Exploring the area

We took a little drive today and explored the area a little.  We stayed within 20 minutes of the base, and it was a beautiful day for a drive.  (Although really any day here seems beautiful, even if it’s raining, it’s still pretty.)

This picture was taken at Castello Di Aviano (Castle of Aviano).  It was up on this big hill, and the view was gorgeous.  All the buildings you see off in the distance is the base.

There seem to be lots of tree lined streets here in Italy.

These buildings are everywhere.  Very old, very close to the road, with arched doorways.  All the windows have shutters on them and I would say 90% of the windowsills in Italy have flowers on them.  I absolutely love it.

More of the streets with the mountains in the distance.  Notice the biker in this picture.  Bikers are EVERYWHERE here.  Old men and women ride around on their rickets old bikes with baskets in the front and back.  And all the women wear skirts.  It’s interesting.  We also have the road bikers around here – the ones in the fancy bikers get-ups that look like their training for Tour de France.  I personally think they’re nuts to bike along these roads (usually without helmets).  The roads are narrow enough, and the drivers are crazy, let alone putting bikers on either side. Even the tiniest Italian town has a church and a bell tower and most of the time it’s in the town’s center. We really wanted to go to Trieste and Venice this weekend, but none of us are feeling 100% and we didn’t want to drag Abbie out when she doesn’t feel well.  Luckily we have 2+ years to explore.  Everyone says to not go to Venice anyway because every time you have someone visit you they want to go to Venice.  So we’ll probably go once to learn our way around and then just go back with visitors.  We here Trieste is pretty too, so hopefully sometime soon we’ll make it down there also.

First trip to the Italian ER

So we’re relatively new to this parenting thing.  This is the first time Abbie’s really been sick in the 10.5 months she’s been here, so we’re extra edgy about all of it.  Yesterday, she started getting pink eye.  I called a nurse help line and did this over the phone assessment with a nurse in Chicago (who reminded me SO much of my aunt Claire – she even sounded like her!) and she recommended that Abbie be seen by a doctor within 18 hours.  Since today (Friday) was a family day on base, the base clinic wasn’t open so at 10pm on Thursday night, we loaded her up and headed for the ER in Pordenone.

Going to an ER for the first time with an infant, in a foreign country, with socialist healthcare, where you don’t speak their language, is interesting, to say the least.  We had to park about 2 blocks away from the ER entrance (Mark said it was a good thing we weren’t going there for a broken leg) and walk down this dark, tree lined street with a FREAKY brick building with all the windows dark.  I would have been scared if it had just been Abbie and me, but since Mark was there, it was okay.  Then we had to go find the pediatrics floor, which was on the 5th floor of a building in the back of the hospital.  The building was very dark, very quiet and very empty.  Quite a few of the lights were off, and the doors to most of the hospital rooms were locked.  It was just weird.  The hospital felt very cold.  There was nothing “soft” or “warm” about it.  The room we went into had a hospital bed that was like a mat on 4 thin legs with that paper stuff over it, and it had a desk with a computer on it and 2 chairs, and a big medicine cabinet with glass doors, and that’s it.  Nothing on the walls.  No color anywhere.  Nothing on the desk even, except the computer.  Mark said that’s what socialist healthcare is like.

So they called a translator as soon as we got there and he was with us the whole time we were there and waited for over an hour with us before we were seen by the doctor.  When the doctor finally came in, she looked in Abbie’s ears and throat and at her eyes.  I asked them to take her temp again since she seemed warm to me again, and she did have a small temp again, even though she was fine when we had gotten there.  It was weird having the doctor talk to the translator and then have him tell us what she was saying.  I felt like we weren’t really getting the whole story because she’d talk for like a minute and he’d give us a 10 second version of whatever she’d said.

In the end, they told me to give her a syringe of this clear liquid (that I guess was Tylenol??) and said to go home and if it gets worse to come back.  They didn’t give her any meds, just confirmed that she does have pink eye.  It kind of annoyed me and I felt like if we’d been in the States they would have given us medication for her.  Mark said it’s probably better we didn’t get medication for her since we wouldn’t have really known what it was anyway.

So it was an interesting experience.  Here we were hoping to go to Venice this weekend and instead we got a tour of the pediatric floor of the Pordenone hospital.  11 days in Italy and we’ve hopefully gotten the worst out of the way!  She’s still all congested and her eyes are still red and she’s had a fever on and off, but she’s active and plays.  We just hope she gets better soon because we hate seeing our little pippers not feel well.

The house and the car

I am very quickly running out of room on my SD card.  I only have room for about 40 more pictures on both 2.0 GB cards, and we’re going to travel some this weekend so I’m nervous.  I’ll either have to buy another SD card or put some of the pictures on this tiny computer and pray to God that those HUGE pictures the DSLR takes don’t bog this down too much.  We’ll see.

So here are the long awaited pictures!  First our little Lancia.  (I always pronounced these as Lan-C-uh, but here in Italia they pronounce them lahn-cha.  A “ci” or “ce” here, is pronouced “CH-ee” or “CH-eh” which completely throws me off.  There is a town near here that is Sacile, and we always said “sa-see-le” but it’s “sa-chee-lay”.  One of these days I’ll get it…) Anyway, here’s our little car.

I had an ‘89 Dodge Omni for my first car, and this car reminds me a LOT of that car.  Basically, it’s a little piece of junk, that couldn’t possibly have cost more than $8000 brand spanking new, but it’s the best thing that’s happened for us since we got here and we love it.  It’s a very bare bones car, as in ZERO frills, but it runs well and has like 62000 miles on it and it’s not missing anything, unlike other cars we looked at.  And Abbie’s car seat fits perfectly in the back seat and it has a radio and the hatchback truck actually stays open when you open it instead of slamming shut.  We’re very happy with our purchase.  We’re the 2nd owners of it.

I drove to the spouse’s coffee last night and it’s just amazing how driving in a place makes it feel more like home.  We’re actually getting around here okay despite not having a GPS and we’re learning to navigate these CRAZY Italian roads.  Luckily the signs around here are pretty good, so if you happen to know the name of the town you want to go to, you can get there fairly easily.

Next up, the house.  We stopped out and picked up the contract from our new landlords yesterday, and I snapped a quick shot of the outside of the house.  It’s a duplex – an old couple that are always sitting on their front porch live next door – and the other half is identical to our half.  (And that’s our car in the driveway too.)

  You can’t really see it in this picture but off to the right is the walkway up to the house.  The landlords are going to put a fence up for us since there is a rock wall along the walkway and the yard is higher than the walkway and we don’t want to worry about Abbie or the dogs fall off the wall.  It’s only 2-3 feet high, but still.  They’ve agreed to put up a fence for us.  It’s a cute little house and we like our landlords and Americans (and the landlords – another duplex) live right across the street so that’s nice.  And the view from the porch is amazing.  I’ll take pictures of that once we move it, but this will give you an idea of what our new place looks like on the outside.

I’m going to go lay down for a bit since Abbie finally fell asleep for her nap.  Luckily her temp is down to 100.5ish again.  I was freaked out when it got up to 103, but she’s doing okay.  I think I’m getting whatever she has, which doesn’t surprise me too much since she’s been covered in snot for a day now and I’m constantly wiping it off of her and me.  Good times in Italy!  =)

Easter picture and a bunch of other stuff.

Here’s Abbie’s Easter outfit.  I really need to find some white baby legs.  The of-white ones had to do since it was all I had.  I’m pretty sure this outfit is from Mark’s late aunt, Elaine.

Abbie was “helping” with the laundry.  She thought it was great fun to climb around in all the clothes.  Ollie was supervising.  (And here’s proof that they can get close to each other without anything happening.)

Abbie has turned into the little climber.  I really wish we had at least a rug in here (although it’s probably a good thing we don’t right now bc of the dogs stomach issues….).  At the new house, we’ll have rugs and then I’ll feel better about her climbing.

Every time she sees a pillow now, she’ll lay down on it like this.  It’s pretty cute.  We’re teaching her how to do the “kiss wave” too.  She’s kinda getting it.  She signed water for the first time a few days ago, and she’s pretty consistantly doing “all done” and “eat”.  She likes to copy what we do – like shake her head no, or raise arms and legs.  Our little copy cat.

Here she is playing with Easter presents from grandma and grandpa Browning.  She was quite interested.    So Abbie is sick now.  Her nose is running all over the place and she has a slight cough and she’s running a temp of 102.  She’s still pretty active and in good spirits, but I hate it when she’s sick.  I worry about her.

Took Sadie to the vet today.  They said most likely it’s just stress related.  I’m supposed to take her off food for 24 hrs, and then feed her rice and boiled ground beef or chicken for 3 days and then gradually work her regular food back in.  I think Ollie might be stressed too because he seems to be doing the same thing Sadie has been lately (poop-wise).  Gross.  As I was typing this Sadie jumped off the chair and pooped all over the floor.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have a baby crawling all over the place….  Yuck.

So we finally got a car.  It’s a little ‘98 Lancia.  We were looking at a ‘95 and ‘97 BMW but we both thought the Lancia was in better condition and a better value.  The car buying process is a huge ordeal here.  You have to go with the “dealer” to transfer the ownership to your name and then you have to run around to 6 different places registering it and paying road tax and bunches of other fun stuff…  Mark was gone for 5 hours today trying to get all that done, but at least it’s done.

Now we’re going to go pick up the house contract since they didn’t have it ready yesterday when they said they would.  (Typical Italian culture.)  Luckily since we know the people in the house, we can sign paperwork to transfer all the utilities AND INTERNET over to us.  That’s a HUGE plus since they said they waited for 3 months to get the internet when they moved in.

One more thing, our new (American) phone # is 815-402-3448.  It’s an American number that calls our Skype so you can dial it from any phone with just a 1 in front.  It only works when we have our Skype turned on, but at least it’s not long distance!

 

Ciao! Ciao!

Feeling displaced

I guess that's probably bound to happen when you move to a foreign country, but it still kinda sucks.  Our little hotel room is decent, full kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, but it's not home by any stretch of the imagination.  It definitely feels temporary, because it is, but it makes it hard to feel at home in this country.

Our biggest obstacle right now is not having a car.  It's hard to be stuck in a hotel room all day, and not be able to get out and explore.  We borrowed our friend's car over the weekend since they were out of town and it feels weird asking people you hardly know for rides everywhere or to borrow their cars.  We're praying we find a car soon.

There is a volleyball team here that I would give just about anything to be a part of.  But 1. I'm probably not good enough to play on it.  I haven't played v-ball in years.  And 2. I have no clue who I'd get to watch Abbie while they practice/ play.  So that makes me feel kinda secluded too.  They also have squadron coffee's, which are a time for the wives to get together and hang out, but kids aren't invited to those either...  So when Mark's gone, I'm really not sure if I'll be able to go to those, or even if he's home since he'll be so busy.

Speaking of Mark being gone, he's going to be gone a lot, which freaks me out.  He'll be gone for two 3-week trips and one 5-6 week trip this year and there's talk of them changing the deployments from 4 months to 6 months.  That kinda really scares me.  Some days I'm not sure I can handle Abbie by myself for 8 hrs at a time, let alone 4-6 months!  Plus they have gypsies here.  Our sponsor had one come into their house at night while they were asleep and steal money, which terrifies me.  I don't even know what I'll do if that happens when Mark is gone.  Apparently these people are not violent and are non-confrontational, but still.  The thought of someone coming in while I'm asleep, and alone just isn't my idea of fun.  Maybe there's a reason Ollie barks at EVERY little noise he hears.  That might come in handy in the future.  And I'm ready to go buy a Rottweiler has a 2nd line of defense.

Anyway, we're off to bed now.  Sadie is still sick.  I'm taking her to the vet on Weds.  That's the soonest we could get in.  We're looking at a car on base tomorrow and Laura, our sponsor, is taking us to look at cars off base again and we're picking up the lease to our house.  I'll try to take more pictures, but both of my SD cards are almost full and the new (big) one won't be here for a while yet.  Hope you all had a Happy Easter.

So grossed out

I've cleaned up about all the dog poop and puke I can handle in the past 24 hours.  It started last night around 2:30am.  It was Abbie waking us up this time, it was Sadie who jumped off the bed and poop on the floor.  Thank GOD there is only tile floors in this place and no carpet.  Although after that she proceeded to puke on the bed, and then later she pooped all over an arm chair.  It's disgusting.  I don't know what she ate, but it's sure not agreeing with her.  She just pooped again on the floor and then when I was cleaning that up she peed on the floor too.  Anyone know what I can give her to make her poops even a little solid?  Yuck.

On a positive note, Abbie has been sleeping until 6:30am for 2 days in a row!  That's much better than 2:30am, although I think we have a ways to go until we get her back up to 8am.  We gave her a bath again tonight and I got in the tub with her, but she's still pretty scared.  She was clinging to Mark for dear life when he brought her into the bathroom and was crying.  She did better with me in there with her, but she slipped again (nothing major, we were both hanging on to her so she didn't go anywhere, her feet just slipped out from under her) and she flipped out.  Anyone know how to get her over this fear of the tub?  She used to love it.  I feel bad for her.

Today we went to Easter Service on base.  It was okay.  The message was terrible and a worm could probably speak more dynamically that this guy did.  The music was okay.  Luckily people who've been there before said that it's usually better than that.

After church we went to Mark's commanders house for Easter bunch with the squadron.  We got to meet a lot of people from the squadron.  Everyone seems very nice and it seems as though EVERYONE has kids or is pregnant or both.  I think I saw 2 couples with no kids.  The commander has 6 kids himself.  Their house was really neat, but houses over here are just so different from what we're used to in the States.  There is no such thing as open concept anything here.  The house we'll be renting is probably as open concept as they come since the kitchen, dining and living room is all one big room.

Tomorrow is an Italian holiday so most things are closed on base.  Mark has Right Start classes and I guess Abbie and I are going to hang out here most of the day and pray to God that she takes decent naps and that Sadie doesn't continue pooping all over the place.

Friday is a family day here, which means we'd like to travel some where.  But since neither of us has a AAA license, or even a car at this point, I'm not sure where we'll be able to go.  We might just head down to Venice for a day since it's only 45 mins away, or maybe go to Milan, which is 3 hrs away.  I'd love to go to Vienna or Zurich, which are both 5-6 hours away, but that would involve going out of the country and I'm not sure how long it'd take to get there via train.  We'll see.  I really hope we have a car by then!

Ciao!

Bellisima bambina!

Translated means beautiful baby girl.

I haven’t done a post about Pips lately.  Well besides my one at 3am… 

Other than the sleeping issues, Abbie is doing great.  People over here rave about her.  The Italians are very big on babies and they all come up to her and say “Ahh, bellisimo bambina!!!” and then they talk mostly to her and not to us.  And they ALL touch her.  I’m glad she’s not a newborn because Italians are touchy feely people in general, but especially with kids.  They love touching her face and hands.  Luckily that doesn’t bother me too much.

  She’s pulling up on everything now and her new thing is to push things around while she ‘walks’ on her knees.  She loves and and she trucks all over the place pushing things around.  Chairs, her high chair, her play table – anything she can get to move.  And sometimes she runs into things and then she’ll be pushing multiple things around.  It’s kinda funny.

She’s also started spitting things out now when she’s eating.  Drives me NUTS!  Especially her pureed baby foods.  She’ll eat about half of it just fine, and then she starts spitting it all out and you have to put it in her mouth about 3 times before she’ll actually swallow it.  Grr.

She has her front top right tooth all the way through the skin and her other front tooth is just barely starting to poke through.  Luckily they don’t seem to be bothering her much and she’s not drooling everywhere either. For some reason, the bathtub here TERRIFIES her.  Three nights ago we gave her a bath and she slipped and her head almost went all the way under the water and I think that freaked her out big time.  Tonight we just put her in there and she started screaming her “scared” scream.  It took two of us to give her a bath and she was upset during most of it.  I put a towel in the bathtub so it wouldn’t be so slippery, but she still didn’t like it.  Not good…  Hopefully she’ll get over her fear here, or at the new house once we get into it.

That’s all for now.  Tomorrow we’re going to look for a car and sign the contract for our house.  Hopefully it’ll all work out and we can find a car.  That would be very nice.

Benvenuti (welcome) tour

Today we went on the benvenuti tour, which the base provides to give you a small introduction to the local area.  It was so nice to get off base and explore, even if it was on someone else’s schedule.  We’re a little secluded right now since we don’t have a car and relying on people you don’t know very well for rides is hard.  Hopefully this weekend or next week we’ll get a car and that will solve that problem.

I finally took some (okay, a lot) of pictures!  Here’s the view of the mountains from the base.  It snowed up there yesterday, but all the ski resorts up there are closing this weekend.

The first stop on the tour was at this spring that originates over 600 feet into the mountain.  It was absolutely beautiful.

This is very typical architecture around here.  Very old buildings that are “dirty” looking, with shutters.  Every building here, new and old, has shutters like that on all the windows.  And the Italians all close them when they leave.  They never leave them open if they’re not at the house.

   The stream from the spring.   There were little steps everywhere going into this water so obviously people swim here.  It was maybe a few feet deep and crystal clear.  And that cobblestone lane -  they’re EVERYWHERE around here.  SO pretty.

Next we went to another town and parked in front of this church to go to the market.  (I don’t remember which towns these are.  Abbie was up at 2:30am and screamed until 6:30am, so she was a bear on part of the trip and we were trying to keep her quiet instead of listening to the tour.  Plus I’m so tired I’m not sure I’d remember the names if they were tattoo’d on my forehead at the point…)

Anyway, each little town around here has a center where they hold their markets.  Usually it’s by the bell tower, and each town has one of those.  These vendors move from town to town every day to sell their stuff.  It was so quaint and just exactly what you picture the Italian lifestyle to be like.   It’s not like in the US though.  You don’t touch the food especially here.  You point to what you want and the vendor gets it for you. The flower vendors were AMAZING.  There were probably 3-4 of them at this market, and a few more that sold potted flowers and plants.  Everyone here has their own gardens and they grow about 80% of their own food.  I can’t wait to plant my garden!  At the market there were LOTS of little old ladies carrying their huge bouquets of flowers upside down.  I thought it was odd that they all carry them with the flowers facing down, but they did.

When I took this picture, there was a seafood vendor (yes, they sell seafood at these markets and we even saw one that had live eels for sale.. EW!) off to the left of me, and he was singing Italian music loudly along with the radio.  (Think the song from Lady and the Tramp when they were eating the spaghetti – very similar to that!)  Most streets through these towns are as wide as the one pictured below.

Next we went to visit the Duomo di San Marco, the church of St. Mark.  (Proud of myself for remembering that.)  However, I don’t remember all the history behind that or where it was…   After that we visited a chocolatier and tasted the chocolate.  Even Abbie tasted some.  The tour guide was tickled pink when he fed it to her.  All this below is made of chocolate. This is the main shopping road in Pordenone. (Pronounced pour-deh-no-nay.)  Apparently it’s very busy in the summer.  There were TONS of shops along here and the church above was at the end of it.

Next we went to eat at this place.  It was like an upscale B&B type place.  The food was very good and the setting was gorgeous.

Lane to the restaurant.

Front of B&B.

Back of B&B.  I feel like I keep saying this, but again, it was beautiful!We sat with very nice people during lunch and I tried to engage in conversation with them, but after lunch was over, I was seriously struggling to even keep my eyes open, let alone talk.  It was really bad.  I could have easily curled up on the floor right then and there and taken a good nap.  Abbie FINALLY fell asleep here also.  

Lastly, we went to a winery for some wine tasting.  Most places around here have at least a few grape plants and they all make their own wine, whether they sell it or not.  This place was an official winery.

   Again, Abbie was zonked out.  At least I was fairly awake at this point.  I’d taken a little nap on the bus ride to the winery.

The red wines.

The white wines.

Wine tasting, and the owner of the winery.

We bought 4 bottles of wine for 13Euros.  Wine is VERY cheap over here, and very good.

Overall, the tour was great.  I just wish I’d been more with it.  We saw hundreds of things that we wanted to go back and check out, and the tour guides talked about many places in the surrounding area that we should look at.  The only problem was, they’re Italian, and have a thick Italian accent, and I had no clue what they were saying, let alone how to write it down to remember it.  Mark and I had to laugh a few times.  They add an “eh” sound at the end of most words, especially at the end of a sentence.  “Kids-eh”.  “Class-eh”.  Ticket was “Tee-kay-teh”.  And purchase was “pour-chase-eh”.  Their english was very good, but there’s definitely a learning curve to understanding Italians who speak English, let alone when they speak Italian…  But it was fun.   I finally feel like my blog is “real” again, now that I finally posted pictures.

4th night in a row

So it is currently 3:30am on Friday morning, and the FOURTH night in a row that Abbie's been up at this time.  I just absolutely cannot deal with this any more.  We are both exhausted.  We've gotten less than 5 hours of sleep a night since we got here and it's usually closer to 3 hrs per night.  Mark hasn't been feeling good lately, and it's most likely due to lack of sleep.  We're supposed to be leaving to go on an 8.5 hr tour in 4 hrs.

She has currently been SCREAMING, not crying, screaming, for a good 45 mins.  She's woken up 2-3 times between 10pm and 2:45am and let out a few little cries, but went back to sleep.  Except this last time.  Now she's just sitting up in bed screaming.  I know if I went and got her she'd want to play for the next few hours and then go back to sleep around 7am until probably 11am, but that's not going to work since we're leaving on that tour before 8am. 

I don't know how to get her to not wake up at this time every night.  She had been taking 3-4 hour naps before yesterday, but yesterday I didn't let her take naps longer than 2.5 hours and today she probably won't take a morning nap at all because she doesn't sleep when we're out and about.  Mark and I are both getting really angry at her for not sleeping, which doesn't help the situation at all, but she is so unbelievably frustrating at 2:30am.  If I could go nurse her to sleep that would be one thing, but if I go get her right now, she's going to want to play for 2-3 hours before she goes back to bed and that's just not going to work.

We're exhausted and frustrated and I just don't know what to do, besides sit up in the middle of the freakin night and write a blog to vent.  Mark is next to me with his iPod on trying to sleep.  I'm watching her in the monitor and she's standing up in her crib, holding on to a stuffed animal, screaming.  And it's that God-awful blood curtling scream.  She's trying to throw her stuffed animal out of the crib.  I've been up for an hour listening to her scream and she's not showing any signs of letting up, but I'm so pissed right now and exhausted, I'm not going to get her.  This really, really sucks.  And there is no way in hell I'm coming home while Mark is deployed because that means that I'd have to deal with this by myself when I came back since he'd be gone, and I couldn't do that.  It scares me that she's making me so mad, but she is and I guess it's the result of the stress of being in a new country, and not getting nearly enough sleep for 6 days in a row if you count the nights in the hotel in LA, the plane ride and every night since we've been here.  If any of you have any suggestions as to how to get her to sleep, I'm all ears.  This completely sucks.

House hunting in Italy

There must be something wrong with me.  I haven't taken a single picture since we've been here!  Normally I would have taken at least a 2GB card full by now, but it's been raining and cloudy and we don't have a car so we're stuck on base most of the time and our little camera broke.  But I bought a new one today so it should be here in about 2 weeks.  In the meantime I'll start trying to use the DSLR more.  It's just a pain to lug around sometimes, and keep dry in the rain.

Yesterday we started our house hunting.  Per the military, we're required to look at 2 houses the first week we're here and 5 houses during the next week.  We have to document it all if we don't find a house we like and put the reason we didn't want the house.  But that's kind of a huge pain because you can't technically put most valid reasons you'd have for not liking a house - too small, too expensive, doesn't allow pets, etc.  They don't accept those reasons because they're your opinion.  You basically have to find (or make up) something relating to safety for them to count it as a valid reason to not live there.  You have to do all this in order to keep getting the allowance to stay on base.  They want to make sure you're actually looking for a house instead of just mooching off the government by staying in the base hotel indefinitely.  However, since we think we found the house we like, I don't think we'll have to worry about any of this.  Thank God.

So the first house we looked at was a nightmare.  Typical OLD Italian house.  Started off bad when we pulled up and it was behind this abandoned building with a fence around the lot.  Literally that building was pretty much in the front yard of the house.  And it only got worse from there.  The house smelled TERRIBLE.  Italy smells different in general, laundry soap, even the American stuff, smells different when you use it here, but even the brand new house we looked at smelled odd to me.  Anyway, so it stunk, really bad.  The kitchen was literally smaller than our master bedroom closet in Phoenix.  The basement was like a dungeon, and the entire place was old, dark and dreary.  Yuck.

So the second place we looked at was the complete opposite.  It was brand new and they weren't done with it.  But it was pretty small.  The kitchen/dining/living room was all one room and it wasn't even as big as our kitchen/dining room in Phoenix.  But it had walk out doors on the living room side that were neat.  And then it had this weird room that was half full with the solar heating system and off of that was a full bath - shower and all on the main floor.  Why you'd put a shower on a floor without bedrooms is beyond me.  The upstairs had 3 small rooms and a bathroom, but the house didn't have a bathtub at all, which was a big turn off for me.  Abbie needs a tub.  Anyway, that one rose to the top of our short list after we saw it, but anything would have beat the first place.

The third place we saw was currently being lived in by people who are leaving the squadron.  They'll be out of the house on the 16th.  The house is about 6 years old and it's a duplex.  Almost all (new) houses in Italy are duplex's or more.  The 2nd one was I think 4-5 houses all connected.  Anyway, it's right up against a hill so the backyard is pretty steep and small, but the yard on the side is decent.  You pull up to the garage and then you have to walk up stairs to the first level.  There's a good sized front porch on the house that has a beautiful view.  It overlooks this quaint little town with the Dolomite mountains in the background.  It's breathtaking and I should have taken pictures, but I didn't.  I will next time though.  So you walk in the front door, and the living room is on the right and the kitchen is on the left, but it's actually one big room.  (Most older Italian houses have a main hallway with rooms with doors going off of it, including the kitchens and dining rooms.  Not open concept at all.)  If you go almost straight into the house from the front door, you'll go up three steps and down a hallway.  At the end of the hallway is a bathroom and to the right and left are bedrooms.  A little before the bedrooms on the right is a staircase going up to the 2nd floor which has a bedroom and bathroom.  If you go thru the living room there's a doorway going downstairs to another large room (which probably could be a living room - it has a fireplace and it's huge, but we'll most likely use it as a guest room), the garage, another full bathroom and 2 storage rooms.  The storage rooms alone were enough to sell me on this house.  That's almost unheard of with older Italian homes unless you count their dungeon basements.  Yuck.

So anyway, Mark and I really liked that house.  We went back and looked at it again today and told the landlord we wanted it and asked if he'd fence in the yard for us.  Hopefully we'll sign the contract this week.  We looked at one other house today and it was exactly like the first house, except it had been renovated.  But it still had that funky smell to it.  Next time we go back, I'll take a picture or 2 of the outside of the house and the views.

We also looked at cars today and found a little '95 BMW 318i.  It's a decent little car.  We'll use the Passat as our main car, but this car will be Mark's work car.  We can't drive here until we get our license's, and hopefully we'll be able to get those tomorrow.  You have to take a class and a test.  We've been pretty much stranded on base, which isn't horrible, but we want to get out and explore and we just can't because we have no way of getting around yet.  Hopefully that'll change soon.

Anyway, we're taking a class tomorrow from 8am-11:30am and a lady from the squadron (whom I've never met) is coming to our hotel to watch Abbie.  It's a good thing she's older because I would have had an absolute fit leaving her with someone I'd never met when she was younger.  Then another friend (who I've met a few times) is watching her while we get our licenses at 2pm.  Ollie bit her in the face yesterday so I'm more worried about what he'll do than anything else.  He's such a turd sometimes.

That's all for now.  It's 11:30pm here and I have to be up around 6:30am, so I'd better get to sleep, even though I'm not all that tired.  My schedule is still all out of whack.  More soon!  Until then, Ciao!  (goodbye)

We’ve arrived in Italy!

Small confession:  I actually had to open my blog up to make sure I hadn’t written about this stuff already… *sighs*

We had a bit of excitement right off the bat.  We were at Avis returning the car and started unloading all our junk.  A guy came running up and said not to unload it, that he’d just drive us to the airport and drop us and all our junk off at the curb.  Great, except there was no way 3 adults, the baby, 2 dogs and all our junk were fitting in there.  So he was chasing down the bus and yelling at one of us to get on the bus and that we’d meet at the curb.  It all happened fast and so I grabbed 2 bags and got on the bus.  I had to borrow the lady bus drivers cell phone to call Mark to ask which airline to get off at since I wasn’t sure.  But we met up at the United departures curb, only to find out our flights were at the Lufthansa terminal, even though we booked through United.  So Mark and I had to hike 5 terminals back with all our junk.  It was an adventure.  I had a luggage cart piled so high that I had to look around it because I couldn’t see over it.  And Abbie was on my back yanking on my braid the entire time.  She thinks it’s her reins.  Mark was behind me with the 2 dogs in their crates, barking the entire time and he was pulling a big suitcase.  A little nuts.  And in all the commotion, we left our GPS in the car.  Oops.  Luckily my parents are handling that and getting it back for us.  (Thanks mom and dad!)

Checking in took quite a while.  We had to put stickers all over the dogs cages and their shot records and have the cages inspected and then we zip tied the doors shut.  I got a little teary eyed watching them leave, but they made it safe and sound.

Overall, the flights went very well.  Abbie slept for about 4 hrs total on the 11 hour flight and at one point Mark said he really wished we had a “spud”.  (Our neighbor in Phoenix, Thomas, referred to laid back babies who would just sit on the couch for hours as “spuds”.)  Our little one just has issues sleeping and she was trying her hardest to figure out how to lay on her stomach in the car seat.  Obviously, that didn’t go over so well.  But eventually she crashed towards the end of the flight to Germany.  She was a little bit fussy, but she wasn’t doing her loud shrieks, thank God.  And she slept the entire flight from Germany to Italy.

We flew over Venice before we landed and it gave me butterflies.  I just finished reading a Steve Berry book that partially takes place in Venice.  It was so pretty, even from the air.

After landing, we got all our luggage (so we thought) and the dogs, and changed Abbie (she had a blow out at the end of the first flight and naturally I didn’t pack any extra clothes for her in the 14 carry-on’s we had – not one of my brighter moves, but oh well) and took the dogs to go potty.  Our sponsor, Laura, was there as soon as we got out of the baggage claim area.  We loaded up the car and headed towards Aviano.  She explained quite a few things on the 50 min drive and I probably remember about 1/4th of it.

We got checked in to our hotel room, got the dogs settled and then headed to the BX/commissary to get a few things.  Laura took us to get our mailbox set up and I had 4 packages (3 of which I mailed to myself) already, so I was excited about that.  Then we went out to eat with about 10 of the wives from the squadron.  (All the guys are gone right now.)  It was nice to meet people already.  We were going to go out for gelato after dinner, but Abbie was fading fast and I wanted to get her to bed so she didn’t get a little nap in and then stay up for another 4 hours.  Luckily we made it home in time.  We got her to bed about 9pm (which was 1pm Phoenix time) and she slept until 3:30am.  Not bad!

We got up at 3:30am and then Abbie took a nap from 6-8am and then we ran a few more errands around base and called a bunch of places about renting houses.  Abbie slept from noon to almost 3pm just now, and now we’re headed out to look at a few places.  We’ll see what we find.  Decent houses seem scarce around here and it’s odd calling people about renting them, especially when you’re not sure if they speak English.  I wish I knew Italian.  Eventually I will, but that doesn’t do us any good right now.

I’ll write more later and hopefully I’ll get to take pictures soon!

Hello from LAX

Just a quick blog before we board the plane.  We had a great time yesterday with Brittany and Michael.  I'll write a blog about that when I have time.

Hardly slept at all last night, thanks to our 10 month old.  After getting up with her 3 times between 10pm and 4am, we finally brought her to bed with us after 5am.  She wanted to play.  Finally she fell asleep around 6am I think.  She fell asleep with her head on Mark's head.  And then she rolled over the her back, but her head was still on Mark's head.  Kinda funny... but kinda not. 

We got everything packed up, the dogs went potty, the car filled with gas all record time and we were at Avis to return the car around 11am.  Since the car was completely packed, they wanted us to leave all the stuff in it, and I rode the bus to the airport, and someone from Avis drove Mark and Abbie and the dogs and everything else in the car and dropped them off.  The only problem was, we had them drop us off at United, since that's who are flights were booked thru.  But we're actually flying Lufthansa, so we had to hike about a mile with ALL our junk to get to the right terminal since no taxi would take us.  I asked about 3 of them and they all said they couldn't pick up on the departures area.  Nice.  So I strapped Abbie on in the Ergo and I pushed one cart full of luggage and Mark pushed the other and pulled one suitcase and we made it.

It took a while to check in.  But the dogs are checked in cargo and we're down to one luggage cart of carry-on stuff.  We grabbed lunch in the terminal and now we're supposed to board in 15 mins.  Abbie's climbing all over the place.  She hasn't taken a nap yet, so this might be interesting....

Our camera (the little one, not my DLSR) broke yesterday.  Bummer.  It's 5 years old though.  But it doesn't work so we won't be taking pictures on the flight at all.  Not that we would have anyway.  I'll buy a new one when we get over there.  Anyone have a Canon SD 1400 or SD 1300 you'd like to give a review on?  I think that's the one we'll get.

That's all for now.  Wish us luck.  This is the part I've been dreading for quite a while but Abbie's been relatively great so far today.  Let's hope she does well on the flight.  As of right now, we're not sitting together.  Mark is like 8 rows away from Abbie and me, but we're hoping someone will switch.  Pray that the dogs arrive safely.  I got teary eyed turning them over to someone else, but had to laugh when we heard Ollie's vicious bark as soon as he was out of sight.  He won't let anything near him....

More soon... from ITALY!!!!