Brian's First Day of Kindergarten

Just after labor day Brian headed off to his first day of Kindergarten! Of course I can't believe he is old enough to go off to school full time! After months of deliberating, we decided that sending him to the school on base was the best decision for him. He loves going to school. He loves his new friends and his teachers and riding the bus and most of all, recess!! It's a looooooooong day though for him, he's up at 6:20, on the bus at 7 and doesn't get home until 3:15! I miss having him around and I feel like I hardly see him during the week, so I guess you could say that I'm still adjusting too!

Waiting for the school bus for the first time! Luckily, the stop is right in front of our house! Oh and Emily welcoming him home after his first day. It might look sweet but they were picking on each other within seconds of this picture I'm sure!

Dirndls and Lederhosen

So several times a year our squadron (the 555th Triple Nickel) has events where everyone wears the traditional Bavarian outfits, lederhosen for the men and dirndls for the ladies. We are about 1 hour from the Austrian border and less than two hours from Villach, which happens to have several shops that sell the traditional clothing. Lots of squadron people have been ordering them online but we wanted the experience of shopping for them and wanted to see Villach and were craving some German food! So, we loaded the kids up in a car one day and drove up to Villach, the drive was incredible, the shopping decent, and we found a great little Biergarten for lunch and had us some German food. And by us, I mean Steve and the kids, since I had the ravioli. I'm not that keen on the German food, except for the occasional brat and potato salad. Anyhow, we have already gotten some mileage out of our new outfits. The pics above are from a squadron Oktoberfest party and also Steve wore his outfit to the real Oktoberfest in Munich. We will also wear them for the squadron Christmas party and in the summers for beer rafting! Prost!

Boxes O'Fun!

After 11 weeks in transit, our 15 crates of junk were finally delivered mid-August. I couldn't resist taking some pictures of unpacking hell! Or unpacking "Christmas" if you are not the one unpacking and everything is new and exciting again, like Emily enjoying this set of bowls. Everything is so much more fun when you haven't seen it in 11 weeks! Despite our horrible, terrible, worst pack-out-ever in Arizona, our stuff arrived decently intact and the Italian movers were so great. They stayed for two extra hours in the afternoon and searched every room and every box for the one small box that contained all the hardware for assembling the furniture and then they assembled everything! So glad we are past this stage and the house is 99.9% unpacked now!

Lake Barcis

 About 20 minutes from our house up in the mountains is this beautiful lake. There is something about the water in the Alps that gives it this beautiful green glow, I've always been amazed by it. It rivals all the tropical waters we've seen for crystal clear beauty! We took a quick trip up one day to check it out and walk along the water just before sunset. I have a feeling that next year it will be our new swimming hole!

Top left picture: I'd like to call this one "The Frustrated Fisherman." The fish in this lake are so thick they hardly have room to swim yet there are signs everywhere prohibiting fishing! Steve was in some sort of agony over this discovery of massive amounts of fish of which he could neither catch nor eat!

Around the Farm

Okay, so it's not exactly a farm, but as a certified card-carrying suburbanite, our home in Italy is the closest I've ever come to living on a farm. It's more like a really big lot with a huge orchard and garden at the back. Here are some random pictures of us playing around in our yard and the orchard/garden since we moved in in August.

The left picture is actually from a walk we took in the town but that is the mountain behind our village, I can't wait to see it snowcapped!

 The top picture here is Rina's house, our sweet landlady, who the kids LOVE! She is constantly giving them candy and they are constantly giving her hugs! She's had Emily and I over for lunch a few times and just about killed me with sheer volumes of her delicious pasta!

 Rina's son, Claudio, took me and the kids out to the orchard one day to shake the Hazelnut tree and collect what fell. They had a blast, but sadly don't actually like hazelnuts. They have enjoyed sitting on Rina's porch eating her apples and peaches and pears from the orchard. Claudio has spoiled us with tomatoes and grapes and cucumbers from the garden.

Top: The kids are over the moon at needing rain boots here and love a good rainy day when they get to wear them around! Emily posing in front of the giant hole in the ground that serves as a compost pile.

Flowers around the "farm"

Nom Nom Nom!

The food: It is probably my favorite thing about living in Italy. Italian food is the best food in the whole wide world. It's carby and fresh and delicious. So far, our favorites are Gelato (ice cream) in pretty much any flavor and Spaghetti Carbonara and Pizza Diavola, Margherita, and Aloha. We are super lucky to have an amazing Trattoria a 5 minute walk away with the best pizza and vino rosso we've found yet. They are never super busy, have a highchair for Emily and always give the kids candy when we leave. It's awesome!

 Clockwise from top left: E eating gelato (her fav is Fragola ~ Strawberry), B's gelato-stashe, B eating gelato (his fav is usually Mente ~ mint with little chocolate chips), and then my favorite wine so far from a local winery along with some Moscato grapes from our Landlady's son's grape vines. They taste like tiny moscato wine sips, yum!

Above: nummies in Venice, that ravioli was insane!

The pasta aisle at the local Italian grocery store and funny little spiral pastas with our Landlady's pesto sauce. I don't like pesto because I don't like basil but her sauce was amazing!!

Clockwise from top left: the day our household goods were delivered, we had pizza delivered for lunch and didn't have a table in the kitchen yet so the trash can works just fine for Brian! Pizza "Americana" from our local pizza joint, complete with hot dogs and french fries, I'm sort of offended by the stereotype that Americans eat this!! And E and B enjoying some giant pretzels in Austria.

Clockwise from top left: B enjoying some biscotti, more gelato, some tiny nummies from a local cafe and a cappucino from there too. Italians do small breakfasts, just a coffee and maybe a little pastry. Their coffee is incredible though and same goes for the pastries, yum!

Venezia

 One boring saturday in August before our household goods got delivered, we hopped the train to Venice (about an hour ride) and had lunch there. Then walked around a little, rode the Vaporetto (a boat that is like a bus) and generally just wondered the canal city. Brian loved all the water and boats and was excited to see a city where the roads are canals and the cars are boats. Both kids had a great time on the train and didn't seem to notice it was about 95 degrees out that day and the train on the way back didn't have A/C other than some open windows. Open windows = European Air Conditioning with the added benefit of bugs.

 Both were tuckered out and took advantage of the comfortable (?) seats of the train home to take a nappy.

Emily is in a phase where she ruins every picture because she doesn't want to be in it! This is one of the rare ones where she is facing the camera and not hiding in her stroller!!

Benvenuti in Italia

 Finally to pictures of our arrival in Italy! We had a great flight over from Baltimore to Ramstein AB for a quick layover and then on to Aviano AB. The kids did great, they were so exhausted from a day hanging around in Baltimore waiting to board the international flight, that they both passed out just after takeoff and slept until landing in Germany! Then Emily fell asleep again on the second flight and didn't even wake up when the plane jostled down onto the runway, we had to wake her. We were all tired of course but we had minimal jetlag and the worst part is that we all spent the first 2 weeks in Italy with some sort of cold/flu virus. We spent the first month carless and living in the temporary lodging on base until we could get all the paperwork squared away on our house and then we moved into it with only the loaner furniture from base. Steve and I had been through that process before but it was different with kids and only having one small bag of toys to entertain them with. Luckily, our house has a great yard and the weather was beautiful so we were able to spend lots of time playing outside.

 

These pictures are from a Welcome tour the base takes newcomers on to acquaint them with the local area. Emily stayed back at base daycare because the trip was not really toddler friendly. We went to this cave lake thing (above) that goes down at least 600 feet and they don't know where it ends! Brian was facsinated by this. We went to see an Italian outdoor market, each big town has these weekly and they sell everything from food to clothes to purses. Then we went to a nearby town, Pordenone to walk around the downtown and tour a church, and took the train from there to Sacile. Only a 10-minute ride but it was only to show us how to buy/validate tickets and so on. Then onto an Italian lunch (yum!) and a winery (more yum!). Brian had a blast at the winery because the owner had a son his age and even though they didn't speak the same language, hot wheels, Lightning McQueen, and trains are a common language among 5-year-olds the world over!

Sunny Days

 

We had about 3 days in Norfolk, Virginia before we headed out to Italy and only needed one morning to ship our van. We thought long and hard about how to give the kids one last uniquely American experience before beginning our 3-year-long overseas adventure. What says "American" more than spoiled-rotten, sugar-loaded, trinket-carrying, character-obsessed, tantrum-throwing, overheated children in a theme park!? Nothing! So off we went to Busch Gardens with Aunt Amanda for a fun-filled day with Elmo and his Friends. We dined with Elmo and Cookie and Abby and Big Bird (pre-political scandal) and we ate junk-food and slurped icees, got overheated and dehydrated, skipped naps, and bought junky toys, rode all the best kiddy rides, ate what passes for "german food" in fake Deutchland, and on and on. It really was a blast! The best part was that we got in free thanks to SeaWorld themeparks' military program that gets all military members and their immediate family in free once a year.

The Outer Banks again....

After almost a week at Steve's parents, we all headed down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to spend a week on the beach over the 4th of July. Two summers ago we did this same trip and loved it. The Outer Banks is cute and charming and not too crowded and has great beaches so we decided to squeeze in one last family beach trip before heading overseas. Steve's sister joined us and for a short time, her boyfriend, Gene, and also Steve's Uncle Tony and Aunt Dreama. The kids loved splashing in the surf and near the end of the trip, Brian got into the water beyond where he could touch and floated around with everyone, kicking and swimming. He was still wearing a floaty but considering how absolutely terrified he is of water, it was a big step forward. Emily was less apprehensive and was out in the water past the waves on a boogie board as often as she could find a willing adult. Steve and his Dad got up super early every morning to fish from the pier and did pretty good some days. They finally figured out that the key to fishing the Outer Banks is the wind direction as well as tides and didn't waste time on unfavorable winds/tides.

 

 We went to see the giant sand dunes and maybe when the kids are older, we'll go back to climb them.

 We watched fireworks from the deck of our rental house and we enjoyed one of the many local ice cream shoppes.

 Before we left town on the last day, we headed over to Kitty Hawk where the first flight took place. We walked around the little museum and sat through a talk about the first flight. Then as we were stepping outside to see where it took place, an Army Apache Helicopter set down in the field and opened it's doors to many excited aviation enthusiasts, our kids included. Steve has actually been in one of these before on a short flight in Korea but it was my first time seeing one up close, they are much bigger than they look.

After this, we made our way up to Norfolk, Virginia where we shipped our van to Italy and took the kids to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg with Aunt Amanda.



On the Road Again....

....like a band of gypsies we go down the highway (darn you Willie Nelson and your catchy jingles that get stuck in my head!)

 

Our adventures in June...... The kids and I headed to CA for a week once our house in AZ was packed out. We got to see all the family one last time before the big move because my parents threw us an Italian themed Farewell Party. All the cool kids were there and they all had a blast, jumping in the bouncy house until way way too late at night and eating way way too many Italian cookies and Italian sodas.

 

 The kids and I returned to AZ just in time for Steve's 35th birthday and "fini flight." At the end of each assignment on their last flight with that particular squadron, the pilot is forcefully and sometimes not gently removed from the jet, taped to it using various methods, or chained to the ground near it, and then hosed off by giant pressurized containers of water and bottles of champagne. Doesn't that sound lovely? 

 

In the past, Steve's fini flights have always been in the dead of winter. When we left Germany, his fini flight was in January and small flurries of snow started coming down just as he landed. When we left South Carolina, it was in February and was so cold out, there was a terrible ice storm later that evening. On his fini flight in June in AZ, he finally got desirable weather for a spray down, it was about 110 degrees that day and probably 15 degrees hotter than that out on the flightline! He was the most comfortable of us all!

 



 On June 19th, we loaded up our van and hit the road for a cross country trip that would take us from Arizona, through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and finally to Steve's parent's house in southwestern Virginia. 7 states and 3 timezones in 4 days and not a single tantrum. The kids did great although they watched an insane amount of DVDs and were ready to run run run whenever we got out of the car. The day we left AZ, it was 116 degrees and we were happy to say goodbye to the miserable heat, but we made one last stop in hell at the giant meteor crater off Interstate 40 in northeastern AZ. Brian still talks about the crater and had all kinds of interesting questions about "meateaters" (he can't say meteor no matter how hard he tries) and how a meteor might have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs. We were hoping to make a few other stops and see some friends and family along the way and maybe some more sights but either the timing didn't work out or they wouldn't allow kids (damn you Jack Daniels distillery!) We did get to stop in Nashville for two shakes of a lambs tail to hug my cousin Carrie. That is a town I want to see again and spend a few days in. But all and all, a good trip for 2,150 miles in 4 days!

We spent almost a week at the farm. We got to visit most of the extended family, including Steve's Granddad Hurt, who was in the hospital at the time and passed away a few weeks later :( The kids of course loved seeing the cows, riding on the 5-wheeler, playing down by the "Big Rock" and the little pools of water near it. Steve worked for a whole day building a damn for one of the larger pools, so he could fish it. Tiny fish, but still fishing I guess. Brian liked helping with the damn but not fishing. Emily just wanted to get dirty and wet and eat sand. We all participated in a new activity called "see who can get eaten alive by mosquitoes first!" I think I won. Little did we know that Boones Mill mosquitoes have nothing on the giant vampire Italian mesquitos!