They amaze me everyday Today was an awesome day. Started out by getting up earlier than usual. Got Carlee dressed, fed, and ready to meet the Mom's Club and their little ones at the main kiddie park. Right before we were ready to leave a new friend stopped by and joined us on our walk down there. I'm so glad I'm making so many great friends, and with babies Carlee's age!

So, Carlee played with the kids for about half an hour before it got way too hot outside. The poor thing was so red and sweaty I decided we should leave. My friend's baby was red too, so we went to her house to visit for a while. Her son and Carlee are the exact same age and it was so funny to watch them play and interact with eachother. I found out today that Carlee is a jealous little monkey. Anytime I showed the little boy any attention, Carlee would run (even from across the room), scream, and throw herself inbetween me and the little boy. Man, she's got some socializing to do! lol.. but other than that, she's really good with playing with other kids. I'm really surprised since I didn't really have the chance to get her socialized her whole first year. Anyway....

Oh! Here's my pic of the monkey bathroom set:
Is that not freakin cute or what!? The shower curtain matches and everthing! And now we have a place to put all the stuffed monkeys that Tony and I have bought eachother. :D And I also put up a couple of monkey themed children's books that I have. It's so cute in there, and I think Carlee likes it.... ANYWaY!... hehe...

The reason the day was so awesome:
Are they not just completley awesome?!? Watching Tony interact with Carlee just amazes me everyday. He is such a great dad. Tony was drumming away on Carlee's little LeapFrog drum, and she plopped over and started mimicking him. I published this in her blog also, but I wanted to put it here too.

Moments like this remind me of how wonderfully blessed I am.  ¶ 2:38 PM 1 Comments

  Duty Day It always seemed that in Florida I usually wrote on Tony's duty days. Today's another duty day, but I hope to write more often now. Today went good. Carlee kept me busy. We even stopped by a friend's house to visit for a while. Carlee went to bed early tonight of all nights... There is nothing on tv... the whole 8 channels that we have.

Anyway, so I had originally wanted to write a lot about my experiences here, and I know I haven't done that too much. So my blog has remained not too interesting, I know... but whatever. So, here is something for you to look at. This is a flash and it's hilarious because everything in it is SO true! So go look.

Some things I've learned about Italians... They stare, it's not considered "rude" here, they're just curious so they're gonna keep looking... They are very loud, lol... the Italian firefighters here at our neighborhood take walks sometimes and listening to them talk, you would think they hate eachother and are fighting, but really they're just talking. They LOVE love babies, they will hold your child, give your child stuff, and possibly take your child out of the stroller without permission. (hasn't happen to me yet, but it did to a friend. The Italians love babies THAT much!) They do not waste space. Like the line example in the flash, if there is room, they'll take it. So, Americans who must have a personal space bubble will never get their order in anywhere. They go to driving school for 6 months to learn all the driving laws, get their licsense and immediatley disregard all laws. They speed and they will pass on a blind curve (in Sicily anyway, I hear it's worse here than anywhere else.) Italian time is even more behind than Island Time. Haha... But they are definately nice people.  ¶ 2:29 PM 0 Comments

  Unpacking... So, the past few days have pretty much been spent unpacking. Yesterday afternoon, we did take a break and went to an Italian air show with all of our friends. We left the house at noon, got there a little before 1 and waited... and waited... in the blistering heat... and waited some more. Bought some over priced sorry excuse of a panini... and waited some more. We did see what looked like a crop plane as Tony called it, doing a few barrel rolls, but that was it. By 3:30 we were tired of waiting and decided to head home. At the parking lot we found out from security that the Italian version of the Blue Angels were flying at 4:30. We were wondering why they didn't say that the show started at 4:30 instead of Noon... Anyway, we were not about to turn back around, so we went home.

We were invited to the beach today, but we decided we really needed to concentrate on getting all of our stuff put away. We've finished the kitchen, living room, and dining room. All that's left is our room, Carlee's room, the spare bedroom, and the bathrooms. I did finish Carlee's bathroom though. I was so excited because I've never spent the money on a new and complete bathroom set. I've never really seen the point, but I found this monkey set at the Nex and I thought it would be so cute for Carlee's bathroom. I wanted to make it fun for her to be in, so we decided to get it. I'll post pics tomorrow.

So, we haven't done much more exploring or sightseeing due to the unpacking but hopefully once we get settled we'll go do something exciting that I can blog about. :)  ¶ 2:10 PM 0 Comments

  Household Goods Finally! Tomorrow, our household goods shipment is finally being delivered! We can't wait. We're really excited. We feel like we've been waiting forever. A month without all of our stuff has felt like forever, but we also know that we were a lot luckier than some people who were in temp. housing for that long! So, we'll be buried in boxes tomorrow.... We're also having problems with our internet connection already, but we're not sure if it's something on the laptop or if it's the connection itself... we'll find out when Tony's new computer gets here.

On another note, I am registered for two classes this fall. I am so excited to be starting school again. I'm really optimistic. I'm only taking two since I've never tried online classes before, and I don't know how much extra time I'll have to study with the baby and all. If all goes well, next semester I hope to take even a few more. First I'm taking Business Principles, and Macroeconomics.

Today I drove to Nas1 for the first time today. It's about a 40 minute drive. I'm getting more comfortable driving here, thank goodness. :D

Other than this, we haven't been up to much. Tony's been working for a few days now. He likes his new job a lot more than his old one at Mayport. I've been to a few Mom's Club meetings. All the moms here are really nice. The meetings have been really fun, and Carlee loves playing with all the toys and the other kids. That's all.... :D  ¶ 1:11 PM 1 Comments

  A nifty little site I was surfing the web tonight and found a neat little site... er, a few sites actually that all intertwine together using your same account once you create one.

www.43things.com
www.43places.com
www.listsofbests.com
www.allconsuming.net
www.43people.com

I started my 43 goal list and my places I want to visit, have visited, and have lived lists. It's pretty cool. I guess the main "home" profile is under 43people, here's mine. I used my geocaching name... because I couldn't think of anything else... lol. I'll have to get the hubby on here. He's been to many more places than I have. If you go look at them let me know so I can look at your lists.
:)  ¶ 4:30 PM 0 Comments

  Persephone and the Pomegranate After we visited the temple where they worshipped Demeter and Persephone, I remembered this book that I read back in the fourth or fifth grade. I decided I wanted to buy a copy for Carlee and then put our picture in the inside cover. So, I looked it up on Amazon and on Ebay and was shocked at its price... $88!!! for a book that probably cost $12 or so a few years ago. Apparently they quit printing it. I remember the illustrations were beautiful. OH well.... Carlee doesn't need a copy that bad. Ha Ha...

I'm updating the blog slowly but surely. I'll be backdating all the entries to the day that they took place. I'm caught up on Carlee's blog though. :)  ¶ 4:40 AM 0 Comments

  Italy Wins the World Cup!!! All of our friends invited us to go into the town of Mineo and watch the game. We were originally going to watch it in the Church plaza where they had a huge projection on a wall, but there were so many people and we were all hungry. So we decided to eat at a little family run pizzeria and watch it on their little tv instead. The food was so good and the game was exciting... and when Italy finally won we were amazed at the town's reaction. They all came rushing out of the Church, all ran into their cars, vespas, 3 wheeled vehicles, cramming as many people on each one as possible, and then drove around the plaza honking their horns, waving Italian flags, and making as much noise as possible. You could say they were happy. lol... Fireworks were done right off the roof of the old Church. A couple of guys brought out a hand crafted version of the french flag and burned it. They were definately passionate in their celebrations. The excitement was infectious and we enjoyed the night. We ended up leaving around 11 pm and the Italians were still celebrating. lol.. It was so much fun. Here are some pics from the night: All of our friends that we've made over the past few weeks:
The screen in the Church court where most of them watched the game:
Where the family made the pizzas right in plain view:
People rushing out of the Church area right after the winning goal:
Driving around the block... it was very loud!
Burning the french flag replica:
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  When it rains... It Pours
The first week we were here, the heat was unbearable, reaching the teens at times. Since then, it has cooled off some, but is still hot, especially during the middle of the day. Which is why from around 1-4 the Italians close up shop, and you cannot find anything open in any town between those hours. Anyhow... We were told that the rainy season starts around October, and that it probably wouldn't rain until then. A few days, storm clouds would gather, thunder would roar... but no rain would fall. And then today out of nowhere, we woke up from a nap to find it pouring rain, so much so that our street was flooding somewhat. It lasted for a good while, and finally the sun came back out and everything was dried up in oh probably less then ten minutes. lol... Thankfully the rain came and went in time for us to make it to town.  ¶ 3:39 PM 0 Comments

  A day in the streets of Catania On the final day of our ICR class (Culture Class), we took a class trip to Catania, which is the second largest city in Sicily. (Palermo, the capital is #1.) We spent all day walking through the busy streets. They have open markets in some streets, and regular shopping stores on others. The open market was just amazing. There are so many people and so much stuff to look at and buy. We also stopped in a little wine shop, tasted a sweet dessert wine, and Tony and I bought some. It is very good, the first wine I've ever really liked. At the end of the trip we ate Italian cuisine at a nearby restaraunt. My favorite part of the meal was pistaccio pasta. It was so good. I also reluctantly tried octopus. Tony made me. I told him I wouldn't try it unless he cut off all the purple sucky things. LOL.. I didn't like it... but I tried it. My mom will be proud. :D Anyway, here are a few pics. The fresh market pics are a little graphic if you don't like seeing fresh meat, don't look at them....

The Elephant is the symbol of Catania (wiki site). The reason for the elephant is long ago, people wondered why Sicily didn't have any dangerous animals like their neighbor counrty Africa. They did have elephants, so it was decided and told that the elephants scared all the dangerous animals away.

The Church:

Another Castle. We didn't get the chance to go inside though.
We stopped for breakfast at a Cafe. It was very yummy, and trying to figure out what everything was, and to order was fun... lol

Shopping in the markets... Fresh fish is everywhere!
And even other types of fresh meat. I asked our ICR instructor if the meat went bad being out in the heat. He answered that the demand is so high that the meat is bought up quickly and usually doesn't go bad, but to be sure if we were ever to buy any to make sure it was shiny. I thought I would be disturbed at the fresh meat, but it was just amazing how the market worked here that it didn't even bother me.
Fresh Fruit. I definately enjoyed the aromas around this section a lot more! And we got to try a few fruits too, they were so sweet!
Views of a few of the streets:

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  Castle at Enna Our first stop on our ITT trip was a castle. I'll have to look it up again to tell you more info, but here are some pics:

This is the view of the terrace inside the castle. It was blocked off because recently they found ancient remains and now it's an active archeology site.

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  The Church

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  The Procession So, The Virgin Mary is the patron saint and protector of Enna. And every year they have this festival in her honor. The statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus are adorned with various gold items that have been giving to her by the public, such as necklaces, watches, chains, any item of gold. This year we were told she would have a total of more than 600 pounds of gold. She sits in a throne like structure and men of the Church carry her on their shoulders. They walk all the way down the main street that goes down the mountainside, and they do this barefoot on the hot pavement. After they passed each main intersection they set off a bunch of fireworks. We ended up right at an intersection and they fired off right in our ears almost. Carlee was quite scared, but she calmed down after a while. The festival was absolutely beautiful, and being Catholic it was emotional as well.


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  Ancient Temple This is the ancient temple that they worshiped mother and daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone. It's right next to the castle so we hiked back up there and watched the sun set after the festival. It was really beautiful. Carlee and I took our picture here, I thought it was a cool photo op. :D  ¶ 9:30 PM 0 Comments

  Other Pics from Enna A View of the Whole Castle:
A Sicilian Sunset:

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