Looking ahead to 2015

 

Although 2014 was a good year, there are definitely changes I’d like to make in 2015, starting with this blog.  As of right now I have a whooping 19 blog posts done for last year.  That bums me out big-time.  I use this blog as my online diary and we print books out at the end of each year and we’re hoping someday we’ll have an entire set of the books with the story of our lives in them to pass down to the kids.  I have so many pictures from last year that I haven’t even looked at, but I am starting to go through my photos and edit them and it is my goal to get all of those pictures, at least, up on the blog.  I’ll write as much as I remember about the days I took them, but at least the pictures are better than nothing.  And then I hope to keep up on it much better this year, although with having a job and adding another kid to the mix and possibly moving God knows where, that might be tough.  But I’m going to attempt it anyway.  I’m bound and determined to get last year caught up too, but I’m going to be back-dating all of my posts so they probably won’t show up in your feeds.  If you want me to email them to you, let me know and I’ll add you to the list!

Speaking of the blog and all my photos and editing, that’s another thing I’d like to work on.  I really want to improve in my photography, including the actual picture taking and figuring out my camera more and then editing in Lightroom.  This blog was a lot easier to keep up with when I didn’t know much about photography and didn’t edit any of the photos.  It adds significantly more time to the blogging process when I want to edit the photos before I put them on here.  This year I would LOVE to upgrade my camera to a full frame (preferably the 5D Mark iii), but considering that camera is about $2500 I’m not sure that’s going to happen.  Although, when we had Abbie, we got my first DSLR, the XSi, and shortly after we had Ben we upgraded to the 60D, so it would just be keeping up with tradition if I upgraded again with baby #3.  I love the 60D but I take a lot of photos inside and I have to bump the ISO up SO much to be able to have the shutter speed above 1/120, which I need considering I’m shooting kids or dogs (aka – moving targets).  But if the ISO is above like 800 the photos have a ton of noise in them and that bugs the hell out of me.  (See below for examples.)  I still get decent pictures, but I like crisp, clean shots and these are far from it.  

I also would love to work on de-cluttering my house.  I am the queen of holding on to things I don’t really need to keep because I always think of the what-if’s.  But let’s face it, I’m not ever going to be the size I was in high school anymore and having some of those clothes is more depressing than motivating at this point so I could probably unload them.  We have so much stuff that we don’t use that I should just get rid of.  And my main motivation is our potential move this summer.  We were close to our weight limit when we moved from Italy to here and since then we’ve purchased another kitchen table (and I’m using the old one as one of my sewing tables), a solid oak antique desk for Abbie, a huge 3 piece sectional couch and lots of other little things that add up in weight.  I can almost guarantee wherever we go next we won’t be living in a 3100+ sq foot house and we’re not going to have room for all our stuff so we might as well downsize now.  I’m hoping I can put some things in my parents basement/shed for a while until Mark is out of the military and we’re not moving every 1-3 years.  This will be a tough one for me, but I’m going to try!

I would also love to be more active this year.  Right now it’s a little tough with being pregnant and all, but after I have this baby, I would like to be more active.  I have dreams that I can actually run for any real amount of time.  I have never been good at running and I have never enjoyed it.  If I could get to the point where I could actually jog a mile without stopping and without feeling like my lungs are going to explode or collapse or both, I would consider that a win.  I’d love to someday do a 5K, but that is a long way in the future.  I have pretty much zero endurance and I would like to build that up by walking/jogging and maybe swimming.  This will probably be the hardest of all my goals because I tend to not make time to exercise and I can only imagine that might get more difficult with 3 kids.

I would also like to have more patience with my kids and really work on the way I talk to them and handle them when I’m tired/stressed/busy/etc.  My kids tend to get the brunt of my pissy-ness and I hate that.  I want to learn to take a step back when I feel tension building and then handle the situation and my emotions the way I would like my kids to handle them.  They are little sponges right now and I really want to be the best example to them of how we should act and how to be kind and if I’m flipping my lid, I can’t expect them not to.  I’ve been reading articles regarding the way you talk to kids and how it affects them and I’m much more aware of what I’m saying now or how I’m coming across to my kids.  I’ve already noticed I’ve been able to hold back a few times and not flip out on them.  I’m far from the perfect parent, and I never will be perfect, but my goal is to become better and to bring myself up to a level I’m comfortable with and I’m not there yet.

Last but not least, I love buying fabric.  I have a pretty healthy stash of fabric, but I never DO anything with it.  I have lots of plans for it, but actually sitting down and sewing something doesn’t ever happen.  I don’t make it a priority so it just doesn’t happen.  I love making things though and I love giving homemade gifts so I’m hoping to use at least some of my stash this year.  I haven’t even made my own kids quilts yet so if I could make them their own full sized quilts I would be happy with that.  And I think I’ve decided I’m going to pay someone else to quilt them for me since that part really stresses me out and trying to get a full sized quilt through my little machine sounds like hell.  I love piecing the tops together so I figure if I can at least get 3 tops done and then pay someone else to do the hard part it’s a win/win.  I get to use some of my stash and don’t have to do my least favorite part of quilting.

Lofty goals for 2015, but I’m really looking forward to this year!  Big changes are going to happen for us as a family and looking forward to seeing what’s in store for us and meeting our newest addition!

PS:  All of these pictures were taken Jan-March of 2014…  Better late than never.

Jumper Abbie

Since Abbie started her swimming lessons, she’s really taken off in her love of the pool.  She loved it before, but she was content to just float around with her water wings on.  She didn’t want to jump in, she didn’t want to take her floaties off, she didn’t want to put her head under water or open her eyes under water.  In the past month, things have changed a little.  For one, she’ll jump in the pool completely by herself, while all the adults watch and take pictures from the deck.

She’s turned in to our little water kid.  We bought her a couple of those water ring and sticks that sink to the bottom of the pool and she loves trying to dive down to get them and usually she can get 2-3 of them before she comes up for air.

Thank God Mark likes to swim since I’m not much of a “get in the pool” person.  I like to watch from the sides.  And the pool is a nice refreshing 94 degrees right now.  (That was intense sarcasm… It’s like swimming in a warm bathtub.)  Abbie loves it and Ben loves it too, although we usually take Abbie swimming during Ben’s naptime, hence the lack of pictures of him.

All I can say is the house with a pool in the back yard was a good investment.  I’m glad we have it!

Interesting start to 2013

This year has started with a bang.  It seems like it’s one thing after another for us right now and it’s a tad bit exhausting.  I’ve been busy, but I like it that way.  The first Saturday in January, I went to Venice with 4 of my good friends from here and we had a great time shopping and eating at the Hard Rock Café.  It was my first time going to Venice with the girls, and I wish I had done it more often while we lived here.  It was a lot of fun spending time with them, and I got a cute purse from Venice also.  Over the next 8 days, I had a meeting and a luncheon to attend, but couldn’t because Ben had pink eye so I couldn’t put him in the childcare for those events.  Good thing I took him to the doctor since he had his first ear infection also, but after the first dose of antibiotics, his ears and eyes both cleared right up, thank God.  I also helped host 2 baby showers for good friends here, and that was a lot of fun.  I managed to finish their quilts for them and I’ll post about those soon.

Last weekend we were supposed to get the house ready for the movers to arrive on Tuesday, but Mark was sick with pink eye, a cough, a cold and a fever and I wasn’t feeling the best due to this stomach bug I’ve had off and on since after Christmas.  I felt queasy, had diarrhea and had no appetite what so ever.  The upside to it is that I’ve lost 6 lbs due to not feeling the best, but I think a lot of it has to do with the stress of the move and the anticipation of what’s to come.

Last weekend I also managed to drop my laptop off of my lap while I was in bed, and it landed on our hardwood floor and ruined the hard drive.  I sent it to a computer guy here and he couldn’t get anything off of the hard drive, so any of the photos you’ve seen on the blog since August are not gone.  I’ve lost my copies of all of them and the ones on here aren’t print quality.  I could have cried.  I’d spent hours working on editing pictures of a friend that I took for her in December, and I was almost done with them.  Lost all of those also.  (I still have the originals, just not the edited ones.)  I had just emptied my phone pictures and videos on to my computer and I lost all of those too.  I am heartbroken by it and I really hope that someone can figure out how to get the pictures off of it.  I lost all of my saved recipes on it, all of my favorite saved websites, everything.  I can’t access anything that I had on that computer anymore.  It completely sucks and I feel bad that I ruined the computer.  Not a good way to end one year/ start another, that’s for sure.

So the movers got here today and we had very little prepared for them.  We had to get everything separated that we want to keep with us here for the next 6 weeks while the majority of our stuff is shipped to AZ.  We managed to get the majority of it done today while the movers worked, but we still have some to do tomorrow and the movers will be here all day tomorrow also.  They think they’ll be able to get the rest of the house done tomorrow but I’m not holding my breath for that one, unless they stay super late, which I really hope they don’t.  It’s hard enough with the kids when they stay until 6pm, but any later than that is infringing on dinner time and the start of our night time routine.  We’ll see how it goes, I guess, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if they came back on Thursday also.

I’m already worried about our stuff being shipped.  I have my new stainless steel pots and pans being shipped and I told the guy packing them that they couldn’t be touching each other at all or they’ll scratch each other up by rubbing metal on metal.  He threw a bunch of them in a box, all piled on top of each other, but luckily I saw it and told him to redo it.  I wanted him to wrap them all individually but he just shoved packing stuff in between them, and that was only 3 of the 7 of them.  So hopefully the other 4 aren’t packed on top of each other.  We have a bunch of vases and plates and other very breakable things that we’ve gotten during our travels and I’m really hoping that those will arrive in one piece.  I’ll be pretty upset if they don’t.  And I’m worried about our antique table that we bought at the bazaar too.  I just really hope it gets there okay.  I would have preferred that they packed it differently than they did, but everyone assured me that it was okay.  I hope they’re right.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy.  I’m going to Slovenia with my friend Brittney for the weekend this weekend.  I have a Bunco game night this week, dogs vet appointments and a squadron coffee next week  and then we leave to go house-hunting in AZ for a few days.  February will be fairly laid back, but it’s the calm before the storm for sure.

This is our 6th military move in our 7 years in the military, so it isn’t our first rodeo, thank God.  I feel a little more laid back about this one (obviously, since we didn’t really do ANYTHING to get ready for it), but I’ll be glad when it’s behind us for sure.

I’ll post more once our stuff is gone and I have more time on my hands, which might not be until February!!

Ready

Lately I have been a bit antsy.  I feel unsettled, and I know exactly why.  I’m ready to go home.

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved the opportunity to live in Italy, and I am very thankful for our time here.  But I am over the novelty of it, and I’m missing the comforts of home.  I know that part of this is because the end is in sight now.  Mark has to turn his dream sheet (list of jobs that he’d like to do next, which would narrow down where we could possibly be sent next) in the next month, and then we should find out where we’re headed next in November or December.  So I’m getting antsy to know where we’re headed next for sure.  I’m a planner and I’m ready to start planning our next adventure.

A BIG reason I’m very ready to move back to the States is because of our house.  I’m tired of it.  It is WAY too small for us.  It would probably be just right if it were just Mark and me, but with 2 kids and 2 dogs in the mix also, it’s just tiny.  Abbie’s room is right by the living room, and she FLIPS out if her bedroom door is closed all the way.  Plus it is way too hot in both of their rooms with the door closed since the one A/C unit is in the hallway outside both of their doors.  (No central A/C in Italy.)  I close Ben’s door at night so he can sleep better and won’t wake Abbie up, but his room gets to 81-82 degrees at night when the door is closed. (His monitor tells me the temp in their rooms.)  Anyway, so we put Abbie to bed around 9-9:30pm and she’s often times still up at 11pm when we’re going to bed if we stay downstairs.   Lately we’ve been staying in the living room to watch the Olympics, but if we’re downstairs, she can easily hear us and it keeps her up.  It’s just annoying.

And my kitchen is TINY.  I am SO tired of having one tiny counter to do all my cooking on.  I love to cook, but I just don’t have the space here.  Here is the extent of my counter space.

Mark just bought me an awesome set of stainless steels pots and pans and I have no place to put them since you’re not supposed to stack them.  I kept all the cardboard they came with, so I have some of them stacked in my cabinet with cardboard in between them, but the rest of them are permanently on my stove, since I don’t have any other place for them.  I wanted to get one of those hanging racks for them, but since the ceilings and walls here are concrete, I’m afraid the screws will come out of the wall if I try to hang it.  (You can see some of my new set on the stove.)  But this is my entire kitchen.  I am SO ready to get in to a normal sized American kitchen, with enough storage for my kitchen things, or studs in the walls/ceiling so I can hang my pots.

The babysitter situation over here is ridiculous.  I’ve been taking Abbie to a sitter over here for almost 2 years, but she’s done some things lately that have made me not want to continue taking her there.  Abbie is going to start going to the asilo (Italian preschool) in mid-September anyway and I don’t want to pay someone 5E ($6.20) per hour to keep Ben when he just sleeps half the time.  So I’m going to try to find someone to be my regular night time babysitter for squadron events and date nights since our current one is moving this month, and also watch Ben at my house 2 days per week for a couple hours while Abbie is at school.  I’ve been interviewing people for the past few days.  Today one called me 10 mins before her interview telling me she’d be late and then never showed up or called, and then the other one spoke VERY little English.  I asked if she knew CPR or first aid and she had NO clue what I was saying, and I honestly had no clue what she was saying either.  Things are just 15 times easier in the States.

Abbie needs some new clothes and shoes and I’m having to have her Grandma’s get her things since I don’t have access to the good cheap stores like Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Tuesday Morning, etc.  Shopping online isn’t nearly as fun as shopping in person, and it’s hard to shoe shop for her online also.

And last but not least, I’m just ready to be closer to family.  I know we won’t be able to live close to either of our families, but at least they’d be a 3 hr, $300 plane ride away vs a 13 hr, $1300 plane ride away.  It would be nice to not be 7 time zones different from them also.

The good news is that we’ll see both of our parents in October.  Mark’s parents are coming over early October for Mark’s brother’s ordination in Rome, and my parents are coming at the end of October to go to Ireland with us.  I am really excited.  And it will be nice when Mark’s brother gets back to Rome also.  It is nice when he’s in the country and hopefully we’ll get to see him a few times before we move.

As I said, I am thankful for our time here in Italy and all the friends we’ve made and the places we’ve seen, but home is calling my name.

Abbie’s big girl bed

Last weekend we moved Abbie into a big girl bed so we could put her crib in the baby’s room.  I wanted there to be a little time between when she transitioned to her big girl bed and when he showed up, so it didn’t seem as though he was stealing her bed.  However, since we live overseas and only the shoppette here sells beds and mattresses (American sized), we were only able to get the box spring and mattress.  They didn’t have any full sized bed frames or headboards in stock, so we’ll have to order them and then wait 2-3 months for them to arrive.  But in the meantime, this works out well for her.

She seems pretty excited about her big girl bed and she loves having all her stuffed animals sleep with her.  She won’t get out of bed unless I’m in there with her, which is a HUGE relief for me.  She’ll call for me and ask me if she can get up, but she won’t get up unless I’m in there.  I’m hoping this lasts for quite a while because it makes my life a lot easier, for sure.  I still have a monitor on her so I can keep an eye on her when I’m in my room.

We took away her bottle and moved her to a big girl bed all in the same week, but she’s handled it well.  Now we just need to put her new dresser together and get her old dresser/changing table into the baby’s room, but I’m not in any rush to do that, especially since I still use the changing table with her.  And I still need to order her a bed spread and more sheets, but I’ll get around to that eventually…. I think.

A walk around the block

Before Mark left, we took quite a few walks around our neighborhood and had fun messing around with our camera.  Here’s a few shots from one of our walks.

Abbie waiting for Mark.

A few of our neighbors houses.

Carefully avoiding a puddle.  =)

Views from behind our neighbors house.

Heading home.

A view of Sarone from our landlords yard.

I miss him.

Springtime in Italy

The Spring is by far my favorite season in Italy.  The Italian countryside is just gorgeous and so vibrant with all the colors.  Italians LOVE flowers and that was one of the first things I noticed about Italy – everyone here has flowers.  Most houses have at least a couple window boxes full of flowers and most yards are beautifully landscaped with flowers of that season.  Our neighborhood is a perfect example.  Since the weather has been so nice here lately (high 60’s almost every day and sunny), I’ve been wanting to get out and shoot the neighborhood.  I finally took Abbie for a walk one afternoon and took pictures of the neighborhood flowers.  Abbie obviously enjoyed the walk because every day since then she’s been asking “Heppa mommy see fowers?”  She’s cute.

This is our neighbors front yard.  He does a great job with his flowers and changes them all out a couple times a year.  I LOVE the colors of these!

Another neighbor has a HUGE hydrangea bush, that I just notice they completely trimmed down.  But now it’s getting large buds on it again.  I wish I was going to be here to see it bloom.

Roses are big over here.  Ours aren’t blooming at all yet, but these ones were.

I don’t know what these flowers are, but they smell good and they’re really pretty.  They’re cascading down another neighbors fence.

These are pretty, but I was mainly just playing with my camera.

Abbie loves smelling the flowers.  She’s funny because it doesn’t matter what she smells, she’ll take a big sniff of it and say “MMMM.”  And she points at all the flowers and says “Oh piddy!”  (Pretty)

This tree is what I wanted to take pictures of mostly, but by the time I got around to it, half of the flowers had fallen off already and the ones still on the tree were wilted.  But I still think it’s beautiful.  I thought it was a cherry blossom, but friends here have been calling them tulip trees.  Anyone know what type of tree this is?

A little old lady tends to this huge garden.  She spends a LOT of time in it during the summer, and I saw her out there getting it ready to plant a few times.  Or maybe she’s already planted it, I’m not sure.  But I love all the daffodils around it, and I saw a few tulips also.

Here’s the road leading to our house.

I just can’t get enough of this weather!  Hopefully Abbie and I don’t get sick when we go back to the States.  It’ll be at least a 30 degree temp difference, if not more.  I’m going to try to bring some Springtime weather home with me.  We’ll see how that goes!