Thursday, May 16, 2019

      Well a lot has happened since my last entry.  Easter was a blast because we got to do the egg Olympics.  Uncle Matt and Aunt Mimi were good sports because they did not come down too hard on Xadia’s BYU decorated egg.  In fact, they had a lot of fun tossing it around.  I almost won the luge but got beaten out by Vaughn.  I found out that the shot put and I don’t mesh well.  This is the event where you put a shelled egg in your mouth and spit it out as far as you can.  My egg did not go very far.  Roxanne (my sister) thought it was hilarious.  Every time I was up, she would gut laugh because I looked so funny.  We go some good pictures.  I think the best event was the 400 meter dash.  Aunt Roxy is super competitive.  As soon as the race started, she whacked my egg off the spoon along with anyone else who got next to her.  That did not stop us from having a good time.  We would pick up the egg, put it back on the spoon and keep running.  The kids all had a good time.  Uncle Tim was in hard-boiled egg heaven.  It seemed like every time I turned around he was salting an egg and eating it.  I think the egg Olympics is one of the best Easter traditions ever.

     The weather in Utah is absolutely beautiful.  The kids walk to school every day.  When the weekend arrives, as a family, we like to go to a park or ride bikes.  The flowers are so beautiful.  I love seeing the phlox on the rock wall.  It looks like a vibrant floral waterfall.  God sure knew what he was doing when created this earth.

     In the beginning of May, Tim, myself, Aunt Amy, and Uncle Ethan went to Rome and Italy.  What a fantastic trip.  The landscape and history are unbelievable.  The pictures do not do it justice.  I was so amazed at how advanced the Romans were.  They had their own little sewer and plumbing system.  Their roads had speed bumps to prevent chariots going too fast and hitting pedestrians (saw that in Pompeii).  I was really intrigued with their tall buildings and short doors.  However, the buildings dedicated to their gods were super ornate with huge doors.  I believe it was the Pantheon door that is 23 feet high.  Another church/baptistery door in Florence was decorated with gold and depicted bible stories.  There is a lot of religious influence in Italy.  It was bizarre to see interpretations of hell in the murals.  It looked like a scary place with some very strange creatures doing weird things to people.  I was glad we were able to go to the Rome temple.  It was very powerful doing a session and hearing people respond in different languages.  Humans have not changed much over the course of thousands of years.  Some strive to be close to God, others choose to live a different type of life.  I am so glad I was able to go and see and learn the history of Italy.  I could not help but think about the age of the structures (some over 2,000 years old) and compare it to the U.S. only being about 250 years old.  It made me laugh.  Here is a fun fact, Michelangelo did not want to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling because he considered himself a sculptor not a painter.  However, the pope kept asking and so eventually he said yes.