Next installation of our Roman Holiday

OK, so here we've got our Sunday...and a little of Saturday. The pix are more or less in order, so just enjoy and follow the timeline.
View from the top of St. Peter's on Saturday. We ended our tour of the Vatican City with a visit to St. Peter's square and cathedral, and there was a line to go up to the top of the cathedral dome. AJ went, while Josh and I stayed downstairs...over 1000 steps round trip that AJ did. But he had a good time taking lots of pictures from the top.
This is that big white building from the last post.
View of Rome to the south of the church.
Not sure what this is, but AJ though it looked cool.
St. Peter's square
This was on Sunday. We went to this big park in the morning, then after lunch we went walking through the city a little. This was part of a fountain in a square at the bottom of a hill the park was on. Josh with one of the stone lions.
A view of the square with the above fountain in it.
Lunch in the park...there were some boys playing "football" (aka soccer) and he really wanted to play, too, but they were too big.
Josh riding in a car on one of those carousels with all different things on it. He loves cars!
I believe this is a view of the Vatican City and St. Peter's.
In our wandering on Sunday afternoon, we happened upon this "little" fountain called the Trevi Fountain. We weren't heading toward it on purpose, but when we found it, of course we bought a couple of gelatis and sat down to watch all the people and see the fountain. It's HUGE! And very pretty.
This is actually the fountain in front of the Spanish Steps.
The same...
The Spanish Steps from the top
Josh playing in one of the fountains from the square at the top of the page.
Josh getting in other people's pictures in the Piazza Navona (these are from Monday again)
Some building
Tripod Josh...he started doing this Monday morning in the hotel room...silly little boy!
Here are AJ and Josh throwing the coin into the Trevi fountain so they'll go back to Rome. I didn't get down there, but it was for all of us, really...

Josh really enjoyed playing in the water, too!

Our Roman Holiday (last part)

We went to Rome, Italy for a "last hoorah" trip over here in Europe last weekend. We had a pretty good time, considering we were traveling with a 19 month old who refused to sleep more than 30 min. to an hour during the day, and not enough at night to make up for it. He's a trooper, though, really a good traveler...could have something to do with the fact that we've taken him with us on all our vacations starting with a week long trip to Berlin and Dresden when he was 5 weeks old! Since then he's been to 16 countries (I think) and on at least 18 flights (possibly more, I may be forgetting some) and countless trains. He really is a good kid, when you think about all we put him through!
Anyway, other than being really hot on Sunday, and all of us getting slightly sunburned the first day when I forgot to put sunscreen on us, and Josh and I covered in bug bites, we had a blast! It was so amazing to be able to see such ancient buildings/ruins...to stand where people who lived the same time or even before Christ have stood...to see the Colosseum and Circus Maximus where so many Christians died such horrible deaths, but were so brave to not recant their belief in Christ. Wow! The whole atmosphere there is so relaxed and just geared so you can just enjoy yourself, great for a vacation.
So anyway, this is the last day of our holiday...part of it, but for some reason I can't upload anymore pictures, so we'll work with these for now.

Josh and I at one of the fountains in the Piazza Navona. One of Josh's favorite things was to splash in the fountains...he would have gone swimming in them if we'd let him!
The Pantheon, now a Catholic chapel. BEAUTIFUL! The inside was all tiled all over the floor and ceiling.
Piazza Navona with all the artists and their artwork. We actually bought a beautiful oil painting here!

This is another fountain, but had a railing around it, so no splashing for Josh.
Josh at the Pantheon. Looks posed, doesn't it? Nope, he just sat himself there...loved those columns!
This is the inside of the Pantheon. You can seed the beautiful tiling and the HUGE doors!
The dome of the Pantheon. Apparently the height of the building and the radius of the dome are the same...semi-useless trivia that AJ fed me.
The outside of the Pantheon...lots of people there.
They had some horses/carriages outside the Pantheon in front of the fountain...so after splashing Josh and I went to visit the horses...this one was so sad looking, with his hips and ribs sticking out and veins popping out all over his neck and face. He was very friendly, though. Josh loved him!
We're not entirely sure what these ruins were...they were just in the middle of town, you turn a corner and there they are, surrounded by a little fence. Apparently where all the city's cats live. I counted at least 10.
More ruins...
While we were at the Pantheon letting Josh play on the columns, this other little boy, probably about 4 or 5 came up and started playing with Josh. Here he is showing him how high the columns are...so cute with both of them looking up like they were having a whole conversation or something!
Good friends after about 30 seconds.
Josh climbing the column, with a little help from Mamma
This was the most beautiful church...I think prettier than the Sistine Chapel or St. Peter's. The artwork was INCREDIBLE! Il Gesu was it's name.
Part of the mural on the ceiling.
More of the church
The mural above the altar
The full mural on the ceiling...there's a glare on the sun rays with a dove flying out from the real sun coming in the windows up high.
Josh playing in another fountain...in front of the building below.

This is their memorial like the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. Its in front of this giant white building built around the turn of the 20th century. Apparently most Romans hate it and think it's one of the ugliest things in the city.
Here's the full view. I think it was some kind of palace or government building.
This is more of the Il Gesu church.

OK, hopefully I can upload some more pics tonight or tomorrow afternoon so you can see more of our trip.

Packing out

So last Monday (the 14) we packed our big shipment of household goods...pretty much everything we own. We kept out some clothes, sheets, blankets, pillows, kitchen things, a few of Josh's toys, and some other random stuff, but everything else (all our furniture) is gone. Poor Josh had to endure almost an hour of the packers packing things up, and was fairly traumatized, but then spent the day with Shannon and Brennan. These pix are kindof backwards, so you'll have to read the captions.
No table and chairs, so we had picnics on the floor...Gus really enjoyed being closer to the food!
What was left in our living room...mostly trash
The living room halfway through packing it up.
The wooden crates in this truck are what they put our stuff into...then they caulked the lids on and nailed them shut. We used 6, plus a box slightly taller than the crates for our couch. They estimated it was around 8,000-9,000 lbs.
The big rolls of paper stuff they would wrap around odd shaped things and make a neat little (or big!) package. They went through several rolls of this and several boxes of tape.
While they were packing, we found Gus's first toy we ever bought for him, this stuffed puppy with rope arms and legs...it had a hole in it, but was intact other than that...in about 5 min. this is all that was left of it...note the black ear and brown pieces that used to be the doggie's head...poor doggie!
More picnic pictures
Our kitchen right before the packers got there.
The office before the packers got there.
Our bathroom, which is where we put all the stuff we wanted to keep. It was pretty much filled completely.
Our bedroom...hard to believe everything fit into these nice little bundles.

Josh getting one last play in his toy box the night before we packed out.
We rented a carpet cleaner and cleaned our rugs, which are now several shades lighter, and this is our huge living room rug partway rolled up. Josh thought it was a good toy, until he fell off!

Part of our map record of where we've been...color coded by AJ.
Our living room before the movers came.

So now we've got some loaner furniture until Wed. the 30th when we move out of the house completely and into TLF's (temporary living facilities) on base for the last 5 days. Then we fly out noonish on the 6th, spend the night in Baltimore (where the military charter flight will get us to) because we don't have time to get our stuff and the dog and get through customs and then check back in for our continental flight to Houston. So we fly out the next morning around 7 am and get to Houston around 0930. We'll be there for just over a week, then AJ has to head up to Altus, OK to train up on his new jet, the C-17, and Josh and I will be staying a bit longer, then probably heading up to join him sometime early June or so. He's in training until the end of August-ish, and then we finally head to Charleston, SC!
OK, that's the news on the move. I'm just ready for it to be over.