in one week. It was a lot to pack into one week, but that was really the most time we felt we should be away, and then we figured we probably would not go back to Italy for a while so we should just pack as much into it as we could. You would probably need to stay a week in each of those places to do them justice, so we just did the highlights. Which also means we were surrounded by tourists a lot of the time because we were doing the most visited places in each city. So maybe one day we will have to go back and see a little more of the non-touristy Italy.

We did get to see the Italian countryside- from high speed trains as we traveled from city to city.  I love taking public transportation in foreign countries because you get more of a sense of what it's actually like to live there. We spent about eight hours total on the high speed trains travelling around, plus time spent on buses and metros within each city. What was awesome about this trip was that people came up to us all the time in public areas trying to talk to us in Italian. I guess we look Italian?? Unfortunately, although written Italian looks very similar to the Spanish and French Robert and I are familiar with, spoken Italian is not as easy to pick up. We knew only your basic greetings and as soon as we opened our mouths people knew we were not Italian (although, we were not necessarily immediately pinned as Americans. One guy guessed Robert was German. Even if their first language was not English, most tourist still communicated with Italians in English since it's a common second language all over the world).

I would love to blog about each of the cities, and maybe it will happen before July when we have the baby, but until then, here are our selfies from each area. I still haven't even looked at all the pictures from our nice camera, so these were all taken from my phone or Robert's phone.

Venice

"Gondola, Gondola, Gondola!" was the catch phrase in Venezia that all the Gondola drivers used to try to get you to come on a ride with them...which we did. We were super touristy this trip!

You will find I started getting better at taking selfies as the trip went on. These were some early ones before I realized I kept reaching across Robert.

The Grand Canal, below.

On some bridge taking a picture with just some random pretty bridge. You have to be used to going up stairs and bridges if you live in Venice. And walking a lot. There are no cars, so you either take boats (which itself only gets you so far) or walk. Even local deliveries to restock the shops or hotels are done by boat. It's sooo nice and peaceful with no cars though! Get out of the touristy part of town and Venice is absolutely lovely.

Another picture with the Grand Canal. Most of the canals are small like the one in the picture above, but the Grand Canal is, like the name implies, grand. That's where the bigger boats and waterbuses go down, also where the oldest and most famous houses are.

This was from the top of the bell tower in San Marcos square.

Florence

This is from the top of the Duomo, the dome of the most famous church in Firenze and the city's most recognizable piece of architecture. You need to come back to read about the trip up to the top when I finally get around to writing about it, but lets just say Robert might not have done it if he knew what he was getting into.

And here is us safely at the bottom with the Duomo in the background.

Pisa

I forgot my phone in my bag at the coat check when we went up the tower, so Robert has the selfies on his phone. Here's just a picture of the tower and the church I took before we checked our bags. Come back someday to read more about our short trip to Pisa.

Rome

Inside the Colosseum. We got there before it opened and got it as soon as it opened. Half and hour later the inside was crawling with people.

Outside the Colosseum

The Roman forum, which would have been like downtown Roma during Roman times, the most important and bustling part of the city. Those three giant arches to the right behind me are just half of what used to be the Roman Basilica. I always thought a Basilica was another way to say Catholic church. Actually, the orginal Basilica was a Roman invention, a large public building like a town hall, and the Catholic church adopted the same floor plan for their churches after Rome fell and the church became more prominent. Rome history is fascinating because the city has been such an important part of both the history of the Roman Empire and the history of the Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole.

More Roman Forum

In front of the Pantheon. An ancient Roman building that is not a ruin, and is actually still used today. You can thank the Christians for taking over this Pagan temple and using it and up keeping it as a Catholic Church for thousands of years, to this very day.

Inside St. Peters Basilica. Definitely a big church, but I think I was more blown away by some of the interior decorations of some other Catholic churches we've visited, like Notre Dame in France. Still, cool to see the inside.

Outside St. Peters Basilica.

We saw a lot more, this was just our selfies, but it's a good start to writing about what was a trip full of must see sights. I should mention too that we took no selfies in front of any art, but we saw a lot of famous art that was also a highlight of our trip. It is always really cool to see famous pieces in person to see what makes them so spectacular. So come back to read about that too!

Happy Birthday Julia!

For Julia's birthday we went to Lagoon on Saturday and then had a cake for her the next day at home. She got an American Girl doll which she named Kit Kitty, and Grandma Wheat made her doll a matching dress.

 Lagoon on Saturday. I had given Julia the option of going someplace fun like we did for Micah's birthday or having a party with friends. She asked of we could go to Lagoon and I said yes, so she chose Lagoon over a party with friends.

Our Kids are Weird

Our kids fall asleep in weird places:

Julia likes to make her bed in her room someplace not in her bed. This was in an Amazon box. Lately she's been putting down blankets in her closet and sleeping in the closet. Whatever, fine by me as long as she sleeps.

Camden usually stays in his toddler bed when I put him to bed, but this night he was extra wiggly and decided to wander around his room until he finally fell asleep on the rocking chair mid-book.

Poor Micah, I had been busy trying to get everyone ready for bed and he had run off to play downstairs. By the time I was able to go and get him ready for bed he had already wiped out at the bottom of the stairs. I had to double check at first that he was indeed sleeping and hadn't unbeknownst to me fallen down the stairs or something.

 I wonder where they get it from?

 Julia also has some interesting reading positions. She is still a crazy reader.

Some things our 2.5 yr old Camden has told me recently:

• Having a conversation with Camden. He is still looking at me but I can tell he is getting distracted. Then out of the blue he interrupts, "Look at your eyebrows! Look at your pretty eyebrows!" What a Casanova.
• I ran my list of potential boy names past Micah and Camden tonight. They shot down all my names! When I asked them what they wanted to name the baby Micah said Percy or Henry because they are green (both trains from Thomas the Train) and Camden said Greg.
• Me to Camden: You're going to be the big brother! Camden to Me: And you're the big Mommy!

• He also likes to smell my arm and tell me, "Your arm is stinky!" Like, on a daily basis. Like, this is how he likes to greet me first thing in the morning.

The boys have fun dressing up and just looked cute dressed up as a policeman and train engineer. They each asked me to take their pictures, on separate days.

Julia's teacher won teacher of the year at their school and the principal invited the parents to come and surprise her with the announcement. Julia was super excited for our surprise visit, and all the kids were really excited for the award.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Micah!

For Micah's fourth birthday we went to the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium located here in Draper. We were a little afraid we might have a hassle getting caught in traffic because a couple days before Ted Cruz's campaign had announced they were holding a rally at a school right down the street from here, but by the time we got there the rally had already started and the traffic had died down and didn't affect us.

My favorite was watching the penguins, they are quick swimmers!

Micah and Camden both say their favorite was the sharks.

Afterwards we went back to our house which is a quick under ten minute drive for lunch and an aquatic themed ice cream cake. Micah fell asleep in the late afternoon the day before and slept until 6:00 pm, which means he didn't want to go to sleep and he ended up staying up until 11:00 pm with me and helped me make his cake.

When I asked him a few weeks ago what he wanted to do for his birthday (like where we should go to celebrate) he said he wanted to put together a ride on backhoe and that he wanted a backhoe for his birthday. So I found him a ride on frontloader (close enough right?) and after we had cake grandpa and Dad helped put it together for him. Well, after everyone except Micah had cake. That evening I asked Micah how he liked his cake and he said sadly, "Good, except I didn't get to eat any." He had run off to play with his new toys and hadn't gotten any cake! Luckily we had leftovers so I got him some before he went to bed.

Micah at four is such a sweet little boy. He loves to tell people he loves them. He is all about trucks, and a little less about anything else that moves like planes, rockets, and trains. Camden has recently started to like playing dinosaurs, but Micah still just loves his trucks. 

I didn't want to rush him with potty training, so even though I started potty training a couple times in the past year, I backed off if he resisted. So he didn't actually get potty trained until a few months ago when he randomly told me one evening he needed to go pee on the potty, and then said the same thing the next morning again. He still had accidents, but it was a lot nicer than having to force him to to do it and he's doing pretty well going on his own now.

We just put up a bunk bed in his room in anticipation of Camden coming in to share a room a little while after the new baby is born. He likes his new big twin size bed (he was in a toddler bed before, which now Camden sleeps in in his own room, until the baby comes). He does home preschool where one of my friends and I switch off teaching them, focusing on a letter of the week. He's not super interested in his letters but he has started to learn some of them. He always says his favorite part of preschool is playtime when he just gets to play with his friend and the toys.

Julia's class celebrated the 120th day of school because 120 is a counting goal for the first graders (and these first graders can do it in English and Chinese).

I call this the Grandpa Wheat affect:

Julia dresses up like she is 120. I wanted to do her hair in a bun but she is currently anti me doing anything with her hair, even wearing a headband or a bow is too much to ask :) But she really likes to brush her hair while looking in the mirror and likes her short hair.

Another day she was supposed to dress up like a book character. She is a fairy from a Rainbow Magic book. She chose the fairy herself and chose what to wear to make herself look like the fairy. She was into the details like rolled up cuffs and rolled up pants and a belt.

It is starting to warm up- Hallelujah! I've felt like I've been stuck indoors all winter because apparently me being pregnant makes me not like the cold at all so I never went outside unless I had to. I took the boys to a small wetland preserve that is less than a mile from our house. All the plants were still dead, but the ducks were there!

Camden loves doing puzzles. He also loves me to take his picture or video (and give me a cheesy smile) and then have me show the picture or video to him.  He talks so much lately and it reminds me a lot of Julia at that age. I'm constantly thinking how adorable he is with all that he says.

We were looking at this book the other day and I pointed to the milk and asked Micah and Camden what it was. They both said at the same time, "Horchata!"

They all three love books. This week was literacy week at Julia's school and they had a competition to see which class could read the most minutes each day in each grade level. Julia was reading for two hours a day. She read a few Rainbow Magic books, an American Girl book, some other random mermaid book, and a whole lot of Harry Potter. She is currently on the fifth Harry Potter book, which is like 800 pages long so she had lots of reading to do there. She was extra motivated to read this week, but on a normal weekday she will still read for 1/2 hour-1 hour before she goes to bed and occasional all afternoon after school if she is really into a book. Her class won one day out of the five days of the competition (there are four 1st grade classes, so I guess it was good for more classes to be able to win the prize- donuts!)

Zoo

We went to the zoo on Friday with Robert. Our zoo passes are going to expire next month, and Robert had still never been to the zoo with us. In fact, he's never been to the zoo in Salt Lake City and doesn't remember the last time he went to a zoo. So even though it's busy season, he took the morning off and join us on a beautiful Friday at the zoo.

They have a baby giraffe! Willow was born less than 2 months ago, and is just getting her chance at be outside these past couple weeks that the weather has been warmer.