Our last souvenir

On our last Saturday in Italy, we decided to get the one thing here that we hadn't gotten yet.  A good set of knives.  There is a town known for it's knife making, Maniago, that was about 25-30 minutes from our town.  We hadn't spent much time there, although our friend's Luc and Cassy lived there, and my friend Jessica, lives there.  It's a really neat little town and Mark and I kind of wished we'd lived over there during our time here.  There are walking paths all over, a really nice downtown square and it's nestled right up against the bigger mountains.  Hind sight is always 20/20.

We weren't sure what we wanted to get when we went there, we just wanted to get a nice souvenir, since Maniago is known all over the world for it's knives.

We ended up getting a set of 5 knives, with the wooden block, and then a little paring knife, a sharpener, and Mark got a nice that he wants to use in his wood working.  We're pretty excited about them.  We wanted to make sure they all said "Maniago" and they do right under "Fox".  I've never heard of Fox knives and I've tried to find them online and I only see the hunting knives that they make.

Mark got a little knife for his wood shop.  It's really neat and has an olive wood handle.  He's happy with it.

And because I haven't taken very many pictures of my kids at all lately with everything going on, here's  a few of Ben's nightly routine.  He impatiently stands next to us while we get his bottle ready, signing milk and more and eat the whole time.

And then he's happy as a clam when he gets it.  The kid could eat 24/7 pretty easily.  He eats ALL the time!!

Abbie’s last day at the asilo

Friday was Abbie’s last day at the asilo in Sarone.  I was a little sad for her and for her teachers, since they were sad to see her go.  And I was a little sad for me since the asilo here is free except for the 2E meal ticket per day, and in AZ it’s going to be around $440/month for PART TIME.  Ugh.

Abbie has come a LONG way since her first day at the asilo.  She loves going to school now and gets sad to leave when I come pick her up after she’s been there for 7 hours.  I think she thrives in a group setting like that where she can be social and be around other kids.  She learned quite a bit of Italian and can sing nursery songs in Italian now, which is really cute.  I’ll miss that.

Ben and I walked this walk multiple times per week to take Abbie to school or to pick her up from school.  Usually I would strap him on my back in the Ergo, or I would push the double stroller up the hill so she could ride home.  The street above was about the only flat part of the walk.  The rest of it was uphill to her school, although it was less than a half a mile away.  I loved that her school was within walking distance of our house.  The two preschools we’re considering for Abbie in Phoenix are both about a mile and a half away from our house there.  I will consider putting the kids in the Burley bike trailer and taking Abbie to school that way there.  I loved that I could walk her to school here.  And I lost a bit of weight doing it!

This is one of Abbie’s teachers.  I think she had 4 of them that rotated throughout the day.  Abbie really like Maestra Marta (pictured above).  (“Maestra” means teacher in Italian.)  She didn’t speak much English, but she always gave Abbie a big hug when she got to school.  The night before her last day of school Abbie told me that Maestra Felica said that she would “have a tear” when Abbie left.  It was sweet.

Every day Abbie would ask if she could play in this park right outside the school.  The asilo has a private park not open to the public, but this was the little public park in Sarone.  It had like 3 things, but Abbie still liked it.  I think she’s going to be overwhelmed by the parks in Phoenix.  There is a park about 300 feet from our back yard in Phoenix and it’s even covered, so it’ll be shaded in the 120 degree heat there.  She’s going to love it.

I’m glad we put Abbie in the asilo during our time in Italy.  I know she really enjoyed her time there.  Hopefully we’ll find a preschool in Goodyear that she likes just as much.

Ireland–Day 7

Since we had to be at the airport at like 5am, or some ridiculously early hour in the morning, we decided to go to Dublin the night before and spend the night in a hotel near the airport so we could actually get a little sleep before our early flight.

We got checked in to our hotel and then decided to head downtown to check it out.  We decided to drive, which probably was a mistake.  It took quite a while to get to the downtown area from the airport with the way traffic was, but we eventually made it.  I thought it was interesting that Dublin had the same thing going on that most of Italy does – crumbling buildings in the middle of downtown surrounded by a bunch of newer buildings.

We wanted to find a place to eat an early dinner since we hadn’t really had lunch and ran into the same problem we have every other place – finding a child friendly restaurant is next to impossible sometimes.  There were bunches of restaurants around, but my parents didn’t want to eat at an American place like Hard Rock Café, and we walked in to about 3-4 other ones and none of them had high chairs available for Ben to sit in. 

We eventually found one and had a good meal and took a few pictures while we waited for our food.

After dinner we walked around a bit more to check out the Dublin Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which ended up being expensive to go in to, so we skipped it.  I hate having to pay to go inside a church.  That just seems odd to me, especially when it’s something like 5 or 8 Euros a person.  Give me a break.  I would have loved to spend a bunch more time in Dublin, since it seemed like a fun place to be, but I was glad that we’d concentrated more on the “natural” part of Ireland versus the city life during our visit.

Overall, Ireland was a lot of fun.  It was on our travel wish list and I’m so glad that we got to check it off.  There’s still a lot there that we haven’t seen, so hopefully someday when the kids are much older, we’ll be able to make a trip back to see more of this beautiful country.

Ireland–Day 3

(This was the road to our rental house.  It was beautiful!!)

On our third day in Ireland, we decided to go check out a few of the castles.  It started out a little hazy, but on our drive by Lough Derg the sun came out and it was beautiful all day.  I got some great shots from the car as we were driving to the castles.

We passed this park every time we went anywhere, but this day, since it was so pretty and we had a little time, I jumped out and took a few shots.  The fall colors were just gorgeous in Ireland, and when you added the blue sky…  it was perfect.

We also passed through Killaloe every day, but this was on of the best shots I got of it.  The sun just makes everything better!

Up first was Cashel, Ireland.  It was actually in Cashel that Mark got the phone call from his commander telling us that we were going to Phoenix next.  We were sitting in a little pub, next to a fireplace with burning coal.

After lunch we headed out to find the Rock of Cashel.  We saw signs and just started following them.  We passed this church on the way, that was missing a roof.  I love the picture on the right below.  And I also love the mailbox picture.

The Rock of Cashel is on a big hill overlooking Cashel and the gorgeous Irish countryside.  According to mythology, the Rock of Cashel landed here from a mountain 20 miles away when the devil was banned from a cave by St. Patrick.  The oldest part was built around 1100 A.D.

The views from the Rock of Cashel were just breathtaking.  I’m definitely glad we stopped to see this.

Next we drove a little further south to Cahir to check out the castle there.  We decided not to get out, so I just took a few pictures as we drove by.  Cahir seemed like a cute little town.

Lastly, we went to Kilkenny to check out their castle and have dinner.  I loved Kilkenny.  It had a really cute downtown area and the people were very friendly.  We also went to an “outdoor mall” there and checked out Penney’s, which is the Irish version of JC Penney’s.  Cute clothes for really cheap.

I love these pictures of my boys.  And I love that hat on Ben!

 

We headed back to the house earlier on this day, since we wanted to get an earlier start to see the Cliffs of Moher the next day.  More on that soon!