you've had a birthday shout hooray,
we want to sing to you today
one year older and wiser too,
happy birthday
to you!!!
my dad embarrassed me most of my life (now I know it is a requirement as a parent) but he is one of my best friends and my kids can't get enough of papa young. He finds it necessary that they have cowboy boots and they agree. Cloe's are pink, Brody's are brown and Abbey's are purple.
Happy Birthday Dad, hope it's a good one ;)
This picture is from when Cloe went on a date with Ryan to his school graduation for the year that just ended. So now school is out and my mom is gone. I've been trying to adjust to both and get back on routine. I love it when he is here but I just find it more difficult to get things done when Ryan is home all day. Which reminds me, while he paints all day to make money I am thinking of my next big event. The SALES!! From what I have been told, it's the law that stores can only have sales twice a year. February and July. Which is pretty much the change of the seasonal clothes. Yes in the heat of the city center when you are surrounded by buildings, concrete and tons of tourist, there are wool coats in the windows for Fall. Nothing is more enticing than sweating bullets and seeing a coat in a store window! Why didn't I bring my wallet??!! For the most part, my purchases will be shoes and kids clothes, since I am a little too large to fit into the clothes here. No, I don't find it depressing just weird that they are so small. Some stores have size L but it usually only goes up to M. But this stuff gets as low as 75% off!! Want me to pick you up anything? When you see me in UT I will be sporting some snazzy Italian fashion ;) Or I guess my kids will be.
I had a funny experience. For Christmas, I got an arm band for my ipod, pretty standard right? So I wear it when I jog and the other day I went to the open market before going home, 4 of the guys working there where like, "what's that?" "is that for...(they do the international sign for running)". I thought I was in the tribal regions of Africa. Do you guys actually carry your MP3 player when you exercise? weird. Which made me think, how did we live before MP3 players? discman and walkman's, crazy. But I do see a girl when I run who carries what looks to be a mini tape player and I can hear it as I run by and it sounds like static. But hey, whatever keeps ya moving right?
Not too much happening here but I know it's always nice to read a new post :)
To help the kids cope with my mom leaving and to keep them from wanting to leave with her, we made chains to countdown. We're all a little ready for a break. We've seen the sites, lived the life, made it through 2 trimesters of school and could go for some English and the luxuries of a consumer friendly country. Oh and it will be wonderful to see all of our family and friends! So if you want to join in on the countdown because I know ya'll can't wait for our arrival, today marks 29 days!
How can I not brag when my husband is so awesome? ;)
Ryan got 2nd place in the landscape division of The Artist Magazine annual competition. He will be published with an article in their December issue and gets a cash prize of $1250! Not bad for a $30 dollar entry fee. Can this guy be stopped??!! I'm so proud of him, he works his @$$ off all day and is starting to be a big name in the art world and I'm supporting him the whole way. Oh and I also have to mention that this is an invented landscape, he made this up in his head, I'm not sure if this place really exists. Also, it was purchased by the son of Steven Dougherty, who is the editor of American Artist Magazine. This is turning into a special little painting!
what are these kids going to do? They are going to be so bored to have just their mommy. I don't even want to think about life without her here. There may not be posts for a while because I might fall into a deep state of depression.
Ryan objected to the photos of him in bed while eating breakfast with his crown on. Don't know why.
Happy Father's Day, we love you!
"He's so ticklie and funny and fun." -Cloe
"I like to paint with him" -Abbey
"I like to play basketball with him and him tickling me." -Brody
Saturday, Ryan played ball with the Missionaries and the kids waited ever so patiently for their turn. He took them down to the court by our house which is usually occupied by kids playing soccer. They had the best time! Ryan wore them out and they keep asking when they get to go play again. Abbey was so cute, every time Ryan said "okay Abbey your turn!" she would get the biggest grin and giggle with excitement. had to capture a photo of it. 
Abbey couldn't resist giving dad a hug in the middle of some one-on-one. "come on Brody, whatcha got?"
I don't have any wedding photos on hand but just picture us younger, tanner and of course thinner, much thinner in my case. It's been fun and I look forward to more adventures in the future. Love ya Babe!
My step Dad has told me that I need to take my mom to see some Etruscan ruins in Tuscany. I searched the Internet for local cities but wasn't huge on the idea of taking the kids somewhere. Then I read that the little city of Fiesole (I think it is part of florence?) had some. It is just north of Florence on one of the surrounding hills. Supposedly, Da Vinci tested his flyer off the hills of Fiesole. I wanted to take my mom here because it has an AMAZING view of Florence. Piazza Michelangelo is nothing compared to Fiesole's view! It was about a 30 minute city bus ride and it was SO nice to be up there. So quiet, the weather was cooler and not a busy city at all! We went to the Romans/Etruscan ruins. Pretty interesting and not patrolled at all. Therefore, we climbed all over them. Was it allowed? Not sure but cool to think about how old all this stuff is and to my kids it was an on going field of rock climbing. I kept telling them, "all this stuff is older than Jesus." And Brody kept asking "where are the Romans? Is he a Roman?" me "no they died." Brody "why?" me "they had a war and fought and were conquered" and then endless questions of the fighting began. Why do I bother? I should have just said "yes, he is a Roman" but then he probably would have asked why "he" killed Jesus.
After the ruins, we got gelato, of course, and then took the longest walk of my life to a park. It was uphill, steep and long. The view was amazing and I promised the kids if they were good I would take them to the "big" park. They loved it. If you come to Florence, you gotta see Fiesole.
sitting in the Roman theatre. brody is just too cool.
roman/etruscan temple ruins (FYI the etruscans were here first and of course the Romans conquered them)
photo in front of tuscan view to the north (florence is south of us)
Roman baths
view from the park
it sounds like someone using clothes pins to hang the laundry. So I look outside in our "laundry room" and what do I see...
these girl never stops amazing me. The missionaries challenged us to do charity within our home and this is one thing she wanted to do. And I think she also enjoys it. 
As you can see, she is using what I call our "top of the line Italian dryer" get it? top of the line hehehehe. One thing on my list of things to do in utah is 3 loads of laundry in one day!
The other day, I mentioned to the kids "how would you like to take swim lessons?" and the next thing I knew, they were in their swimsuits. It's about 9 am. Then Brody went and got them their new socks, (I bought them off of an African selling stuff in the parking lot of the grocery store) and they started "ice skating". It was hilarious mostly because of Abbey's sweet giggles every time she ran but also because of Brody's effort at sliding at the end of the hall. More of a dead stop then fall. 
Then after naps, yes they took naps in the swim suits, it started to rain with crazy thunder and lightning. And the responsible mother that I am, I told them to come outside because I thought it would be funny if they got scared from the thunder. I figured if it was scaring me, it would scare them. As you can tell by the pictures, I don't think they even noticed the thunder. I guess this is our Italian version of going in the backyard and playing in the sprinklers.
A correction needs to be made from the most recent post. I stated that Ryan wanted an excuse to go take reference photos. I was wrong. All he wanted to do was to show me where he and the kids go to throw rocks in the river. And he knew it would be fun to do it as a family. He was right, it was very fun.
for my non mormon viewers, that stands for Family Home Evening usually held monday nights ;)
It's pretty much guaranteed that I will be in charge so I plan a little lesson that has to do with church principles and maybe read a scripture or two. Short and sweet. So last monday, Ryan was in charge. What did we do you ask? We went down to the river bank and threw rocks in the water. The kids loved it. How do Dad's get away with it? But I'm sure that is how FHE is suppose to be.
Let's be honest, he just needed an excuse to get some photo references for paintings, the sunset.
Our perfect renters decided to stay in our house! phew! I was really praying for perfect renters that were clean freaks ;) Thank goodness my prayers were answered in a way unexpected, were keeping the old ones.
alright, I'm sure your sick of reading about our house being for rent. There just hasn't been too many noteworthy events, but I will bore you with an update. Not only are we coming home in August, our round trip tickets are $350 a person! And that deal is still available if your interested ;). (how bout them apples melinda? remember my comment on your real estate post?) We are so excited to get a little brake and be in the States which brings me to my next event. The other day, I was sick of these damn Italians. okay, okay, hate the game not the playa'! I was at the store with Brody and Abbey and as I pushed my cart through with the children inside, Brody ever so sweetly pushed a button on the cashiers register! I scolded him and good thing they don't understand English, actually they probably understood one of the words because we all know the swear words in different languages right? The cashier was cool about it but when he was done checking out our stuff, he needed I guess the manager to come over with the "key" to fix Brody's mistake, who then turned to me and scolded me in Italian. I stared at her and then said "Grazie' you dumb hag!" and we left. That same day I went to the bank to pay our rent and it was a different guy than the usual. I gave him my stuff, he continued to ask me questions in Italian "what the eff do you need, your Italian, just take my money that's all you guys usually want". He ended up charging me a 6 euro commission. what? since when? Italians. Then I came home and we had a notice in our mailbox about the conduct of renters in our building. In a nutshell "Do not throw things off the balcony, do not shake your rug because it causes dust to the people below you" "do not have loud music" It was much more wordy but that's what they were saying. I saw my neighbor clean her broom on the "drain pipe" and so I did as the Romans do and copied her. My neighbor below complained. And Ryan listens to his music when he paints, the walls are thin. It was a bad day of language barriers and culture differences. So I'm over it now and just need to get this language thing down cause they aint learning English and faster :)
On a sweeter note, there are plenty of parks within walking distance from our house, I'll give the Italians credit for that one. Today we walked passed 3 till the kids decided on the "bear park". It isn't the best playground but it has the essentials, slide, swing, bridge, see-saw. But the best thing about this park, it has bear caves! The kids call it the "bear park" because everytime we go, we go on a bear hunt. We take turns hiding in the "caves" and the rest of us sing "we're going on a bear hunt, what a beautiful day....." and then the bear chases us home. The kids could play all day and I love it. Imagine the calories I could burn if we did play all day, hmmmm, not a bad idea.
a lttle break for your eyes
A new workout I've been trying that I recommend is HiiT. High intensity i??? Training, i think. you warm up, then you do 10 sets of sprint 20 seconds then go slow to bring your heart rate down for a minute. then cool down. The whole work out takes about 20-25 minutes and burns tons of calories because you continue to burn throughout the day. But I have to warn you, sometimes you feel like your gonna puke! I found it on the oxygen magazine website forum of course referred to me by Lyndsey my workout guru.
And lastly, I think I have a new favorite author, John Irving. Of course I've only read 2 of his books but they were so good!
WAKE UP!!!!!
