Rome

Inside the Vatican Museum, The Spanish Steps, the Sinking Ship at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, and the obelisk outside St Peter's Basilica.

Inside St Peter's Basilica - by far my FAVORITE church EVER!! I've seen St Paul's, the Catedral in Seville, Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey - this one is definitely my all-time favorite. Also home of Michelangelo's Pieta.

Trevi Fountain - Tom being the most amazing husband that he is, went back out after dark and after B was asleep and took pictures of the fountain at night for me. Bottom right is the Borghese Gallery. Bottom left is the entrance to the Vatican Museum. Little known fact - to see the Sistine Chapel, you must first walk through the Vatican Museum which is about 4 miles of art!!!! And, maybe I just don't know enough about art, but 98% of the art is by artists I have never heard of!!! So, not a fan of seeing art that I don't know and walking that far, but the alternative - NOT seeing the Sistine Chapel - is unthinkable, so, you do what you gotta do!

Brighton looking rather innocent outside the Pantheon. We went at noon thinking the 10am mass would be over - it wasn't. So, we had to wait outside with LOTS of other people to walk inside the Pantheon. It was really cool inside and worth the wait. The other pics are us outside the Colosseum. B, in pink, was walking around and found a plastic bottle cap to play with - she would not part with the thing! We finally convinced her to throw it in the garbage, but it took awhile.

Miramare, Dardago, Rome & The 4th

Miramare Castle in Trieste and the view of the Adriatic from our climb. Trieste is about an hour away and this climb had THE BEST view!!

Climbing with the Shackelford's in Dardago. Dardago is only 15 minutes from our front door, but doesn't have the amazing view of the Adriatic like Trieste. But, it's great to have such good climbing so close to our house!

The pics ended up being out of order, these are all shots from the Colosseum. We went to Rome for my birthday this year and had a great time! Brighton enjoyed all the stairs and "climbing" there was in the Colosseum. For the most part, it worked out well - she played around while we walked and looked at stuff.

Tom and I got to spend our 5th anniversary in Venice all by ourselves!! We left Brighton with our friends the Wynns and went shopping on Murano and walked around St Mark's. We had planned on going inside, but then saw the ginormous line going around the whole church and decided we would wait until September when all the tour groups are gone.

Our ward had a 4th of July party at the base pool. It was planned perfectly - dinner at 7, swimming from 8-10 and then watch the fireworks at 10:15. Such a great idea! And then it decided to thunder, then came the lightning, and finally the rain. Poor Brighton, she had barely been in the water maybe 3 minutes when the thunder rolled in and the lifeguards made us get out of the water. She couldn't understand why she had to get out. We thought about hanging out and waiting for the fireworks, but since B is still too young to really care or know about fireworks, we decided to leave when it started to pour. Once again we missed the fireworks (three years running) but it's okay, we still had fun!