Buon Natale! Frohe Weihnachten!

Seasons Greetings from Italy!! 

We have already had a fun and adventurous December! It's starting to look a little bit like Christmas here after we had our first snowfall last night, but it's mostly melted already! 

We are missing everyone, especially for Christmas, but we are also thankful to be here to celebrate! 

We hope everyone has a blessed, and happy holiday! We send our love all the way from Italy! xo

Our little Elle got a nasty skin rash that we ended up seeing the doctor about. Going to the hospital was very interesting, and a little frustrating :-/

We got a prescription for antibiotics and this is what we got at the pharmacy. Just the powder to mix with water and shake.

Found a perfect spot to watch a movie :) 

Driving home....Our house is the one on the left.

A couple pics of the amazing view again from our kitchen!

Elliot taking a little break on our hike.

Nora made a pillow at kindergarten!

Bolzano Christmas Market!

Daddy+Elle 

Christmas Tree Shopping!

David had a small break in his schedule with a few days off so we headed up to Innsbruck, Austria for a couple days. 

Innsbruck Christmas Market

Mommy+Nora downtown Innsbruck

After we left Innsbruuck, we headed up into Germany to Castle Neuschwainstein. Walt Disney designed the Disney Castle after it. David had visited it before as a teenager with his family, and wanted to bring the girls. It's only about a 3 hour drive from where we live, and is pretty amazing. 

Before the 40 min hike up to the castle, which was awesome... :-/

You can see it behind us, above Elle's head.

Le avventure continuano! The adventures continue!

Hallo everyone!!

Happy November from Italia!! We are all good, settled into a pretty good routine now and still trying to enjoy every adventure we can!

Nora is in 'kindergarten' every morning from 8:30 to 12 which is going so great! There have been a couple of days when she has been sad and frustrated because she doesn't understand the language, and the other kids don't understand her, but she is still excited to go and says that she has fun everyday! We are so proud of her! The kindergarten here is what we would call preschool back home. She is in a class of 3-5 year olds, and there are 25 students in her class with 2 teachers. 

A couple interesting things that we've had to get Nora for school....first a pair of 'house shoes'. These are just basically slippers, and this one makes sense. They keep them at school in their cubby, change into them when they get there and change out of them when they leave or go play outside. A few other random things like her own kleenex and drinking cup, but then she also needed 'sport' or 'gym' shoes, also to keep at school for gym class twice a week. Now, you would assume (at least I did) that this would be a sneaker or something similar. Nope. It's pretty much ballet slippers. The sole is more durable, but that's what I'd call them. Weird.

Elliot is continuing to keep us busy, and is talking more and more. She is counting many things now and also repeating whatever her big sister says! She still has her own 'gym' class once a week and it's been a great way for her to be around other kids her age and give her some much needed time to release some energy! 

The weather is getting colder, but still feels very fall-like! It's wonderful! 

David is still kicking ass, and doing well! So much, in fact, that he is now serving a 3 game suspension for kicking so much ass...whoopsie :) Not technically for kicking someone's ass, but for a kneeing penalty. (I know, right?! Yes, I said kneeing) The other guy is not injured, for the record, and our big tough American was just on the wrong side of this lame call I guess. Oh well.

In other big news, I would like to talk a bit about baking. Now, I am by no means a pastry chef, but I'd like to think that I can bake a decent cookie or two. I never even considered that this would be an issue until we got here, and I began my quest of finding ingredients. There are just so many things that you can't find here. Like, vanilla extract. I mean, really? Getting my hands on some baking soda and baking powder was hard enough! And, the absence of pumpkin filling this time of year has been much harder on me than I thought! It also doesn't help me any that there are approximately 20 different kinds of flour (miehl) alone! Where the hell is my all purpose flour? Oh, and don't get me started on my measurement conversions. Milliliters, Grams, blah blah....Ugh. I've managed a couple basic things like banana bread and sugar cookies, that weren't terrible, but definitely not great.  I'm determined to figure this out, so my baking adventure continues.....

In the meantime, here are a bunch of photos to keep you all entertained!

Miss and Love you all!

hiking right behind our place

selfie! mommy + girls

David taking in the view

visiting daddy at the rink!

walking with sweet Elle

ok, there's a hiking path that we take to get to the rink sometimes...
Along this path there are several of these small buildings with scenes depicted in them, I think these particular ones are like the stations of the cross.
There are also crucifixes everywhere, along with other religious statues.
My girls think they are very interesting.

These aren't N's exact house shoes, I forgot to take a picture, hers have kittens on them (we let her pick)
But this is what hers are like.
And then.....

The sport shoes!
Most of the other kids have plain black or white, but not Nora!
It's a ballet slipper, right?!

This last Monday, Nov.11 was St. Martins Day here in Italy.
St Martin is the patron saint of soldiers and wine!!
The kids here don't do Halloween like they do at home, but every year to celebrate St Martin, they walk with lanterns and sing songs.
Nora's kindergarten met last Friday night and walked through the streets with their lanterns, then back to the school courtyard/playground to sing songs for everyone. There were so many people, but it was awesome. Nora loved it, even though she had no idea what they were singing :)

Elliot was excited to celebrate St Martin too

haha...this is kind of random, but we found this indoor pool/sauna about a half hour away that we've taken the girls to a couple of times. It perfect, and this was Nora on the way home :)
Don't worry, I propped her up right after I took this! ;)

a little video from Elliot's gym class....weeeee!

and our little counter! :)

my attempt at sugar cookies.....

baking soda....

baking powder....

and obviously, vanilla flavored baking powder.

no wonder I can't bake anything here.... :)

October adventures!

Hallo an alle!! FYI...this is 'hello everyone' in German :) Pretty tough one to figure out, but there you have it. Has it really been a month since the last post?! Whoopsie.
We are all good, and definitely trying to get into a routine over here. David's team is doing so well, and our #4 is kicking ass :)
It is definitely looking like fall now, the colors of the changing leaves are amazing! It was starting to cool down also, but was 72 and sunny today, yay! :) Sorry to rub it in peeps back home, I've heard it's getting a little chilly there ;)
We've had a few new adventures as well....more hiking, visiting the Innsbruck, Austria Alpenzoo, going to the llama farm, David going to Munich for Oktoberfest!!, Elliot starting a 'gym' class and Nora starting kindergarten at the German school!!!!
love and miss you all!!!
here's some pics, pics and more pics!

hiking with daddy!

taking a hiking break with mommy!

 

sweet nora bean

elliot checking out the fish at the alpenzoo

it was a cold, rainy day at the zoo but that didn't stop us!!

and nora got a new umbrella :)

getting up close and personal with some animals...

that's just a couple wires there...

not gonna lie, this was a little crazy.

but not as crazy as seeing this little guy.

mr. braunbar! Again, that's just me learning to speak such incredible German.

That's mr. brown bear!

he was right on the other side of the window and kept pacing back and forth sniffing at the corners. I think he was hungry, and I think Elliot looked like a decent little lunch.

out for a walk through the vineyards...

and 1 of the things that might make this entire experience worth it....the pizza!

view from our balcony one afternoon after a little rain....

this hasn't gotten old.

obviously sideways, but a pic of David's first Euro goal!! He's of course already had another, but THIS was the first :)

We happened to stop by a little town square celebration, and nora had to have her face painted.

She was a pink kitty for a few hours.

Another pic of the view from our kitchen one morning. 

yep.

David borrowed himself some leiderhosen, and headed up to Munich with a few of his teammates for OKTOBERFEST!! I was a little jealous, but so excited for him! He said it was awesome, from what he can remember ;) 

view of the frost in the mountains one morning...

and an amazing sunrise another morning.

we took the gondola up again to Ritten, but hiked up to the llama farm this time!

yep, the llama farm.

hiking to the farm....

AND our kindergarten girl!!!

ok....we FINALLY got all of our paperwork in order, which turned out to be a bit of a painfully slow process. But, we are all officially official! Which means, we could enroll N somewhere if we wanted. Nora was dying to meet some new friends and even though she knew they wouldn't be talking like her, she wanted to go! She's a couple days in now, and loves it! We're so proud of her for diving right in, and who knows, maybe she might even pick up some German ;)

oh, and the reason she's at a German school in Italy is because the area that we are in, South Tyrol is mainly German speaking. Italian and German are the official languages, but around town it is mostly German. There is an Italian school in town also, which is coincidentally where Elliot has her gym class once a week, but there are many more German schools and students, so German it is!