Day 4: Downtown Rome

On Friday my parents took the day off from working at the Temple Site and we spent some time downtown. They showed us the bus route/metro to take to go downtown for days they were busy. We got off the metro downtown and the very first thing you see is the Colosseum. It was so fun to walk out of the metro and the Colosseum in just right there and so huge! We also saw the Arch of Constantine, some of the Roman Forum, & the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II (Italy's first king) aka the Wedding Cake. We had a great day.

Logan with an original mini waiting to buy bus tickets. I think Logan's favorite part of the whole trip was seeing all the different cars.

Colosseum 

we couldn't go inside because they were preparing for the Pope to come for an Easter celebration

Arch of Constantine next to the Colosseum

The arch depicts the battle where Constantine converted to Christianity, a very religiously significant battle. More interesting info here. 

some of the Roman Forum/ancient Rome 

National Monument aka the Wedding Cake

and a few Instagrams of course

We were lucky enough to spend so much time in Italy that we didn't have to cram each day completely full of sight seeing. It was really nice to go out for the day and then go back to my parents for some dinner and relaxing.

Days 1-3: Paris

The first two days of our trip were a little rough, but fun. We flew out at 4:50pm on Tuesday April 3 from Salt Lake on a non-stop  flight to Paris, 11 hours. We were hoping to sleep on the plane since it was an overnight flight, but that didn't happen. We arrived at 11am in Paris and headed for a metro to downtown Paris. We walked all over Paris, from Notre Dame across Lovers Bridge to the Louvre, up the Avenue des Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, down to the Eiffel Tower and back to the metro stop. We were already tired but made the most of our day in Paris. We even got a delicious nutella crepe!

Notre Dame 

 Lovers Bridge (Logan is good at closing his eyes in pictures :))

Louvre

Gardens of the Louvre, kids chasing sailboats in a pond

Arc des Triomphe

Eiffel Tower 

a couple Instagram pictures

Here's where the trip got unpleasant. We had already not slept for 24 hours & walked more than 5 miles around Paris. We headed back to the airport to wait for our plane...that didn't leave for another 10 hours. To wrap it up in a nutshell, we had to stay overnight in the airport and ended up not getting any sleep making it a grand total of nearly 60 hours without sleep.

we dislike the Paris airport now :)

We finally boarded our plane at 7am on Thursday morning to Rome and we couldn't have been more excited to leave. My parents picked us up at the airport and we were so happy to see them! We went back to their apartment and they went back to work for a bit at the Rome Temple Site. We napped from 10am-6:30pm, ate dinner, got our first gelato of the trip and went back to bed from 10pm-7am. 

While we had fun in Paris seeing all the sites, it kinda put a damper on our trip. Needless to say we were happy to be in Rome and had a wonderful time there. 

More posts to come!

happy birthday dad

Today is my dad's birthday...well technically it's not his birthday for 2 more hours but since he's in Italy...it is his birthday :)

Happy Birthday Dad, I love you so much. Thank you for being an example, a mentor, a wonderful father & a true friend. Thanks for always believing in me and encouraging me to always be better.

I hope you have a fabulous Italian birthday :)

so excited to see you in a week and a half!!

we're so excited!

And it's still a month away, but I wanted to share :)

 

Logan and I had been planning on going to visit my parents in Italy ever since we heard they were going on a mission there. We had always thought we'd go in September to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday all in one. But as we searched for plane tickets, watching prices every week, we found out that Easter is actually the cheapest time to go. Luckily we've been saving for awhile now so we were able to jump on the deal and buy our tickets. We leave April 3 and come back April 18.  We are seriously so excited! Logan has never been out of the country so this will be a whole new adventure for him and I'm excited for him.

We have a 20 hour layover in Paris, by choice, so we'll do a whirlwind tour of that on our way to Italy. I've already been there so we won't have to do all the art museums for me, so we think 20 hours will be just the right amount of time to see the main attractions, though I'd love to stay in Paris for weeks!

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After Paris we'll have a short 2 hour ride to Rome where my parents will be picking us up from the airport!! We plan to stay in Rome most of the time but venture out to Florence to see where I lived when I studied abroad and hopefully to Venice...cause it's beautiful!

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I'm sure you'll have a picture overload when we get back...

but we can't wait to share our adventure with everyone!

the past month

Here's what we've been up to the past month.

On February 5th our nephew, Ridge, was blessed in St. George so we went down for the weekend.

I didn't take any pictures so here are a few I stole from my sister-in-laws blog.

On Saturday we spent some time at Logan's grandparent's. The guys did a little swing practice by hitting golf balls into the river. It was pretty fun to watch.

A couple weeks later my cousin and dear friend Clarice came to visit for the weekend. She came down from Idaho on Thursday before President's day and stayed through Monday. We had so much fun, it's been awhile since we just spend time together. We got manicures, did some shopping, did some fun crafts & ate lots of Birthday Cake Oreos :)

a bunch of us girls got together one night for some delicious dessert

julie, kara, lola, natalie, me, clarice, carmen, lani, maddox, christiana & beck 

3 cousins...just missing Meghan to complete the 4 

(we're all within 1 year of each other and have been good friends our entire lives)

other than that I've been busy with work, Logan is still job hunting...the most exciting thing in the world ;)

I was called as Primary Secretary in our ward last week and already love it. It's a fun change from being  Relief Society teacher for 2.5 years. I'm excited to work with the little kids.

there ya have it...a quick little update on our lives :)

this weekend

so excited to have a 3-day weekend and spend it with my best friend, she's pretty much amazing!

this is us...back in 2007 at our other best friends wedding

can't wait to see you Clarice and have some girl time!!

here's to a fabulous 3-day President's Day weekend

it's been awhile

well it's been awhile since I posted about what we've been up to. I was on a work trip for the past 6 days and I'm back home. This weekend we're headed to St. George for our nephews baby blessing, can't wait to see the little guy again!!

If you're curious what I did all week in California on my work trip...click here

Have a great weekend everyone!