Skip to main content

October 2019 - Travels in Europe

Mr. Chubby (aka Liam or Lum Lum) turned 2! Mark joined us for the festivities. We woke Liam up from his nap—at 6pm, I might add—for a birthday dinner and cake and he wanted none of it. He was mad and pouty, but the rest of us enjoyed the food and fun. We got him a new bug board book, dinosaur gummies, and went to the Butterfly Biosphere as a family to celebrate.

Liam says "Mama!" in different tones to express all of his emotions, similar to Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy.  "Maaaaama!" for happy, "MAMA!" when he's mad, etc.  It's quite comical.  He still doesn't talk a lot but uses the word Mama to communicate what he wants.  He LOVES to read books and do puzzles, wrestle with Kyle, and he is obsessed with food. 

Kyle and I ran off to Europe for 2 weeks and it was amazing!! A huge, huge thank you to my parents for flying out to watch our kids so that we could go on this adventure. They are the absolute best!!

We hit New York, Italy (Rome, Florence, Pompeii, Venice), Greece, and Montenegro. We started with a layover in New York and walked through Central Park. The leaves were changing and you didn’t feel like you were in the city at all, it has always been my favorite spot in New York. We saw St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, walked down 34th Street and 5th Avenue, past the Zoo, the Balto statue, and ate NY pizza.  Oh, and we flew right over the Statue of Liberty on our way in.


We stopped in Munich long enough to watch the sun rise and then continued on to Rome, where we hit the ground running straight from the airport. Day 1 included the Colosseum, Arch of Constantine, and the most wonderful food tour walking through the different neighborhoods of Rome. We started at a family butcher shop with different types of cured meat and Italian cheese, followed by pizza and arancini, 3 types of delicious homemade pasta, and ended with gelato; all while learning about the history of the city.


Day 2 in Rome consisted of St Peter’s, the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, Castel del San Angelo, the Pantheon, Fountain at Trevi, and more homemade pasta, pizza, and gelato.

We took a train to Florence and climbed to the top of the beautiful Duomo.  We saw the David and learned lots about Michelangelo.  It really was amazing to see the way he worked and the beauty he brought out of stone.  Absolutely incredible. 

The next day was followed by a trip to Pompeii.  What a unique city, covered up and preserved for so long.  You can see the spot where Vesuvius blew, the two peaks in this photo were once connected to form a much bigger volcano. 

Then we boarded our cruise in Bari, Italy.  Here’s the view of the sun set from the balcony in our room, and our favorite waiter who made us delicious Indian food on the last night.  We went on this trip with great friends, Brittany and Levi Pardon, and Casey and Jessica Skankey.

Our first port was near Olympia, where we saw the first Olympic flame, large Olympic track, and ancient Temple of Zeus that once housed the ancient-wonder-of-the-world 40-ft tall statue as shown in Disney’s Hercules (with complete accuracy ;).  We saw ancient wonders these past couple of weeks and walked streets that were thousands of years old.  We did a quick comparison for fun--

Rome – 753 BC
Olympia – games started in 776 BC
Pompeii – 600 BC
Athens – current Acropolis 500 BC
Several years ago we visited Jerusalem (western wall 20 BC) and Cairo (pyramids 2500 BC), so the pyramids take the cake.


Stop #2 was Santorini, where we climbed to the top of a volcano, rode donkeys up a cliff, and ate my favorite meal in Greece with the most breathtaking view.  Santorini was such a cool city, I really enjoyed it.


Stop #3 was near Athens, where we climbed the Acropolis to see the Parthenon and other ancient wonders.  We then explored more of Athens via foot and bus.

Stop #4 was Corfu, Greece.  We enjoyed walking around the city until we hit the “beach.”  It was more of a dock, but we heard the beaches on the west side of the island have white sand and clear water, and are mostly very quiet.  If only we had more time.  Either way, our swimming spot had the most beautiful water and Kyle jumped in while I sat on the dock reading a book and sipping on a tropical smoothie.

Stop #5 was Montenegro.  We toured the Lady of the Rock island church, old submarine hiding spots for Yugoslavia during WWII, and swam in the amazing Blue Caves. 

Stop #6 was Venice.  Ahh, Venice.  I loved it.  We did the mandatory gondola ride, visit to St Mark’s Square, went inside the Basilica, and hopped on a boat to Murano to see the master glass artists at work.  We watched a man make this glass horse in all of 2 minutes by dipping his rod into crushed glass to get the colors he wanted, heating it, and then pulling out the legs, mane, and shape of the horse with pliers.  It was absolutely incredible, and the glass shops were fascinating. 

After all of the adventures it was so wonderful to come home and hug our cute kids.  We missed them a lot!

We got home just in time for Halloween to celebrate with Cleopatra, Spiderman, Shadow, and Sonic.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

March 2023 - Tad the race car driver and Alexa the zebra

Tad turned 7 and we took him and his best friend Jimmy go kart racing for his birthday.   https://youtu.be/YiTkpefAa1M https://youtu.be/5VuMLJ5iPH8 Jimmy to Tad: When we grow up we should be racers!! Tad: Yeah, and it's good that we already know how to drive for when we grow up and have our own cars.  He got a fun sea animal painting kit from Grandma and Grandpa, a lego puzzle, and a set of Sonic puzzles.  We also got him a voice changing megaphone which he loves.   Alexa had a really fun Medieval Feast at her school after they finished studying the dark ages.  All of the kids got really into it and a lot of them made their own costumes, including Griffin.   Audrey hit the 3-month mark and suddenly refused to take a bottle.  She went 4 weeks hardly eating during the day so she went from sleeping through the night to waking up every 2-3 hours to nurse at night.  We met with her pediatrician and she was still nice and healthy in the 75th percentile for weight so we moved her out of o

December 2015 - Christmas in Indiana

Merry Christmas! We hit the road a couple of days after Granny's funeral to make the trek to Indiana for Christmas. The  kids did great the whole way.  I think it was harder on the adults!  We left at 4am and the first 8 hours were really bad due to wind and snow.  I-70 was closed unless you had chains and we were only a couple of hours in when we passed a sign saying I-80 was closed due to an avalanche warning.  Kyle screamed "Noooo!" and woke up the kids :).  We were so relieved to have Wyoming behind us!!  And we were very glad to have been driving an SUV with all-wheel-drive instead of our Toyota Matrix.  We got a new Mazda CX-9 only a week before the trip so that we can fit baby #3. We pounded out 14 hours the first day and then stopped for the night in Nebraska before continuing for another 10ish hours the next day.  The kids thought that sleeping in a hotel was amazing.  The weather on the drive home was clear and wonderful. although Tyler did poop h

July 2023 - Baby Ian

We had a blast at the Stadium of Fire Journey concert with Sara and Jason.  We also hosted a Swingle 4th of July party at our house.  Grandpa Swingle said that's the first time he's actually been able to light real fireworks in over a decade.  We decided we should make it a tradition to have them come up every year (or move here ;). Baby Ian was born and he is HUGE!  11 lb 1 oz.  Melissa's water broke at 7:30am, contractions started after that, and he was born at home with a team of paramedics with them in the outbuilding at 9am.   Fun fact: he was born on Ian Beagley's birthday and they share the same name. We spent an entire Saturday pulling down and cutting up dead trees.  We rented a wood splitter and went to town.  The kids were a big help.  We did our annual reading challenge to earn tickets to Lagoon.  Our rule is 1000 pages for every grade level finished, has to be during summer, and Alexa and Tyler both had to write a book report as well.  The kids did great! M