Hate is a strong word...

I don't know about your kids, but my kids are constantly using the word "hate".  "I hate him", "I hate her", "I hate pizza" (I know, right?), "I hate cheese", etc, etc, etc.  I am constantly correcting them by saying, "Hate is a strong word!" and it is...there are few things, people, etc that I could use that word to describe....I hate hypocrisy, racism, prejudice,,,it fits for those ideas but I think that most people feel the same.  

Today, I took Delilah to the commissary with me.  I knew it wouldn't be a quick trip, but I was in a good mood, she seemed to be in a good mood, and things were looking up, so I took her along.  When she hopped into the car after preschool pickup and I told her we were going, she immediately asked the dreaded question,  "Can we get the car shopping cart?  Please.  Please!!!!"  And like I said, I was in a good mood, so I gave in.  Sure, I thought, how bad can it be....

It was worse, worse than driving a Suburban through the narrow streets of Italy for these past two years, practically worse than childbirth.  Not quite as bad as going to the dentist, which I need to do, BUT CLOSE!! Almost as bad as the dentist.  

I tried to talk her into the new carts our commissary has--you know the kind that has two baskets stacked on top of each other and the car part, complete with steering wheel and horn, is actually in the seat-part of the cart.  Those are much easier to drive.  But no, not Ms. Delilah, NO.  She insisted on the double wide version of the car/shopping cart.  Driving that thing through the aisles is impossible.  And clearly invented by a man.  The constant need to back up and pull forward, back up and pull forward just to make it down the straight grocery aisle after turning is too much!!  TOO MUCH!

Our 20 minutes-tops shopping trip in a good mood quickly turned into an hour of me screaming and cursing that damn cart, while Delilah swung from the hood of it like a tiny Chinese gymnast.  So if you happened to see me at the commissary today, I was not possessed.  It's the cart's fault. I hate it. 

There's a reason these photos are blurry...and it has nothing to do with the camera.

Lazy Sunday

Sundays are typically a lazy day in Italy.  Italians eat dinner much later than Americans, especially on the weekends, and so it's not uncommon to see them arriving at a restaurant with their children child at 10:00 at night! They like to stay out late and sleep in on the weekends...

In the Veneto (the region of Italy where we live), many people go to Camisano, one of the bigger markets in our area.  Market-going is common practice in Italy; it's a central place where townspeople can get anything that they need for the week.  It's common to find smaller markets in each of the local towns on a set day each week, ours is always on Mondays,  where people can walk into town to buy a few items that they need for that week.  

Vendors selling food items like fresh fruits and veggies, honey, and cheese are always found at even smaller markets and clothing at very low prices compared to local stores is usually sold as well. I almost always get my flowers to plant at the market and there's even a vendor with a large cart selling awesome cut flowers for "dirt" cheap...(get the pun??)

Steve and I LOVE the Camisano market but it's something we usually do just as a couple because there are seriously HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of people there each week.  It is hard to keep up with the little ones there and so Steve usually ends of carrying Delilah.  My reasoning for living them at home and he and I just going is this:

How can he carry Delilah when he has to cart all our purchases back and forth to the car, right???

We almost always follow the same routine.  We park in one of the pay-to-park lots (it's only €2 for as long as you want to park) that's centrally located and arrive at the market in its center.  If it's close to lunch time, we head left for our highlight of the day, the porchetta sandwich. Porchetta is pork in Italy and if you've never had a porchetta served on a big crusty bun with onions and peppers (cippole e peperoni in Italian), you simply don't know what you're missing.  The same two ladies in a food truck serve it up hot and semi-greasy wrapped in a giant napkin and by Wednesday, I sometimes find myself craving one. It's one of the many everyday things that I'll miss about Italy one day.  Molto Bene!!

(And yes, if you caught that, you DID read that right...the Italian word for "Peppers" in Italy is "Peperoni") Imagine how many of us spend the first few weeks ordering pizza with pepperoni and wondering why they always get it wrong and put green peppers on it!  (The word for "Pepperoni" is actually "Salami--somehow I think WE are the ones who messed that one up years ago....)

After our sandwiches, we head back into the main part of the market to do a little shopping.  What we buy depends on our week ahead, but we almost always buy oranges, kiwi, and strawberries. And of course there's always wine. During the spring and summer, I usually buy some flowers to plant--I am my mother's child.  I have favorite vendors for everything and I like the fruit guy at the far end of the market the best. I tell him this constantly and he appreciates that and gives me a good price instead of the "Americano price". When the kids come with us, they love to buy the fresh fried seafood from a truck in the center of the market.  They eat things I'd never even seen before moving to Italy, but somehow they think it's delicious...I think it's gross...

While I shop, Steve usually runs back and forth to the car to drop off my purchases. He refers to himself as "the pack mule" on these days.  I just hand him the bags or boxes and point towards the car. Have a great Sunday!

The Camisano market 

 The Porchetta Sandwich Lady

 The cheese truck at the market in my town.  Yep, those are giant wheels of cheese.

Market in Verona 

Fruit at the market 

I'd love your vote for top mommy blog!  All you have to do is click on that picture of the happy mommy below! I'm currently #1 in my category (military mommy) and #34 overall. There are over 4,000 total blogs on the site, so 34 isn't too bad, but I'd sure love to break into the top 25!! Grazie!

An Update & Delilah's Version of the "Sticker"

I've got ONE more Kiwi Crate to give away!!  See yesterday's giveaway post...

I've been waiting since last week to post about this, but in order to give my blog a better "flow", I've decided to follow a not-strict-at-all guide to scheduling my posts.  Here's what I've come up with so far:

*Momma Monday--I'll try to keep all of the cutesy stories about the wonderful and fabulous things the kiddos do to this day--although I have enough stories about their antics that I could almost tell a story everyday....

*Around Town Tuesday--This day will be dedicated to things, events, traditions, etc... that focus on Italy and our local area.  This is also the day were I will "discuss" all things military in nature, since the reason we are enjoying this fabulous continent is thanks to the military.

*Wordless Wednesday--I didn't realize just how popular this series of posts are across the blogospere, but it seems that everyone is doing a "Wordless Wednesday".  It's a great way to post pictures that I really love, or that I'd like to share, but wouldn't necessarily write an entire post about...

*Travel Thursday--One of the main perks about living over here in Europe is the amazing opportunities for travel that are so cheap and available to us.  Almost all of our trips span the course of several days and just too much happens on our vacations to just post about them for one day.  I picked Thursday as the day to post most of our travel adventures because it allows me to carry over into the weekend if I need to....which I'm sure I will....we spent 8 full days in Paris--how could I post about it all in just one post...

*UCMTSU Friday--Like Wordless Wednesday, the UCMTSU series is one that I've been posting about already on Fridays.  This is the crazy stuff that happens over here (this is another series for which I will NEVER run out of topics...), where we shake our heads and say to ourselves, "You Can't Make This Shit Up..."

*The Weekend--Saturday and Sunday are my free days...I'll post about whatever I want on those days, perhaps a continuation of a travel post, something awesome we bought recently, cuteness my kiddos were up to, or just whatever I want to discuss.  I see the weekend as my time to ramble on even more than I do on regular days!

Ok, now I'll get on to my much anticipated (by me, at least) Momma Monday post.

Last week, Delilah and I headed out to run some errands, and like most days, it was just she and I, and I had a list of things I needed to tackle.  With the end of the school year fast approaching, I've been trying to get as much done during the school year as possible so that we can better focus on traveling and having fun this summer as a family! In short, I was BUSY and she was tagging along for the ride, so to speak...

We headed out early, and Delilah brought her purse, naturally, and also this little pink bag that she's been fond of lately as well.  It's pink and purple, shiny, with lots of stars on it.  The best part is that it came free inside a box of diapers that I purchased online from Wal-Mart last year. It originally contained a trail pack of Always brand panty liners and pads that I *thought* I had given to Tory long ago...

If you're following along, you can see where this story is headed...

So, we headed out on our "adventures" to Ali (the Italian grocery store), the commissary, the Post Exchange, the post office, and finally Viridea (the Italian flower store).  It was lots and lots of in and out of the car--me with my list, and Delilah with her purses...and Delilah chattering away behind me about her "stickers" from her purse.

I honestly didn't notice until we were leaving Viridea, the last place on our list, and I was buckling Delilah up in her carseat to leave.   

The stickers that she had covered herself with, were in fact, the panty liners and pads from the trial pack.

 I personally love the one with wings....

Yep.  That's right.  We trotted all around post and Italy that day with my daughter covered in stickers pads. And she thought she was SO fancy, too.

In my defense, we are a sticker family.  Jackson has a collection that would rival Sandylion's and Delilah is also a huge fan of the sticker.  It's not unusual at all for Steve to leave for work with a little HelloKittyMyLittlePonyMinnieMouse bling on his uniform.  And I am usually sporting a little bling of my own--lately it's been Dora...In a pinch, a band-aid makes a fabulous sticker at our house, though this usually means there are no band-aids to be found when someone is bleeding to death in the kitchen.

Jackson's bed...I did not tell him he could do this...his father did.

Now that I look back on that day, I wonder what exactly people were thinking when they saw us that day...especially the Italians who already look at us like we are freaks of nature odd sometimes.  I'm just glad I didn't walk into Viridea with an Always with Wings stuck to my shirt...

Be sure to click on that button below--that's all you need to do to vote!  One little click with take you to the top mommy blog website, but there's nothing to do there!  Just the click from my page to theirs counts as a vote!

GRAZIE!

Friends, Babies, & Nove'--OMG I love Italian Pottery!

This is the post that I originally meant to post the day of the flood!  So here it is--thanks for waiting Beth! One of the fabulous things about an impending military move, PCS as we like to call it, is that without fail, someone you know has already been stationed there before you.  Part of being in the great "military family" is that one of your friends almost always "knows someone" who is already living where you are moving. It makes the constant moving almost bearable.  It's always an adventure--a chance to meet new friends, to get to see a part of the country, or even world, that you haven't gotten a chance to experience yet.   Facebook has made this whole process easier for military families.  Here's an example.  Just yesterday, I was chatting with my friend Heather on Facebook.  She and her family lived across the street from ours for a couple of years while we were all stationed at Ft. Campbell together.  Steve and her husband deployed together.  Our kids played together.  When we first met them, Heather was just a few months shy of delivering baby number two, a boy who would become friends with Delilah, our youngest.  When the time came, we dashed across the street to stay with their oldest, Lily, who is the same age as our son Jackson.  This is the way it works with military families. They are great people--part of our every-growing military family. Yesterday, Heather and I were chatting about her move to Ft. Leavenworth--she'll be just a couple of weeks shy of delivering baby # 3 this time...and expressed her concerns that she will know no one to dash across the street this time.  As military luck would have it...I do.  My friend Mandy, who lives just down the street from me here in Italy is moving to Leavenworth also.  Instant Facebook introduction.  It's the way it works in the military.  "But wait", I be you're saying.  "This post is supposed to be about Italian pottery!"  Don't worry, I'll get to it... Here's a little "teaser"...

  We found out that we were moving to Italy in the summer of 2011. Steve was still in Afghanistan when he "got the call". When he told me, I was excited, overwhelmed, and speechless!  I couldn't wait to talk to some friends who had been stationed here.  I rallied the troops....and no one.  NO ONE I knew had been stationed here.  Everyone was excited and WANTED to be stationed here, but NO ONE actually had been.  We knew no one in Italy, or anyone who had even been stationed here. My friend Anne, however; had visited the Vicenza, Italy area when she and her family were stationed in Germany years ago.  In typically military fashion, she told me all about her adventures here and even pulled out some knick-knacks she had picked up along the way here.   THIS is where the pottery comes in.   From atop her kitchen cabinets, my friend Anne pulled down the most fabulous pottery.  I can't remember if it was Crate and Barrel or Tiffany's, but I was hooked.  She told me about her trip to Nove' the Italian "capital" of all things pottery.  American companies like William Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, and Tiffany's (just to name a few) have their pottery manufacture over there in Italy by companies , she told me.  You can buy it there at cost... It's all true.   My favorite of all the ceramic factories in Nove' is VBC.  Andrea and his family have been running it for years. It also helps that he speaks perfect English and will give you a flat 10 percent discount if you use Euro.  Here are some of my favorites from his shop...

This is Andrea

 Pottery that has already been molded but not fired

 The giant kiln (big thing on the right)

Shelves and shelves of pottery that has already been fired

VBC ceramics on the cover of a William-Sonoma catalogue 

One of the plates from the WS catalogue pictured above.  This stack of plates was right next to the phone and apparently someone used one of the unfired plates as a note to take an order!

There were hundreds of these carts FULL of ceramics! 

The have dozens and dozens of different spoon rests and salt and pepper shakers

I LOVE this mosaic bowl! 

 And this giant plater 

And these olive themed pitchers 

I've got to have this bowl 

This man was another American...His wife had a big pile of ceramics on a cart behind him

Huge carton of ceramics that's about to be mailed to Dorothy in PA, USA

AND, are you ready for this...VBC also produces quite a bit of pottery for Tiffany.  I love the little child's bank--it's my new go-to present for anyone who has a baby!  I love them--and they are significantly cheaper when you buy them direct from the maker!

 This is the one that I bought for Delilah

Made for Tiffany & Co. in Italy :)

Check out what they sell for at Tiffany's!  I got mine for 20 Euro!

Here's another piece from Tiffany!

Made in Italy :)

Spelling Errors

You know how American fashion frequently has cute little foreign phrases plastered all over it?  After living in Italy for and year and a half, I frequently wonder how many of those phrases are misspelled, or just plain WRONG.

Do you think they mean "thong party"--thong as in flip flop, not buttless underwear...