2012 The Review

As each year comes to an end its almost natural to look back to see what happened that year. Time always seems to fly by, but this year seemed to go much faster than any other year. 

                            

          The End of January, Josh came home from

              an almost 7mth deployment. 

Ethan got his first bike

We went to Deadwood for our b-days

February we got orders to Italy 

to be there by June 

April Josh and I went to Kauai! And we celebrated

4 years of marriage! :)

We went to the beach and on a scary zip line!

June we headed out to visit family. Our first stop was in Oklahoma.

We were in Joshs mom and dads wedding renewal. 

We then went from Oklahoma to Arizona

to visit more family.

On Fathers day we got Ethan dedicated in our church in AZ

We enjoyed the summer in SD together

We enjoyed the summer with good friends

Had to say good bye :(

We really are leaving!

Packed up our house and we headed to Missouri to

drop off our car and fly to Italy. 

We flew to Italy, stayed in the hotel on base for TOO LONG, found a nice house,

got my Italian drivers license. 

Ethan turned 3!

Josh made Staff Sargent! He started ALS (airman leadership school) it was

a long weeks and he worked really hard! We are very proud of him!

We traveled from the mountains to the beach. We tried yummy foods. We had

family time.

Phew! This year has defiantly been full of life changing events! I am so grateful and blessed with the friends and family I have. Looking forward to see what 2013 brings!

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2013

Cant believe Christmas has come and gone. Im so grateful that Josh was able to be home this year. And also that he is no longer gearing up to go on a long deployment right after Christmas. Which always seems to be the case. 

Joshs Mom, Dad and sister Erin came down to Italy to visit! It was a great time. It was nice having family here. 

We played card games, my all time new favorite was trivial pursuit card game, which I picked up from the BX for less than two dollars lol. We blew through pretty much all the trivia cards LOL. 

We also ate pizza, went to a market, and the last big thing we did was go to Venice. 

Venice is a very beautiful city. Felt like a huge maze with bridges and stone floors. Josh took a lot of great pictures. Its hard to take in a lot of the beautiful sites here. Its still crazy to me that yes Im standing here in Italy. Just nuts!

Ethan enjoyed his Christmas and opening presents  All of them even if they werent for him lol. 

We took the train for the first time. Not as hard as people

make it out to be.

Venice!

(this pic is going in my Christmas book for this years pic)

Gondola Ride 

Capicino 

New news

Today was Joshs first day with his new rank! So proud and excited for him. :) Ethan and I went to his promotion ceremony thing on Friday. And I got to punch him in the arm. I was just there to take pics. But then he called me up. LOL

I'm still volunteering at the daycare on base once a week. Then Ethan goes 4-5 times a week to play. Its working out well. Its nice to go grocery shopping in peace or come home and clean without recleaning two steps behind myself. 

Our murano randomly stopped driving about 3 weeks ago. And we have been trying to get it fixed. It sat at the base mechanic place for 2 weeks with no answer. Then last week in the pouring rain I escorted the tow truck man onto  base. 

After a bleeding scratched nose (from Ethan), a million buckets of rain, bringing the tow man the wrong way through the gate (and him getting stuck), he brough our car to the Italian Nissan dealer. 

As of right now they found the problem and will be making sure that they have the part in stock here in Italy. (which will be great, please pray for this) If not we will have to figure out other options and it will take even longer to get our vehicle back. 



Also the biggest news of this week is Joshs new upcoming deployment date. We didnt get much notice at all, its very soon. Also this will be the longest deployment we have ever been through. Thats pretty much all I can say. So if you can please keep us in prayer. We will be busy enjoying the holiday. Then we have to be in deployment ready mode soon after.

This weekend we went to a couple Christmas markets. It was fun to walk around. We purchased a few things. Ethan decided to run off through a crowd and get lost. One thing I love about Italy is they love kids. And a few people were watching out for him and showed me where he was lol.

And there he was hands in his jacket pockets strolling down the Christmas market. He is getting to smart for his own good sometimes. LOL

This is one of the little towns we walked around. Isint it beautiful? 

Slovenia

We headed to Slovenia last weekend. Its one of the only (two?) countries with completely open borders. Since we dont have passports for travel we cant travel anywhere else besides within in Italy. 

So we took off and got to the border after 1 hour of driving (not bad). Only thing is we got stopped at the border. Naturally I panicked! It was scary but I guess you are supposed to buy this travel pass sticker for your window. For anyone that has been to a state park, like Custer state park. Its just like that.

Also when they asked for ID Josh gave him his Italian drivers license and his AZ drivers license... Not sure why he didn't just show him his military ID. But if anyone hasn't seen his AZ one.. Its a crazy pic (on purpose) so that's embarrassing! But the guy ended up asking if he was military and he became more understanding!

He didnt fine Josh. And let us buy the window sticker at the border. So we were good to go. After being lost in the city for an hour we finally found the main city we were looking to be at. (We do have a great working GPS but someone didnt write an address down LOL)

Good to go with new sticker pass on window!

Once we got to the place we were looking to get to. We walked around the city. It was really big and I havent seen modern high rise buildings since the USA. Seemed really familiar like AMERICAAA. AHH. Anyways. So we walked through a little market, we walked and looked around in a big mall. We also then found the big theater!! They play movies in ENGLISH! WOHOOooo. So Josh bought the tickets. Also this theater was as big as a IMAX. 

We had some time to kill so we walked around the city. It was very beautiful. Also there is this bridge called the love lock bridge (I think) and people from all over bring a lock and lock  it onto the bridge! Pretty neat.

The only downside was it was cloudy all day. But lately it has been raining/cloudy every weekend for almost a month here lol. It will be sunny then weekend hits and its cloudy. Kind of reminds me of South Dakota. How we would always have the worst blizzards or weather on the weekends. Lame I know. But looks like its going to be sunny this weekend! And this week for Thanksgiving, not bad!

                             So we walked around the city. Some India guy was playing Indian music. Josh bought these nut things. I think they were chestnuts? I dont know we weren't a fan. Tasted like weird potatoes to me lol. 

See the Castle at the mountain top?

Lock bridge I told you about 

Ethan did pretty good in the movie. In the beg he sat on his own seat and ate his popcorn. Luckly he never was loud. Just got wiggly from time to time. But it also prob wasnt that intersting of a movie for him and it was more than 2 hours long. 

The lady next to us talking in Slovenian (I think) told him he could have some of her popcorn. He gladly accepted. He was like yomm yammm yommm. LOL 

Only in Italy will you find...

I thought I would write about some differences we have learned to adapt to these past months living in Italy. 

Above is a transformer. We use these on any of our American electronics that are not dual voltage. Each transformer can only take so many watts so you have to be careful or you can blow your transformer. We had a 300 watt transforer and I plugged my iron into it and it blew. The iron was 1500 watts! Crazy.

Italy recycles. Its def a huge life change. And its not like in America where you have a huge trash can and a huge recycle can. NO we have a little can for non recycable things (dirty towels, diapers), we have one for glass, we have one for card board/paper, we have one for food wates, and one for plastics! PHEW! 

                             We are issued a washer and dryer, I got a huge American fridge, but I didnt luck out in the oven department. Since my oven is build in. I have a Italian oven. It has one rack I will be surprised if a 5 pound turkey will fit in here. The settings are crazy, Im still trying to fig it out.

See what I mean!

This is in Celsius. Instead of converting it. I usually just put it on max LOL

Here is our cabinets for plates, bowls ect neat.

Our walls are cemet. AND A PAIN. We have to be careful and use special nails to hang stuff.

This is my DRYER It takes literally 3 hours to dry something. And its not like in America. The dyer

sucks the water out of your close. They aren't dried by just heat. And then you have this gallon thing that

pulls out and  you have to empty the water. I don't use it unless for emergency's since it takes so long, its a waste. 

This string is in all our showers. If you pull it it makes this ringing door bell sound in the whole house.
I suppose its for emergencies. But it also sounds identical to our door bell. So we get each other now and then with it. LOL

The Bidet

There is only 1 in our house out of the 3 bedrooms. Of course its in Ethans bathroom so he constantly plays with it!

These are our light switches. And still we dont always know what turns on what. Its kind of annoying lol!

This is not our phone. Our house has a gate. So when people visit, they ring our gate buzzer. We answer and can unlock our yard gate from the phone. Pretty cool Eh?!

The different plugs we have on our electronics here in italy. And the wall plugs.

Fall Festival

Buzz, Bo Peep and Woody from Toy Story! 

We went to the bases fall festival. It was a lot of fun and Ethan got a big bag of candy. There were tons of booths set up. Before we left Ethan saw Josh and said "WOODY!". That was the first time he has ever said woody. It was funny lol. Everyone at the festival were excited about Ethan and Joshs costumes. :)

Park Time!