pretty ladies

ry and i took a couple of hours while in stuttgart, germany to visit the porsche museum.

my sweet ry has long been a fan of the porsche.

a beautiful, clean, white space!

i loved this beautiful place!

 

 ryan's dream car.  he doesn't want a new one.  he wants one from the 80's.

 not me. 

i like brand new!

 we did the audio tour.

the history was fascinating to me.

i loved hearing about the races and the cars created just for certain races.

 this is a photo i pulled from the web, but it shows the clean beauty of the inside of the museum.

gorgeous architecture!

goin' to church

when ryan and i were in rome, we went to church.

alot.

technically, we went to a lot of churches.

here's one.

it's sort of famous.

st peter's basilica.

 wowza.

here's the statue of st peter.

poor thing, everyone's rubbed his toes off!

this is st. peter's square.

the pope had spoken the day before we visited.

we also saw the sistine chapel!

it was beautiful and much smaller than i had imagined. 

we also did a tour of the vatican museum.

ryan loved the first part of the tour...

going through security.

the guards just sat and chatted with each other, never once paying attention to the monitors or flashing red lights when people walked through the metal detectors.

i guess the pope was out that day,

as they didn't seem to care about the 10,000 other people in vatican city.

rome. aaaaahhhhhh.

the beautiful view from our hotel balcony.

when i arrived in our room, i stepped out onto the balcony and saw this beauty.

it was so lovely and i felt so relaxed.

i still had the day to wait for ryan to arrive, so i...

opened the sliding door,

took a long, hot bath,

took a little nap,

and perused a travel book.

heaven.

these beautiful steps can be found in the piazza de espagna.

they are commonly known as the spanish steps and have been featured in many movies.

we stepped our way to the top with all of the other tourists, but it was still magical!

the trevi fountain!

so amazing.  this was ryan's favorite!

the cutest couple!

it was hard to snag a spot to take a photo, but we scooched our way in.

the pantheon.

the best preserved building in rome.

it has a large open dome at the top and when it rains, the water dances on the floor inside.

i guess you wear your rainboots to church if it's raining.

raphael's tomb inside the pantheon.

the beautiful, spectacular colloseum.

halloween!

this halloween was filled with fun, but it sure went quickly!

 we attended the annual trunk or treat at our church.

 afton, the peacock, with cute friends!

 sadly we bought our pumpkins at wegmans. 

we usually try to fill a saturday with a trip to the pumpkin farm. 

 the always joyful afton, scooping seeds!

a serious worker. 

 this year we had a marmee pumpkin. 

wait!  that's the real marmee with us!!!

 mom and marmee got to visit ella's school halloween party.

 sharpay evans, of high school musical fame, prepares for an evening of candy collecting.

 we spotted a beautiful peacock in our neighborhood!

off to trick or treat with dad!

new artwork from aftie

if you can read sign language (ASL) start on the red hand and and go clockwise. 

you will see what afton's hands spell!

is that amazing? 

i never would have thought to draw hands speling a word in sign language.

beautiful work aftie girl!

a very fun trip

for christmas last year my sisters and i received a super fun gift from our parents...

a girls trip to salt lake city to shop and eat and play!

because we are all busy girls, we rarely get to be together at the same time.

boo.

so we were super excited and i think my dad was feeling a little sad to miss out on this party

so he decided to come along!

 you can see what a party animal he is!

he even wanted to dress up!

a wild and crazy guy.

(mom and kara)

 we shopped, we ate, we shopped, we ate, we shopped some more and then we ate some more.

let's just say

i had to buy a mumu to fly home in because my pants were too tight.

 (the amazing and beautiful oldest sister-in the stripes- and megan)

 (dad & cleve)

we also found time to stop eating and attend a few cultural events.

aussie pink floyd concert

rock on!

my dad and his buddy, cleve, are HUGE fans of pink floyd.

luckily,

cleve found australian pink floyd tickets for us!

it was a very fun concert and we got to see our sweet cleve-er and his cute family.

 the three guthrie girls

 the second half was in 3-D

and no, i am not usually cross-eyed and gape-mouthed!

we also attended a lovely rendition of My Fair Lady at the hale theatre.

and last but certainly not least we took a moment for our spiritual selves

and attended the spoken word at temple square

with the world famous mormon tabernacle choir.

truly they are amazing!

we had a really great time shopping and eating and rockin out to pink floyd.

but we also had some moments of reflection as we looked through old family photos and letters my dad packed up and brought. 

we sprawled out on the bed and floor at little america

and reminisced about the good old days.

we also celebrated megan's 40th birthday.

(just teasing, she's only 30 something!)

thanks for a great new memory, mom & dad!

we all love you.

why? i wanna know why! i wanna know whyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

why does something crazy, involving household appliances, always happen when my husband is on the other side of the world? 

one time the disposal decided it had done enough disposing.

horrible smell.

this time something is going on with the water heater.

i went downstairs to start some laundry and found water all over the floor. 

i was so excited.

like any logical person would do...

i called my dad.

he lives in idaho.

he said to call the plumber.

so, we are waiting for the plumber.

maybe we'll get a new water heater!

i've been dying to get one.

p.s. aren't you jealous of our gorgeous basement?