Roma for Springa Breaka

Yes, we have such a hard life - $40 tickets and a few hours to Rome - please don't feel too sorry for us :)

The Vatican Museum - enormous and fabulous amount of art all the way to the Sistine Chapel - which was also amazing, but a bit ruined by the police saying "SHHHH! NO PHOTO!" every few minutes! Must be related

The Pantheon - once a Roman temple, now a church

The forum - center of life in ancient Rome - below street level

The colossal colloseum

(I really did have this all in paragraphs - sorry about the format now!)

Walking through Rome is, as my friend Leslie describes it, like walking through a huge outdoor museum. Every corner and every building seems to tell a story of its own. Buildings that make you gasp in amazement are not even marked on the map because there are simply too many to note. Even relatively ordinary places held a mystery because you knew that there still lies an entire city - mostly unexplored - underneath your feet. One person we met told us that every time the city has to dig for pipes, subways, or anything - they run into a ruin. Standing outside the coliseum it was hard to fathom what went on inside. In the first three months of its inauguration, twenty-thousand people (mostly Christians) & thousands of animals were killed for entertainment. Middle Atlas Barbary lions are extinct today mostly because of the Roman’s lust for watching lions kill and be killed. But all the persecution of Christians did not make them extinct - in fact, as is so often the case in Europe, you are faced with irony. . . The city which desired to annihilate Christianity ended up being the base of the Catholic Church. Dripping in gold, paint, marble and decorations, each site was truly fabulous And yet a verse kept running through my mind, “Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow . . . yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.” It struck me that no matter how hard humans try to create beauty, for this nature-loving girl, anyway, it just doesn’t compare with the beauty in a simple flower. But even with my cynicism of cities, of manmade beauty and of where exactly all the money used to build these buildings came from, it struck me that the church kept art alive for centuries. And it encouraged God-given talent and pushed artists to new and astounding heights (literally) of art. Almost every cathedral we entered was covered in enormous paintings from floor to ceiling. And I had several “magical moments” in Rome. Walking into a church where almost every single person had their faces lifted upward to a majestic painting that covered the soaring ceiling - lighting candles symbolic of our prayers then kneeling down beside our girls’ little reverent, earnest selves to pray - standing on a hill overlooking the city where the roofs of the many basilicas/churches gleamed in the sunlight as the bells tolled while a guitarist played “Adeste fideles” - soaking in the strains of the organ mixed with the chants of the monks and mingling with incense of their prayers in St. Peter’s Basilica, entering into a plaza filled with fountains, paintings,and a woman singing “Ave Maria” - Walking through a phenomenal path of art galleries in the Vatican museum . . . Come to think of it, every one of these moments had to do with awed reverent silence or music. On a lighter note - I’m sure you are wondering how the pizza and pasta was. Well, it truly was everywhere. And it was simple - not laden with the all the spices and toppings that we Americans love so dearly. The pizza crusts were always homemade and thin. And we loved hearing Italian. It’s such a beautiful language that Gerald and I even enjoyed a temper tantrum thrown by a child on the bus - “Mama . . ." and on he went in his adorable, sing-songy, vowels-at-the-end-of-every-word language. We smiled at him, knowing that if our children threw tantrums in Italian, we would give them whatever they wanted.

Matthew

We just found out that our nephew, Matthew (on Gerald's side), has X-ALD. It is a rare degenerative neurological disease and we are all reeling from learning the news. It was earlier thought he had Addisons, but that test ended up negative, so they tested for this and other things. If any of you know anyone with this disease, please let us know. We want to learn all we can!

Lightening up

Things are heavy in the world right now. I feel like writing anything trite right now is not appropriate. There are local events: The one-year anniversary of the deportation of the parents of the Village of Hope with no changes in sight and the news that the kids are not doing well. Then there's our near-neighbor, Gadaffi, slaughtering his own people. I think of all those young college kids who thought they could change their government with as little bloodshed as Egypt did, now being tortured and killed in prison for dreaming of a life they've never known. And of course, news and videos coming out of Japan that is hard to even begin to fathom. Tragedy that will be remembered forever.

So I feel rather sheepish for putting up pictures of our amazingly peaceful life - but I think we all need a lift or distraction too - so here goes!

A rare shot because Cache-Cache does not like Kendra terribly much. She has many gifts, but cat whispering is not one of them.

Panorama shot by Gerald from the hill we like to go to for sledding

One day the girls in Katrina's class were upset because apparently their teacher had told them they would NOT go on ANY more field trips this year because they were so very BAD. I find this hard to believe and rather dramatic. There are nine kids in their class and I know all of them. With the exception of a firecracker or two, this is a dream class. But the teacher must have been in a bad mood so cast the spell on the class. So Gerald and I (with the help of another parent) decided to take them and a few others on a field trip of our own.

It probably wasn't the best idea to take a bunch of girls from a society that does not encourage girls playing, having any adventure or taking any risks (like not wearing 4 layers of clothing every day) to the most dangerous place we know around here. But we did it. And besides a few scratches and bumps, we all survived the Valley of the Rocks outing quite well. In contrast to most of their lovely friends, Katrina and her buddy (Zahra - front right in the third picture) climb pretty much anything as soon as they meet it before I have time to make all the necessary Mother Comments regarding potential dangers. I guess I can't condemn them, I love a good rock scramble myself.

Gerald took this picture as the sun was setting - I love the colors!