Back Home Again in Sweden

We visted IKEA today. It was so crowded that there were lines waiting to just enter the parking lots. There was the typical huge ground one and two garages. We got a little nervous, but happened upon a lucky break and got a spot. Strolled through and then decided we'd get the yummy, cheap IKEA dinner. I will say the choices here were much yummier than those at the Cincinnati location. Since we eat dinner at 6ish there was absolutely no lines for the cafe. I'm sure we were pegged as Americans just by our dinnertime. :)

Yesterday we visited a local mall-very American like. Celia and Dean especially liked it because there was a kid game room. Celia mostly enjoyed the bumper cars, but has no interest in bumping-only racing. I really think that might be her extracurricular of choice as she gets older. She's quite good at it. Dean enjoyed the kid rides and tried the bumper cars, but I got scared and switched him to something else. The cars had no shoulder straps and the kids just run up to a car and put their coin in. No one standing watch. Cars can stop, go whenever they want. A bit like the ol' school game Frogger.

Still enjoying the pool here at the hotel and Dean now swims (with floaties) by himself!! The pool is actually part of a fitness center and I'm pretty sure that we are swiming during swim lessons (like in the actual lane they are being conducted). I just speak English a little louder so they know I have no clue what the rules are ---no one has kicked us out yet. :)

Today was our first fully sunny (most mornings there is a thick fog) and clear day. Such a beautiful town. You can see the Dolomite Mountains from where we are. Celia and Dean (and we) are excited to visit the mountains soon; every time we drive through this long tunnel under one of the local hills they get really excited! We think it'll be the weekend after next.

Celia starts school tomorrow and Dean's head and cold are...well...not getting worse. We get to move into our house on Wednesday and our shipment from the U.S. is supposed to arrive then. We are all excited to have our own place to live.

How Do You Say "Helmet" In Italian?

Poor little Dean. Last night, since we don't have a bathtub in our hotel room, he was taking a shower, and fell down and hit his forehead on the porcelain edge of the shower floor. We were scared of a concussion or something, so Drew took him to the hospital. They observed him for about 3 hours, then they came home. Poor guy fell asleep on Drew's lap in the hallway.

This morning the lump was bruising nicely, but the swelling came down a little. He was fine all day - then, getting off of the elevator in our hotel, tripped again, and fell on the marble floor...and hit the EXACT same spot. Now it literally looks like a purple golf ball stuck on his forehead. We feel so sorry for him! We gave him some ibuprofen before bed, hopefully with some good sleep he'll be better tomorrow.

Lost in Translation

I'm just guessing...

Lunchtime Fun at Work

(Posted by Drew)
I went out at lunch to get hand lotion, since it's so dry here, and I wash my hands a lot at work (being in a manufacturing plant). I got a good deal on some lotion, about 2 Euro, and got back to my office, opened it up, and pushed the pump to get my hands all nice and lotiony....but, apparently, it's not lotion, it's soap. What a great feeling of dry hands with soap, then having to try and open the doors to my office and then the bathroom with weirdly soapy hands! Should've looked up the translation on that one...


I'm drowning my sorrows with the biggest calzone ever I got at a local pizzeria I found driving back from the grocery. My computer is in the photo for perspective...

Our Weekend Enjoying the Area

Enjoyed a local playground while Drew got his car. We figured that if we are in Italy we should get a ferrari. My drive back was uneventful-whew.

Right when we got there Celia ran over and pretended to be swimming.

Another trip to the grocery afterwards. We may never buy produce again. It's much like the NY Stock Exchange. First you must get gloves--must have these to touch anything. Then you push through the crowd (There's always a crowd. I guess it's because the stores aren't open Sundays or any afternoon) to get you items weighed by someone, bagged, and tagged.

Finally got our swimcaps. I guess Celia thought Italian water was different than Cincy water because she wanted to wear floaties. After a few jumps in though, she was fine to take them off. She's such a natural water lover. Dean, on the other hand, is not comfortable. He wants us to have a hold of him at all times. I'm posting these photos for your giggle pleasure. It's totally out of my comfort zone to have myself on here in a bathing suit, but the picture is really too priceless not to post. :) Enjoy.

Sunday evening we headed to Verona (yes, Romeo and Juliet) to tour the Natural History Musuem. Kids enjoyed seeing all the animals and we hope to visit again and get some pictures of the famous city.

Later that night, I attempted my first wash. After pushing several buttons, turning some dials, pouring detergent in a random opening, it started. The washing machine here is about 1/4 the size of the ones we have there and Italians don't typically have dryers! Yikes, that's a bit too "green" for me. Right now we have yet clothes strewn about our little hotel room. Smells good in here, but not worth the crunchy clothes we are going to have in the end.

Found out yesterday that we will get the house we wanted and will hopefully move in next Monday. Celia and Dean will have their own room then! Celia is fighting a cold right now and having them both in the same room makes me wonder how long it'll be before Dean has the cold too.

Oh, and, we didn't get a ferrari. :)

Two Great Italian Traditions

Drew had his first day of work today here in Italy. We're celebrating by drinking Limoncellos and watching Jersey Shore. :-) Will update about the weekend tomorrow.

Getting Settled

I'm not sure the Italian groceries can keep up with our milk intake. We would go through 7 gallons a week back in Cincy---these little containers here barely get us through one meal. And, you know the frig.s here are about the size of the ones we had in college. Guess I'll have to start drinking more of my newest drink---Snell Up!! Doesn't that just sound so refreshing. I think it taste like what I'd imagine aloe vera juice tasting like, but Drew thinks it tastes like Dt. Mt. Dew. I think that's just hopeful wishing on his part.

Still haven't heard back on the house we'd like to have, but hopefully that'll progress more next week. We did get to move into a bigger apartment/hotel room today. A big plus.

We made our first meal tonight. We've been living on pbj's and pizzerias until now. It tasted pretty good, especially considering we have no microwave or oven---we do have a toaster oven. But we don't really know how to use it or read the instructions on any package. Celia and Dean were happy with their Lightening McQueen nuggets though. :) Their reward was some fabulous Nutella---that stuff is so cheap over here (and so yummy).

Kids are still adjusting well. Sleep is progressing too. We still have to wake Dean up each morning/nap. He woke all of us up last night laughing. I guess he was patting Celia's belly and finding that really funny.

We are going to get our second car tomorrow (didn't make it there tonight) and I'll get my first driving experience here. There are A LOT of roundabouts here and Celia and Dean love to call them out with our GPS. And, I think we'll get to the pool finally tomorrow. Gotta go get those swim caps first though!

Oh, and we both got to work out tonight for the first time. Having your weight amount cut in half here is kinda unmotivating, but the workouts are needed in order to keep up with our gelato intake (sorry I keep mentioning it, but it really is a highlight of our day :).

Here are some videos we took the last few days. Enjoy! (And notice how almost all of them end with Dean saying "I see it, see it, see it..." because he's used to watching himself while we record on our old camcorder.)

My Birthday

Our post dinner gelato! Did you know that gelato is healthier than ice cream?!


Our super, yummy, floppy pizza.

Notice the lack of diners in the background. We had dinner at 7pm, which is still about 2 hours before the rest of Italians eat. :)

Front of the preschool.

We started the day visiting a school for Celia. She liked it and it seems like a great international school. Not sure if she'll attend there yet or not. We'll have to see how close it ends up being to our home and if they will have an opening. She wants to attend an Italian school and was kinda bummed to find out this was an "English" school. Luckily, 90% of the students are Italian, so I'm sure she can learn some from them. She and Dean jumped right into the class...I think they are a little anxious to be around some other kids. The teacher was working with numbers today and had them counting and finding the missing numbers. Celia raised her hand and said "Let's try doing this to 30!" She's not a bit shy, even in a new culture. :)

In the afternoon we visited a few more places to live. One of them we like a lot, but it's unfurnished so we are waiting to hear back tomorrow if it can be furnished. It's three stories, with three bedrooms (yea!) and close to some trails. It doesn't have a/c and will not have a tv. Can the Americans handle that in order to have a great place to live??? :)

In the evening we celebrated my birthday at a local restaurant with pizza, vino, and gelato. YUM!

Kids were great today, especially considering we did a lot of non-kid things. Tomorrow will be more kid friendly.

The Farmhouse we visited.

House Hunting Begins

Good first night! Dean was only up a few hours and Celia slept 13 hours. She must be wired for this! Even Drew and I can't keep up with that. :)

After breakfast around noon, we visited a possible place to live (which will now only be referred to as our villa---no matter its actual title :). It's a converted farmhouse that sits on 400 acres of land. It was beautiful. Front door of the villa opens to covered stone porch, walk to the pool, walk to the farm animals (kids loved this part). It's only two bedrooms and it's booked all spring and summer, so we'd have to move again at that time. But, it would feel very "under the tuscan sun." :)

Walked around the "downtown" of Vicenza tonight. Very cute, great shopping. We can make it here.

We are visiting a few more villas tomorow and a school for Celia. No gelato taste testing today. How did we forget that? We'll have to do double tomorrow and I'm ok with that since it'll be by bday!

Side note: Celia and Dean wanted some raisins today. We found it odd that we couldn't find any here. Guess all the grapes get used for something else. :)

First day here

We made it! Flights were good. Celia slept the entire "night"-even through breakfast. She arrived in Venice fresh and ready to takle the day. Dean on the other hand is like me and not able to sleep on the plane. He and I just hung out. I was happy to have on demand tv-what a difference that makes in flying overseas!

He and I napped at the hotel while Drew and Celia went out to lunch. Celia is practicing her Italian by ordering for us. She was especially excited to order the gelato tonight. That bowl of yuminess really might be worth the flight itself.

Headed to the grocery and found out at checkout that all produce has to be weighed and tagged before checking out. I'm sure those behind us in line would have appreciate us having that knowledge prior. Luckily two cute kids can get you out of about anything. :)

Tried to swim at the hotel pool, but after getting dressed (and super excited) we found out we needed swim caps-which we don't have. This was the only time Celia has expressed sadness about being here. She calmed down when she realized we could come back tomorrow. :)

Kids are asleep now-Dean was before the light went out. Drew and I took bets of what time it'll be during the night when they wake up and ready for the day. I say around 3am our time here.

Camera will be out soon and this blog will liven up. :)

Berlitz Intensive Italian - Day Four

Things were better today. I was more relaxed, and felt a little more in control of the language. I feel like I can hear and read Italian OK (for 4 days of lessons) but still not speak it too well. My pronounciation is good, but my brain spends so much time sorting through verbs, conjugations, masculine/feminine pronouns, etc., that no one would have the patience to actually have a conversation with me! I talked about this with my teachers, so tomorrow we'll work on speaking more than reading/hearing. While I understand a lot of the language's ins and outs, and know a lot about it, it'd be nice to have a bunch of ready-to-go phrases at the tip of my tongue for certain situations, which is something that I've not learned yet this week.

Berlitz Intensive Italian - Day Three

Ugh. A lot of info, and only one small brain. I'm still learning, but at a much slower pace it seems. My teachers say I'm doing well, but I feel like I'm not retaining much anymore. However, when I flip through the book, there are a lot of things that I now understand, so maybe I'm learning more than I thought.

Berlitz Intensive Italian - Day Two

Well, the day started out slowly - I felt like I was even more dense than I did yesterday afternoon. But, I kept plodding along, and by the afternoon I actually did OK. And, this evening, I even rolled a few "r's", and I wasn't even trying! I still don't feel like I could hold a conversation with anyone, but at least I can hear bits and pieces of real sentences, read some paragraphs, and conjugate some verbs. My teachers think by the end of the week I'll be in good shape...if so, then it'd better pick up a lot in the next couple of days!

Berlitz Intensive Italian - Day One

Wow. My head is spinning with grammar, vocabulary, and prononciations. I started out feeling pretty good, but by the end of the day I felt like I was just guessing, and like I knew next to nothing. It was like a straight 8 hours of a test - kind of like I felt after finishing the SAT's, except I have to do it again for the next 4 days. I just don't see how my little brain is going to absorb any of this all at one time...I'm mentally exhausted, and that has transferred to the rest of my body. (However - it is fun to spend my workdays learning language, instead of the other not-nearly-as-interesting things that I often do!)