Our Year of Travel

I know that many people will find this strange, but I am sort of a homebody...not someone to take too many risks, and not someone who has ever yearned for adventure and travel. So for someone who really doesn't like to travel and has only really been between utah and my home-town in california, 2009 is going to be the year of travel. After San Francisco and sadly sadly missing out on Adelle, we went with all of Lane's family 12 and older on a mediterranean trip. That means Aubrey got to go. This means that all of our pictures are generally of European landmarks with Aubrey in front of them. Lane went to Italy on his mission so he was probably the most excited of anyone...like a kid in a candy store. I sort of have a fear of flying (I know...it kind of goes along with my boring lack of adventure stuff) so of course on the way to the airport I wrote out a will for where the children should go if we die. Lane's family would pretty much be wiped out so it left me with "my family" as options. (I tried to picture lance and melissa raising 3 additional chilren in san fran). We flew for over 20 hours and arrived in Italy. We left Utah in the morning and got to Italy in the morning. We took a bus to Venice, traveled our luggage to a storage facility and toured Venice all day with no sleep. That night we took a train to Florence, walked about a mile to our hotel (Which must have looked hilarious...13 people marching through the town with luggage and backpacks) and walked around florence, slept a few hours and than took a bus out to Pisa and then back to Florence (saw Michaelangelo's David which the girls were seriously embarassed by) and then took a train then several subways to Rome (all with luggage in tow). That night we walked through the sites of Rome (colloseum, trevi fountain, etc) and the next day toured the Vatican. I think the vatican tour was torture because it was like 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity, we were extremely tired and the guards would not let you lean or sit or rest anywhere for aproximately 4 hours. We did see the famous ceiling of the sisteen chapel. I must mention that at the colleseum they said that the smell of blood was so strong that they covered the stands in perfume to drown out the scent (gross). All in all we must have walked 100 miles. We all had bloody blisters and I think I lost 10 pounds despite eating my share of gelato and pizza (so good!).

We then went on the cruise to ciccily, athens, ephesus (turkey) and crete. We were lucky to hook up with a guy on the cruise who was a church history expert and so we got some excellent information on some of the biblical sites from an LDS perspective. I really enjoyed Turkey where we visited a site that some historians feel Mary (mother of Jesus) was taken after Jesus was crucified, and ephesus where some say Paul preached to the Romans. I took time to read those chapters in the bible following the tour to get a better perspective. I also loved seeing the acropolis, parthenon in Greece. I had just finished reading the Lightening Thief series (which I would recommend to anyone 10 and older) so I had brushed up on my greek mythology. I took almost 600 pictures so I will only include a few, but family may have to sit through a more thorough and boring vacation report. I felt pretty safe until the plane ride from New York to Salt Lake. The last 20 minutes of roller coaster like turbulance reminded me of why I generally stick to the roads. I am glad I didn't orphan all my other children and I am glad to be home. And we really are home. While we were away the pre-qualified buyers on our house suddenly failed to qualify...I think this year has been generally quite the wild ride. On a side note since there is an 8 hour time difference I have been waking up at like 2 and 3 am ready for the day.