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...

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New Blog Series-YCMTSU

My friend Shannon (she's my person here) and I were recently talking about all the craziness we as Americans experience here in Italy that is impossible to describe to anyone, especially someone who has never lived outside of the United States.

She is a frequent blogger also and so we both decided to add a new series to each of our blogs entitled "This Doesn't Happen in America" or as we like to call it between friends, "You Can't Make This Shit Up..." I cannot tell you how many times a day I think these exact thoughts in my head or say them out loud.

Don't get me wrong, living in Europe and Italy can be amazing!  The opportunities and experiences we are having and that are kids are having are life changing.

Making sand castles in Paris 

But for every amazing thing, there seems to be just a little craziness to go along with it....

So, it's here in my own little corner of the blogosphere that I'll try and enlighten you with (or at least share in the humor of) the craziness that is our Life in Italia...

Back in December, when my father had just arrived for Christmas, we noticed that the exhaust fan in our fireplace wasn't working.  We have a giant fireplace in our kitchen--it's one of the things that I liked best about our house when I first saw it.

Our fireplace (before we moved in)

 Keep in mind that Italians actually use their fireplaces for heat because they frequently keep their thermostats set in the 50's.  Gas for heating is VERY, VERY expensive! Without a fireplace, your house would be freezing. When we first moved in back in January of 2012, our downstairs would frequently drop into the high 40's INSIDE.  It is COLD without a fireplace!

This is what it was like the first month we lived in our house....

We contacted Claudio, our landlord, about the exhaust fan not working and he arranged a time for himself and Lucca, the electrician, to come over.  It was a Saturday when they decided to come and I had run out to the market.

When I got home, I had missed them.  I had started to put away the groceries I had bought, when I noticed an empty wine bottle--a big one--and 4 wine glasses sitting on the work table we have in the kitchen....and next to it all was an empty container of fudge that my cousin had sent for Christmas.  Keep in mind, it was barely NOON by this time....

I said some thing to my dad and Steve about who was drinking wine at 10:00 in the morning and Steve laughed and said that when he had asked Claudio if he and Lucca wanted something to drink, Claudio had pointed at the giant wine wrack we have in the corner of our kitchen...and then he went over and PICKED OUT A BOTTLE !

All of this might sound fine up until this point. Claudio, though he doesn't speak a word of English (except for Wednesday, flip flop, and Mercedes--he has one, the other two he learned from me), is the NICEST man and we honestly couldn't ask for a better landlord....I had NO problem with them socializing...

BUT, keep in mind these important facts...

1. It was 10:00 in the morning
2. They had come over to fix something involving ELECTRICITY
3. They had to climb up on the ROOF to do so
4. Italian wine is much, much higher in alcohol content than American wine is--the bottle that they drank was 13% alcohol...
5. They drank the wine BEFORE they climbed on the roof
6. They ate all the fudge... :(

My dad, seeing the humor in the entire situation and not wanting me to miss it, took a picture of the whole thing from my yard...thankfully HE had some sense!

The men on the roof--Steve is in the red shirt, Lucca is to the left and Claudio is in the center

You can see the chimney just peeking out on the corner of the the house. This picture is just to show you HOW high up the roof actually is...

Can you imagine this happening in America?  Honestly, I can't make this shit up....  

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Wordless Wednesday

Signs of Spring in Italy

Podere Casanova Part Three

A panaramic view of Podere Casanova

Do you know how when sometimes you take a vacation and then you actually NEED another vacation to recover from the original one?  This trip to Tuscany was not one of those types of vacations.  We actually got to relax and enjoy ourselves.  The weather had a lot to do with it.  There were a couple of days where the weather was just too rainy and yucky and we didn't want to bother with dragging the kids out in it. Instead, we just decided to "hang out" and enjoy ourselves around Podere Casanova.  We drank wine--lots of wine, and we ate food--lots of that too, and we simply walked around and let the kids enjoy some slightly warmer weather in Italy.  

 Unfortunately, it was just too cold to swim...

The pots that these trees were in were HUGE

 The adorable road into town...

 Things were just starting to turn green a bloom

 Some of the vineyards on the property

 The kids loved the goats

 They were super friendly

I was scared they would fall of the ledge (see it RIGHT behind them)