Grape Stomping

Hey there!  Let me start by apologizing for being away so long...I am not dead and nothing is wrong.  With several people--family, friends, and perfect strangers included--contacting me each day to check on my well being, I thought it might be important to start with a little, "everything's ok" message.  But I appreciate the concern and the support.  It's so nice to feel the love.  I have just literally been bogged down with life at the beginning of this school year!  Yikes!  What a fickle bitch I am.  At the end of the school year last year, I was begging summer to hurry up and come and then at the end of summer, I was begging her to hurry up and end.  Now all I want is just a few more days!  Come back, summer.  Just hang around for a few more days!  Please?

So, like I was implying, we've been REALLY busy here at Via Fontanelle during my unintended break from the blog. Life in Italy with four brats kids in four different schools is hectic, never dull, but always fun (hahaha, I hope you can detect the sarcasm).  So I've got a lot of catching up to do over the next couple of blog posts, but I wanted to post today about something amazing that we got to do in Italy over the weekend.  When we moved here, I made this little Italy must-do list that I keep in my head of random things that I wanted to do during our time living here in Italy.  It includes things like:

*Ride in a gondola in Venice

*See the chess match in Marostic

*Pick grapes and mash them I Love Lucy style with our feet

I've done all of these now, by the way, because this weekend we went grape stomping!  What an awesome experience it was for us!  The kids LOVED it.  And Francesca and her wonderful friends and family at the Salvan Urbano Vinicola were super to invite us to give it a try.  The kids actually got to pick the grapes from the vine, dump them in the giant mashing tub and jump in with their feet to stomp them.  There was wine and local food for sampling, live music, and lots of fun.  It was a great way to spend a weekend enjoying what our local area has to offer us here in Italy! But I cannot even begin to describe just how sticky it was....

(Let me apologize for all the pictures now)

 (Tory and her boyfriend, Drake--they've been dating forever in teenage years.  This is the smile that I always get from them)

(Delilah's future husband)

The man up there pouring the wine carved his name into the stone back in 1993...

Sure would love your vote!

Italian Bikini Car Wash

I'm about to tell you something that I'm sure I'll burn in parental hell for, but here it goes:

Sometimes I let the brats watch TV while we eat dinner.

I know, I know, it's terrible...but don't judge, people!

We don't have a television in our dinning room (that actually used to be the garage before our landlord converted it into a dinning room--"Italian Style"), it's actually where our computer is, and the kids watch shows on it from our iTunes.  The "watch TV while we're eating thing" first started when Steve was TDY somewhere and it took all I had to keep the brats at the table to eat.  Their dinner viewing pleasure began as the Scooby Doo's "Menace in Venice" (totally educational for those of us living in Italy) episode and has since moved on to Olivia, Season 2.  Even I know the words to her "Goodnight, Olivia" song.

 I just can't help it.  That pig is just so darn cute and spunky. Reminds me of a little puddle duck I know...

so anyhow...

Tonight at dinner, we were watching the episode where Olivia and Francine decide to have a fundraiser to raise money for new books for the school.  We were eating our ice cream (which we really do on Sundays but we had left over sundays tonight) and listening to Olivia decide which type of fund raiser to have.  Tory (the oldest brat) shouted out "Bikini Car Wash" and we all laughed at the thought of Olivia in a bikini.

On the show, Olivia decided that she and Francine should have a dog washing event, to which Tory replied, "Wait, they are going to wash dogs while in their bikinis?" (She gets confused sometimes)

And is classic humor that it seems only Trey (the 2nd brat) can truly accomplish in our family, Trey replied to her, "No Tory, the dogs are wearing the bikinis".

I love these brats.

(and I'm sure this is exactly what anyone who googled "Italian Bikini Carwash"was looking for!)

I'd love your vote!  Don't forget to click below.

The Luxembourg Gardens

The Luxembourg Gardens, or Le Jardin du Luxembourg as it's referred to by the French, is Paris' version of NYC's Central Park. Although it was almost nothing like what I had expected, I absolutely loved the place.  What a perfect respite to a week of museum and cathedral hopping!  We arrived to the gardens just ahead of a downpour and still, the park was bustling with Parisian families.  We saw lots of older couples walking hand-in-hand, lots of grandmas and grandpas with little grandchildren, and families out for a leisurely afternoon in the park. Everyone seemed so happy and relaxed, and just SO....FRENCH!! I loved how the park was lined with rows and rows of young trees just beginning to take bloom, and even though the park contained only a few patches of grass, there was certainly something appealing about its dirt and gravel walkways.  I really wanted to rent a tiny boat to sail in the large ponds (the French call them "basins") that were in the garden, but sadly, they were closed by the time we arrived.  We had to "settle" instead for a ride on the vintage carousel that was on one edge of the park, right next to the puppet theater where the original "Punch and Judy" show was performed.  The gardens also are home to the French Senate, and rumor has it (or Rick Steves) that the French version of the CIA is located underneath the gardens. It was high on our Parisian "Must Do" list and I'm so glad that we made time for it.  It's a place that I'd love to see in the summer or early fall when it's in high bloom! Visiting here made me want to pack up the kids and move to Paris.  It was one of those places where I felt more like a world traveler enjoying my most recent city instead of a tourist following a guide book.  I could totally imagine being a young(ish) Parisian family out for a stroll in the park and enjoying the fresh air.  Don't miss it!

 The Gendarmerie--the French version of the Carabinieri.  Even though these two gentlemen look very stern, they were very friendly to us! 

 The Luxembourg Palace

I loved the spikes to deter the birds!

Gross! But Trey was in heaven...

 The basin where you can rent the boats

I loved the rows and rows of trees that were just starting to bloom.  Maybe Steve and I will retire in Paris one day and stroll hand-in-hand like the older couple...

It cracked me up that the brats decided to ride in a carriage together instead of on individual horses.  

 Isn't this little French boy adorable! The kids each got these sticks that were supposed to be lances and the operators had these metal rings that they would hold out and the kids would try to catch with their lances. I wanted to try but Steve wouldn't let me... :(

Nutella Crepes=Heaven...(but they weren't cheap....)

Check out how she's CLUTCHING that bag for dear life and how she has the super annoyed look on her face!

Now...there's a funny story about this picture.  Just before we got to the park, we grabbed some raspberries from a fruit vendor to eat as a little mid-afternoon snack.  Both Delilah and Jackson insisted on carrying their own bag and we planned on sitting on one of the green park chairs that are everywhere in Paris and enjoying a few.  We got up close to the "basin", found some chairs, and got ready to sit down, but JUST as we were talking the kids into sharing "their" berries, this adorable little French boy came up to Delilah and started to babble to her in French. It was obvious to everyone that Delilah was not having anything to do with this kid and was certainly not going to share her berries.  She kept shooting him her death stare, until finally Jackson stepped up and shared his berries with the little boy--I forget his name, but it was something very French, like Jon-Luc or Henry (pronounce Han-ree).  His mom realized we were Americans and spoke to us in perfect English about how funny the situation was.  It turns out that Jon-Luc/Henry was just a few weeks younger than Delilah.  I wanted to ask for the lady's phone number, move in next door, and come to the park each day for playdates...

UGH!!! Going through all these pictures of Paris SO makes me want to go back.  It was SUCH an awesome vacation for our family--even the brats loved it!  The French people couldn't have been nicer to us and the entire city was AMAZING.  I'm ready to go back....

I would love your vote for Top Mommy Blog!  All it takes is one little click below on the picture of the happy momma.  Each click brings more and more readers to Via Fontanelle! Thanks!