It's the most wonderful time of the year.

I don't think there's any time of year that I love more than the spring. I love the bike rides. I love all the baby animals out with their mothers. I love the option of wearing a sweater OR a t shirt and being comfortable in either. I love putting back on my flip flops. I love the kids being out on the trampoline all afternoon long. I love the clocks being set forward and an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings. I love eating outside again. I love the tulips blooming. I love walks after dinner to the local ice cream shop for dessert.  I love it all.

Even though we won't be here for the "harvest" Matt wanted to plant a little garden with the kids so they can watch it grow.  We're excited to garden on a much LARGER scale when we get to Oklahoma.  We have gotten to enjoy the tulips blooming though.  

My kids love planting.

Saturday we broke out the bikes for our first big bike ride of spring.  Hallie is finally able to hold her own on our rides.  We were out for 2 hours and she did so good.  Didn't even complain once.  

I'm really going to miss these kinds of bike rides.  It's just so beautiful here.

And here is Flat Stanley.  My nephew Owen sent him to Hallie and Stanley has some pretty exciting adventures coming up.

It's a good thing Hallie can hold her own on our bike rides now, because we needed to free up a seat in the trailer for this little girlie.  She was an angel for our ride and even took a nice nap.

Flat Stanley loves bike rides.

Flat Stanley also loves chocolate brochens from the local bakery.  Hallie loves them too.

Happy kids.

Chocolate face.

Caught being handsome.

I call this Chase's "The Grinch who stole Christmas" smile.  

I am addicted to this baby girl.  

As winter draws to an end there are a lot of other things drawing to an end.  One of the most exciting is the end of Matt's masters degree.  Last class is next month and this is the stack of books he started selling on Amazon.  There was another stack equally tall that he already returned to the education office (that he borrowed) and the library.  Seeing these books leave my house brings me MUCH joy.  Maybe we can have a little break from education for a while.....

Pompeii /slash/ Amalfi Coast

We really loved Pompeii.  Once again, I have to thank Rick Steve's for that.  If you ever get a chance to go and see it, DO!  I'm sure you don't need a history lesson (although I did) but Pompeii was buried in Ash when Mt Vesuvius erupted in about 60 A.D.  The ash preserved this ancient city.  I was TOTALLY blown away by how advanced everything was.  I could go into the nitty gritty of all the engineering genius, but you'd get bored.  I was fascinated.  Anyways, here's the pics!

Here we are in what would have been the "town square" with Mt Vesuvius in the background.

If I remember correctly this was the temple. 

Eating a little snack in some old, dead, rich dudes house.

No one I would rather adventure with.

The real low point of our day was when Matt dropped my ipad on some nice, stone ruins.  I almost had a heart attack because I love my ipad almost as much as my children.  Just kidding. Kind of. 

Anyways, thank goodness for ipad covers.  It survived without a scratch.

This is Matt also loving Rick Steves.

This picture was taken in the Brothel.  Seriously, nice little town with friendly corner brothel.  And this was one of the "beds" where services were received.  There were even pictures painted above the rooms that were basically pornography which are believed to be a sort of "menu" for services offered.  From a conservative Christian perspective the thought crossed my mind, "now we know why your town got buried in ash." just kidding.  Seriously though, the paintings were pretty graphic.... and well preserved.

Highlight of the trip to Pompeii:  Hallie lost her first tooth while we were there!  It was very very exciting.  Much more exciting than your average "lose your tooth over the bathroom sink" experience.

Another shot of Pompeii.

Ahhhh, heaven.  I want to live on the Amalfi coast. 

Toothless grin.

"A model, idiot." -name that movie.

speaking of models, I don't know why they chose to strike this pose.

Goodbye Amalfi, Pompeii, and Rome.  We loved you muy mucho!

ROMA!!

So we went to Rome and it was pretty neat.  It was definently a biggie that we had not yet seen, and with May (moving month) quickly approaching we figured we HAD to check this one off of our list.  We rented an apartment just a 10 minute walk from the Collosseum with some friends of ours.  The location was ideal.  We also took two days while we were there to see Pompeii, Naples, and the Amalfi coast.  I'll post those later.

You'll have to excuse the five million bazillion pictures with the Collosseum in the background, I just couldn't stop myself.  It's such a cool back drop for pictures.  I also couldn't resist putting up this picture because of the look on Chase's face.  It just screams "sisters are annoying".  Love it.  Sibling love.

Here's a much happier little boy.

I know, I know, you think my husband is hot. 

extreme closeup.

My kids have NO comprehension of how cool their lives are.  They think it's totally normal to see the things they see and eat the food they eat (pizza in naples?  may as well have pizza hut as far as they were concerned).

While Hallie and Chase were both REALLY good on this trip, the most well behaved child award goes to.....PAIGE! She is just an angel baby.  And look at those delicious cheeks! 

Seriously, I think her neck gets tired from holding up those cheeks.

How many of us girls have dreamed about going to Rome with our best friend?  Hallie and Rhiannon like to check their dreams off of their list at a young age. 

So this spartan looking man MAY have snatched my baby out of my arms and went and stood with her for a picture.  I MAY have felt the need to bathe her in hand sanitizer when we got her back.

The kidlets just cruising around Rome.

The kids admiring the Forum.

He's taken.

Funny story about this arch ( I don't remember what it's called).  Europeans LOVE their arches.  You're not a cool city if you don't have a few arches around.  Well we read out of our Rick Steve's travel book the history of this arch, only we were looking at a different arch in a different area.  Then we realized we had the wrong arch, so we found another one and thought THAT was the right arch.  Well, it wasn't.  Third arch is a charm!  This was the one we had learned a little something something about.

Hallie in front of the Trevi fountain.

The photo album this girl already has, it's unreal. 

I am having a love affair with Rick Steve's.  I just wish I had discovered his traveling helpfulness 3 1/2 years ago!  Seriously, if you're going to travel....get his books.  And you know the audio guides you can rent at different sites (westminster abbey, tower of london, collosseum, pantheon, pompeii, the list goes on and on) well the guides will cost you 10 buck.  BUT, you can download Rick Steve's pod casts for free and listen to your ipod while you tour (and get a better tour in my opinion). BINGO.  Loved this.

Tired little girl.

The Vatican.  The husband. 

The children. 

The baby.  Yes, I had a Mom fail and let her fingernails get WAY too long, hence the scratched up face.  Isn't she the most delicious?

Above Vatican City.  (did you know it's its own country?  Smallest in the world.)

For you fellow Mormons out there...this is the site of the Rome, Italy Temple being built.  We may have had to climb a wall to take this picture....but we feel like the church will forgive us.  :) 

Up next: Pompeii.

Love.

I am so grateful for love.  I love love.  Love is my favorite.  It's taken me a few years of marriage to really come closer to an understanding of what love really is.  I'm a verbal person....and I LOVE praise.  Praise is also my favorite.  I like my husband to say nice things to me, and he does, sometimes.  Matt is not a super verbal person and lets face it...he may not notice when I've taken hours to look nice for him.  At first this really bothered me.  HELLO HUSBAND, I just blow dried my HAIR! Don't you want to say something??!  However, the first time he told me how cute I looked and I happened to be wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans and I had my hair in a messy pony tail I realized something...  he doesn't care if I blow dry my hair.  He still finds me attractive when I've taken zero time to get ready for the day.  He loves me in my bathrobe (but maybe not in my bathrobe at 4 in the afternoon...haha).  You wanna know another thing that's my favorite?  Lists.  Here's how I know my hubby loves me:
-Matt always does the morning shift with the kids if he's not flying or deployed.  Yes, the boot stomping through the house MAY make me get a little crazy at times, but that's not the point.  The point is Matt knows how much I cherish my precious sleep hours and he has never complained about getting Hallie and Chase up, dressed, fed, teeth brushed, hair combed, lunch packed and out the door to school.  He even learned how to do a ponytail in Hallie's hair so she doesn't have to wake me up to do it.  Love.
-When the laundry has begun to creep up the stairs out the basement and is overflowing in the bathroom hamper he just gathers it, sorts it, and starts it without a word.  He doesn't make me feel like a crappy wife because the laundry is my most hated chore.  (ok, well he did once....but there was a chocolate bar and huge apology that followed)  He just jumps in to help.
-He never leaves in the morning without waking me up to kiss me goodbye.
-He always calls me during the day to check in.  I'm pretty sure he misses me while he's at work.  :)
-Clothes shopping, grocery shopping, farmers market shopping, errand running, he's there.  He loves to just be together, doesn't matter the task at hand.  Luckily, I really love to be together too.
-He is always up for ditching school work to come cozy on the couch with me for some Law and Order.
-He's just as excited as I am to watch the Hunger Games movie next month.
-He will always jump to my defense when sees I've been hurt.  Now this doesn't happen very often, but the few times in our marriage that my feelings have been hurt by someone he jumps into protective husband mode and is ready to take them on fists flying.  It feels good to always have someone on your side.
-He always thanks me for the dinner I've made.  Even if it's something as simple as grilled cheese sandwiches.  He gathers the dishes and starts loading the dishwasher when dinner is over.
-He works his booty off to support our family.  I was thinking the other day about how glad I am that the responsibility of supporting our family is not mine.  It's such a huge job.  Matt makes it look easy though and never complains.  He is always trying to better himself, increase his knowledge, and do everything necessary not only to support us....but to have saftey nets in place to provide for us if he ever lost his job.  He understands that the livelihood of our family relies solely on him and he takes that seriously.  He recently decided to get not one masters degree, but two.  When he told me I was a little sad...because he only had 1 class left to finish the first masters.  However he explained to me that he wants to be as valuable as possible in the civilian world in case the military cuts down even further and he loses his job.  He doesn't do things half way (I've been guilty of that at times) and I really admire him for that.
-He is so kind to my family and friends.  He treats them like they are his family and friends and is always totally supportive of my relationships with them. 

    Now this list is not here to give the perception that I have a perfect husband.  I don't.  If I did he'd probably be pretty miserable because I'm far from being the perfect wife.  It's here because this is what I've learned about love over the past (almost) 8 years....actions speak louder than words.  I love praise and nice words and those ARE important.  More important though are things we do for eachother to SHOW love. 
   
  I think back to when we got engaged and we told eachother we "loved" eachother.  At the time we did (as much as we were capable of understading love).  Love now means something so much different than it did 9 years ago.

Love is riding on the handle bars of his bike to school because you're too poor to buy a car.
Love is holding my hair while I puke from morning sickeness.
Love is bringing children into this world through blood, sweat and tears.
Love is listening to eachother.
Love is waking up in the middle of the night from a bad dream and snuggling into his arm.
Love is him holding you for days after you lose a baby.  Wiping your tears and crying right along with you.
Love is doing what the Lord wants you to do....together.
Love is having faith in him and supporting him in his aspirations, and him supporting you in yours.
Love is him driving home from work for lunch, just because he wants to be with you.
Love is apologizing, and accepting his apology.
Love is being kind to eachother.
Love is wanting to be a better person not just for yourself, but for your spouse.
Love is him bringing you medicine and lunch when you're sick in bed.
Love is him getting up in the middle of the night to strip the sheets because a kid wet the bed and you just can't wake up to deal with it.
Love is him making me a blog book once a year because it makes him so happy that I take the time to document our lives, and because he knows how much I love getting that book.
Love is thinking about someone else before yourself.

Love is all of the little things.  The actions.  The self sacrificing actions.  It's doing the things that don't necessarily benefit you in anyway....but you do it anyways because you love to see your spouse so happy and you have their best welfare in mind.  I have been blessed with a husband that I love more everyday and every year we are together, and thank the Lord everyday for him in my life. 

Love you Matt.....Happy Valentines Day! Now lets go makeout.

Happy Valentines Day!

I found this idea on Pinterest and fell in love with it.  Since it's Chase's "friendship" party at school tomorrow (is that like saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"?) I figured I should save the cuteness to the blog world to be preserved forever and ever.  I was a TEENSY bit miffed that shutterfly cut a significant amount off the edges of the pictures, thus cutting off the words a bit.  Oh well, I'm moving on with my life.

collections.

We don't really do much as far as souveniers go for all of our trips.  We kind of feel like our pictures are what we cherish the most from our travels.  However, about a year after we got here we started collecting magnets from everywhere we go.  A few magnets have met the terrible fate of falling off of our refridgerator and smashing into a million little pieces on the floor, but most of them have survived thus far.  Anways, before any more meet a fate similar to the magnets that have ended up in the garbage, I figured I should photo document.

Let see if I can list where most of these came from:

-Berlin, Germany

-Norway

-Strassbourg, Frace

-Brugges, Belgium

-Kuekenhof Gardens, Holland

-Poland

-Salzburg, Austria

-Paris, Frace

-Barcelona, Spain

-Lefkada, Greece

-Prague

-Antibes, France

-Nice, France

-Monaco, France

-St Tropez, France

-Split, Croatia

-Venice, Italy

-Favignana, Italy

-Kos, Greece

-Trier, Germany

-Florence, Italy

-Sicily, Italy

-Parga, Greece

-Hallstat, Austria

-Texas, home of the alamo.  haha.

-Bodrum, Turkey

-Plitvicka, Croatia

-Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

-Lake Bled, Slovenia

-Knossos, Greece

-Switzerland

-Pisa, Italy

-London, England

-Preveza, Greece

-Nice, France

I'm tired just writing that list.  All of the packing and unpacking in the last 3 1/2 years has left me feeling excited for a schedual and a normal life.  A life where we take a trip maybe twice a year....instead of every month.  We've loved it here.  We've made the most out of it.  We are heading to Rome next week (that's a biggie that we haven't seen) and doing one more big road trip in April with two of my best friends, and then....back to AMERICA.  Exciting.