Way back on February 4th we loaded up our Mercedes and headed south for a week in Rome. It sounds fancy, but the U.S. luxury car turns out to be the workhorse of Europe. Many buses and most work vans seem to be Mercedes, and with a daily grind of twelve--count 'em!--twelve switchbacks down the mountain in order to drop Justin off at work every morning and to carry around 7-8 people at other times, a hard-working diesel is what we need. So, we loaded up said Mercedes and headed south to enjoy the very generous Christmas present Justin's parents gave us: a week at a timeshare in Rome during the Rome Temple Open House.
The timing was a little funny. Julia and Elisabeth had returned just that Saturday from a fast turnaround trip with all youth in the Florence Stake to attend the same temple open house. Luckily the beautiful grounds and holy edifice are worth more than one visit. Our tour guide was wonderful; she obviously loved the temple and what it meant for the people of Italy and neighboring countries. She also took great pains to help us appreciate the design elements that made this temple uniquely Roman. For example, the oval structure echoed the fact that Rome is "The Eternal City" in its own representation of eternity. As we discovered, ovals are also a prevalent shape in Rome due to chariot race tracks (think Circus Maximus) that used to dot the city. Michelangelo's design atop the Campidoglio is also repeated throughout the building, even being etched into the door knobs and carpeting. It's very beautiful.
Living in the middle of an olive vineyard ourselves, we could certainly appreciate the extensive use of olive trees in the decor and on the grounds. There are four that are more than 500 years old standing between the temple and the visitor's center. Naturally the references to the Lord of the Vineyard, Gethsemane as the Olive Press, and other references to Christ were also highlighted.
It was a wonderful tour even if not all of our children behaved themselves wonderfully during it. We then went to the beautiful Visitor's Center and admired the huged stained glass window that tried to incorporate in some way every one of Christ's parables and visited inside the very Italian apartment building that they have inside, an addition designed to emphasize the centrality of the family to God's plan for His children. Had we turned right around and gone back home, it would have been time well-spent.
But, of course, Rome has quite a lot to offer! Tuesday we went to the Capitoline Museums which stand atop the aforementioned Campidoglio which Michelangelo designed, saw the Forum, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, Trajan's column, the memorial to the unification of Italy, and other monuments both ancient and modern. The highlight of the day was meeting up with Justin's friend from law school, Christian Huebner, who is one semester away from graduating Catholic seminary en route to becoming a priest in a Washington D.C. parish. After what has to have been the loudest lunch Christian has ever experienced in recent memory, Christian showed us around a few places, 
including his favorite gelateria. (Two and a half weeks and many rivaling samples later, the girls agree that it is theirs as well.) It was a highlight of our Rome experience to be led through places sacred to a believer. Christian took us to St. Catharine's Basilica Sopra Minerva, a church built to a doctor of the Catholic church, St. Catharine, that before that was a temple to the pagan goddess Minerva (Athena), goddess of wisdom. The paintings were exquisite and there was a Michelangelo statue of Christ carrying His cross up by the altar. St. Catharine showed up many places along our trek with Christian, which I thought was fitting since the central decoration in our living room at home is from a mural depicting the story of the Good Samaritan photographed by another lawyer and taken from the monastery of St. Catharine that stands atop Mt. Sinai. Julia shared my opinion of this day being a trip highlight: "I looooooooved Rome! It is the coolest place on the planet and you should totally go there and be wowed and then come see us in Florence because it’s prettier and the amount of people trying to sell you stuff that you already told them 20 times you are not interested in in Rome is fifteen times as many people as in Florence. But what surprised me about our trip to Rome was that my favorite place was not one of the famous places you usually hear about, like the Sistine Chapel or the Pantheon or Trevi Fountain, even though those were all really awesome places.
My favorite place was a Basilica that we toured with Dad’s friend Christian who is studying to be a priest. It is called the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I don’t think we took any pictures, or maybe we weren’t allowed to, but look it up on the internet because it is sooooooo beautiful.
There are many people buried there, including St. Catherine of Siena. Well, almost all of her; we learned that her head is buried in Siena. We learned a lot about her that day, and she is a really awesome woman. The cathedral is called Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which means Saint Mary on Minerva. This cathedral is called “on Minerva” because it was built where there used to be a Roman temple to Minerva, who is the goddess of wisdom. St. Catherine was a doctor of the Church and well known for her wisdom. So I’m pretty sure this cathedral is a sort of symbol of wisdom.
After the St. Maria, we went in search of Christian’s favorite gelateria. The first one, cleverly called Frigidarium, was closed, so then we went to his actual favorite that was a little bit farther away. If any of you decide to come to Rome, it is called Gelateria del Teatro. I highly recommend it."
The girls' forced-march study of Latin yielded a few rewards even as early as Tuesday: there is a bridge crossing into Vatican City on which stand statues of angels holding elements of the passion of Christ, i.e. the crown of thorns, the whip with which He was scourged, the nails with which He was crucified, etc. At the bottom of each statue, in Latin, is inscribed a reference to the Old Testament prophecy which each piece fulfilled. Had we not had Christian as our guide, we probably would have missed this bridge altogether, as did our friends with whom we met up the next day. And, we must note, Elinor turned seven months, which is why Justin is holding up seven fingers.
Wednesday, the 6th, we met up with our friends from Florence who had moved to Rome for the last month of their two year nomadic life before heading back to permanence in Oregon. We went to the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. Abdiel and Gwyn, being the art-loving six and four-year-olds one might expect, weren't all that interested. In fact, in an effort to allow at least someone to enjoy themselves, I hurried them through the Raphael room just as quickly as I hurried through the modern art room that precedes the Sistine Chapel proper, and all the rooms in between. I paused only long enough in the Sistine Chapel itself to locate that beautiful finger of God, and then I looked for the nearest guard to direct me right out of Dodge.
I tried to convey to the guard in my broken Italian that these little kids needed to get out of this museum ASAP. As if on cue, Abdiel was in the middle of Pachycephalicizing Gwyndelin in the gut when I motioned toward them, and when they were both in a heap on the ground, the guard didn't need any further information. He escorted us personally back through the queue and out a secret door that led into St. Peter's. We spent the rest of the time blowing bubbles on the steps. Luckily it was a sunny day. My spirits weren't so much by the time everyone else had gotten out. But Katharine liked it! Here's what she had to say:
Today we all hopped onto the shuttle and drove to this little motorcycle parking lot by some church or whatever that building was and walked from there to St. Peter’s Basilica.
I was happy because I found Karlie, who was running and jumping onto big cement blocks that were all around the place. Since we missed hearing the pope give his daily devotional/talk by a few minutes I asked her how it was. She jumped up onto a block and replied “Uh, it was okay. It was all in Italian so I just did this!” and jumped onto another block.
Then we all got into a group and went to a museum a few minutes away. We were wandering through it, and then we walked into this big room that was absolutely packed with people, (mostly Asian tourists taking a lot of pictures) and I was saying “Look at the ceiling Karlie!” and she was saying that Asian tourists are literally everywhere and she wonders how there can be so many of them and also the ceiling had too many almost naked people in it when Daddy told us to turn around and there was The School of Athens by Raphael!!! It was super pretty, and I can’t believe somebody was able to paint that. I have to say that I liked talking to Karlie better, though, and so after I had taken a good look I went back to chatting with her and when Daddy asked me why I wasn’t looking at it I said “I already saw it!” but looked at it again to make him happy and then we went somewhere else, but then we had to wait for all the rest of the family. >:(
In another room (which happened to be in the Sistine Chapel) I looked up and said “KARLIE! It’s the Sistine Chapel Ceiling by Michelangelo!” I was super excited and amazed at the perfection and beauty of it, but Karlie just said “ Okay, that’s nice. There are way too many naked people in it. Come on, let’s go,” and so we were going to (as soon as we could locate the door) but Daddy suddenly appeared and so we stayed, and Daddy told us cool stuff about the ceiling and the other painting on the wall The Last Judgment by Michelangelo, like who was Michelangelo in the Last Judgment and how the scenes progressed on the ceiling with the creation of the earth and Adam and Eve. I told him my neck hurt looking at it and he laughed and said “Can you imagine standing like that for a whole day for four years?” and Karlie and I said that we wouldn’t be able to do that.
After we got out of the museum we went to a pizzeria and got a really famous kind called Pizza Rossa that doesn’t have any cheese and it was super good. We bought two other kinds of pizzas, too, and then we went to the Weichers house to eat it.
So all in all, it was a super great day and we had a lot of fun!"
"Today we went to the Rome zoo. First, we walked past the gorgeous gardens of Villa Borghese, which was full of tiny white star-shaped daffodils and citrus fruit trees. Then we walked past the dog park of Villa Borghese, which was also beautiful because of the sprinklings of miniature white crocuses and daisies throughout it but not as beautiful as it could have been because of the dogs. I’m sure Katharine would say otherwise, having suddenly found an obsession with dogs, or rather, been given such an obsession by a friend back home who decided to share her own. After walking for a little bit and two chocolate-chip-with-an-unintentional-infusion-of-lemon cookies per person, we got to the zoo, bought tickets, suffered through using the putrid bathrooms, and set off to see the animals, starting with the parrots, which were close enough to the bathrooms that most of us had already seen them. Turning the corner, Mommy surprised everybody with literal squeals of delight at an armadillo with teeny stubby little legs hustling back and forth across its pen while its mate dug for food. Even now as I write this, Mommy makes affirmative comments about how “it really was SOOO CUTE!!!” Now she says the reason she thought it was SOOO CUTE was that she was expecting a sloth. It was definitely cuter than a sloth and cuter still o account of the stubbiness, but its look had been slightly spoiled because it had clearly rolled through the hay on the floor of its pen and the leftovers were still clinging to its shell. We then went on to see the giant chickens, the hamsters and rabbits, the donkey, some goats that evoked the same squeals from Mommy as the armadillo, (the only difference being that we all know that Mommy loves goats because she always squeals at baby goats and sends chills down our necks with threats of getting one) and a few peacocks wandering across the path. I only have one thing to say about the African wild dogs: I don’t wonder that they’re going extinct because they are terrifying. I liked the water irises outside their pen; the Rome zoo is rich in exotic plants as well as animals and our path was lined with orange flower bushes and . Then we saw the little monkeys, which were really cute because they were doing aerials and flips and monkey-barring upside down across their cages, and afterward we all died over the baby baboons, who spent their time ziplining down a nearby rope and also hanging off the rope by their tails while squabbling with each other. When we had convinced Katharine to leave the baboons, which she seemed to think were almost as cute as dogs, we went to see the red river hogs, which didn’t take long since they weren’t especially noteworthy, and then three different animals that are probably really cool but they all just looked like antelopes to me. After that, we saw the lemurs (“Isn’t that the king from Madagascar who sings ‘I like to move it move it?’ asked Abdiel) and then we saw the seals and the penguins which we got to see being fed. Then we saw the aquatic birds, meaning J-K-A-G played on the playground while I saw the aquatic birds and my heart bled to see the white swan. After that, we passed by the flamingos on the way to the Asian lions. Next to the Asian lions, there was a giant board with a comic strip about the love story of the two lions, since the lioness had gone through two lions before she finally found one she liked. It was funny. After we saw the terrifying hippos, we left the zoo and walked across Rome, down the Spanish Steps, and all the way through the Fashion District before we tracked down the promised gelato. Era molto divertente!"
Friday we went home. Since the roommate situation had ended up a party for Julia, Elisabeth and Katharine, a boy bonding time for Justin and Abdiel, and torturous nights followed by equally difficult days for me rooming alone with Elinor, and Gwyn, I was very ready to leave.
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