We went to sea sea sea To see what we could see see see

Today we headed to the beach! One of the top things I have been looking forward to do. Also Ethan has never been to the beach. So I have been excited to bring him! Josh had off today. So another family joined us and we headed to the beach! It was so much fun.

The water was perfect! I have never been to a beach with such perfect temp water. It was not freezing and it wasn't hot it was nice and refreshing. 

Ethan hated it at first. The second a tiny wave hit his feet at the shore he started crying. But Josh took him out into the water and before we knew it he was swimming around.

We had a lot of fun. It was a goo day! After the beach we walked around the town next to the beach. There was tons of little shops and gelato places. So we stopped by and got some gelato. Josh ordered spaghetti gelato. Which is all ice cream that looks like spaghetti. It was fun and a tasty treat. 

Spaghetti gelato 

On the move

We have internet at our house now! Time to update!

We have been keeping busy lately. Josh has had the past week off and then a few Air force Family days off also. 

We spent time out and about. The other day we joined another family from a church we have been visiting and we went to the zoo! It was a lot of fun. Somewhat the same as an American zoo. But also different in the same time. 

We saw a lot of animals and then some were hiding. I think the highlights were the seal exhibit, which was within reach. Ethan loved feeding the goats! And seeing all the other animals was really fun. But nothing will top the South Dakota Reptile gardens for the reptile exhibit lol. 

Ethan counting the turtles. He was saying- 1,2,6, 1,2,1,2,4!

Cool seal exhibit!

Feeding the Goats 

In Italy when a family has a baby they decorate thier gate, fence, door with colored ribbons (blue-boy, pink- girl) It was funny to see that at the zoo they did it for new baby animals that were born. 

Mommy hippo and baby

GPS is Up and Running!!

Before we came to Italy we got a GPS from a pawn shop in South Dakota. Its something you need here. We had to purchase the European map downloads/updates. So we did. But little did we know it was going to take a million years to download. 

The internet in our hotel room on base is very weak. It stops working all the time. And is super slow. I went to the computer lab on base to try to update. And it took 45 min just to get to 11% done. I googled about it, and read that updates can take up to 3hrs! So I left!

I decided to try plugging it in last night to see if it would download during the night. And it did! It prob took 12 hours (literally) but it downloaded! So today we ventured out and it worked great! We took a trip to another indoor mall. This one was much smaller. And inside it had this place that was kind of like a superwalmart. But not crowded. And people in Italy dont wear PJS out. lol

But Josh found some really tasty pasteries so we bought a lobster tail. Not sure what its called in Italy. But I rem seeing it on Cake Boss! And always wanted to try one. 

So a day of driving around. Then this afternoon we went to our house. We meet the landlord there and picked up the key. The house looks great and the yard is done also. They did days worth of cleaning and cutting trees, cutting the grass ect.

We move in tomorrow and we cant wait!

Time At the Lake

We headed off to Lake Barcis today. Josh has off this week so we are finding things to do outside of our hotel room. I think we might just go crazy if we have to spend any extra time in there. BUT we move into our house in a few days!

The lake was beautiful I could probably spend the whole day there. We first walked around the area and hiked around the lake. Then Ethas very anxious to go in the water! So we headed back down. In the middle of the lake there was little island type things of sand and rock. So we hiked down there.

Instantly Ethan said "Shirt off, pants off." Then he ran into the water. And realized it was ice cold! Well we walked around and found a few good spots. Josh walked around taking pics and Ethan played in the sand and water.

Gelato

                                       So many yummy flavors, I had Strawberry Cheese cake, Ethan had
                                       chocolate chip cookie, Josh had some berry

Yesterday we headed out to Pizza and then Gelato afterwards, t. We joined another family. They have

a daughter who is 2 and I met them at the spouses briefing. It was a fun day. 

A dinner I got a ricotta, mozzarella, and spinach pizza. Josh had tomato, sausage, some kind of cheese.

The pizza is pretty tasty here and I can eat a big pizza all to myself hahah.

After we had dinner we walked over to a Gelto place. Everything looked so tasty. And one scoop was sufficient. Ethan enjoyed it. It was all over his clothes and body! 

It was nice to get out, and also we hadnt had a chance to have a little dinner in celebration of Josh making Staff. The friend I met her husband made staff also! 

Our New House in ITALY

3 story 4 bedroom house with 2.5 bathrooms. Kitchen, dinning room, laundry room. HUGE family/living room. Has a huge yard (like the size of a soccer field) with tons of different trees. There are pine trees, bamboo trees, a plum tree, a fig tree and others we have yet to find out about lol.

Our new city will be Budoia. Its about 15mins at the most from base. And its easy to drive through. Its a easy drive through farming area. So less scary to get to. The landlord said some other military families live close by. 

This is the front of our property. The whole property is fenced in and it has a iron gate that shuts before the driveway to the house.

Finding a House In Italy

Josh was given two days off after his main briefings to go house hunting. Wednesday and Thursday were the two days. I was so anxious! Mainly because houses are limitied for the really nice ones. And this is the high PCS season so lots of new military families arrived when we did.

So I didnt want us having to settle since the houses would be gone to others.

Wednesday finally got here. A guy from Joshs shop (work) picked us up and off we went. He had a GPS so we would put the address of the houses in and then head that way.

The hardest thing was the language barrier. Most lenders did not speak English. So it was like Ciao, can we look at your Casa? lol They would usually hand the phone off to someone that spoke better English.

Secondly the time was always against us! Italians go on this crazy long break from 12-3:ish. Every company closes down. They leave for thier dinner, which is eaten at lunch time. So its really hard to get anything done! Even though we would be out in the AM most people wouldnt want to meet till 3pm. They basically all would say that when we called, 3pm?

We got lucky with a few houses and the guy would be there working on it.

The houses are nothing like houses in the US that I have ever seen. They dont have carpet. Either wooden floors or marble. Marble like thats on peoples counter tops! Can you imagine your kid falling on a pure polished marble staircase?!

Also here in Italy there are NO/ZERO closets! Crazy eh? The windows are different also. They open all weirdly and most dont have screens. And then there is the  bidet (US  /bɨˈdeɪ ). You can google it and find out for yourself what it is. But it is right next to our toliet so I get two things to clean lol in the bathrooms.

We did get to see some houses. And they all veried. There was a really creepy one with a creepy cellar. What ever just came to your mind when you read creepy and cellar, thats probably what it looked like! Then there was some really nice ones but they were 30 mins from base. Which we might of taken if it was the states. But you have to rem this is Italy, and they drive insane here! Ill have to post about that soon.

So on the second day, the night before I was looking at the Classifieds and I saw a listing for what it sounded like a house just what we were looking for. It didnt have a picture though. Which makes you wonder. But we called anyways and the man was there in the AM! So we drove out there.

Definatly fell in love with it right away! After getting to the 3rd level and seeing the big living room/family area I wanted this house! Mainly all the houses we had seen had small tiny living rooms. Smaller than our last house.

We talked about it more that day and we decided thats the house we wanted. Josh didnt want to look at anymore houses. So we called the guy up and we started the renting process. We move in August 17th!

Our first outing

We headed up to the mountains. Not too far from base prob like 10 min or less. There is actually a city in the mountains. It was cute. But I couldnt imagine living up there. Though some military do.

We drove around the city. There were people walking about, tons of cyclers. That must be one of the in things to do here. We acutally had to stop in a middle of a round a bout while a huge group of about 20 cyclers were taking a group pic.

Then we parked our car and walked a trail. In the middle of nowhere on an Italian moutain. Ethan loved it, and when he would go too fast he would say "I gonna fall down!" it was funny.

Prob the funniest part of this outing was the time we deicded to sit under some trees. So we head up there. Josh was already under them and he was about to walk into a huge spider web, and also had a scary spider on it! Im like dont move theres a spider web and spider!!!!

He heard spider and dashed out. BAHAHHA that was the fastest I have ever seen him move. Ethan however was walking behind him so I had to grab him because he was about to walk head first into it.

It was a fun day on the mountain.

Afterwards we drove down. And explored some of the cities. Ended up at a market. But they were closing up. Here it Italy from 12-3pmish no one does anything, businesses close. It thier big rest period, break, dinner time. Its crazy. 

Ciao We Made It to Italy

Our house got packed up into many crates. Ethan went to a daycare while they packed our house. It was a really boring 2 days. After they packed up our house was completly empty.

Then we began to clean and cover nail holes. It wasnt too much work cleaning. We keep our house clean anyways and we hadnt lived in our 3 bedroom on base very long.

Monday the 23 of July we had our final inspection for our house. It lasted less than 8 mins and everything was perfect for them. We then checked out of the hotel and Josh had loaded the car earlier. Then off we went to head to MO.

We arrived in MO about 14 hours later and check into our hotel. It was huge! And very nice. The next day we ported our car for shipment overseas and then just relaxed (as much as we could) hung out in the Jacuzzi and pool.

The next day we got bussed to the airport and got our lugage checked in. We hung around the MO airport for about 3 hours then went on the plane. Landed in New York then flew to Italy.

Ethan did great on the plane. We each had our own screens in front of us on the back of the chair in front of use. So he enjoyed watching happy feet, cars and toystory. Then he slept the rest of the time.

8 hours later we landed in Italy.