No Itch Here

7 Years and counting since I married Mr. Right.








Happy Anniversary to us! I have the best friend, husband, and partner in crime a gal could wish for. I am the luckiest lady around.

Is 7 years long enough for our wedding photos to be unfashionable? I think it usually takes 10 years before you can really start laughing at them, right?

Word to the Wise

Should you ever find yourself alighting on the Isle of Capri with a young child and another one in a stroller, I advise you to look around before deciding to just "climb to the top".

We visited the Campania region of Italy last week, and took a day trip to the beautiful island of Capri. I have wanted to visit this location for a long time, and we were very excited to finally be able to do so.
We took the ferry over, and got off at the marina, which is obviously at sea level.
The town center is up near the top of the island, which is what we would call a small mountain. By stairs. Carrying a 30lb almost-2 year old in his stroller. And a 4 year old who ,remarkably, did not complain about the ascent.
I looked it up online, and apparently there are around 600 of the stairs.
(not my photo. I was huffing & puffing too much to stop and pull out the camera. Also note that this is just a representative sample. Multiply these by about 60)



Sounds like fun, right?
Then, when we arrived at the top, we looked to our left and saw that for the low low price of only 1.40 Euros, we could have taken a funicular to the top and saved ourselves the exertion.


Just so you know.


But, the island is beautiful. It was an ancient vacation spot for the Romans and has been attracting people ever since. And yes, Capri is where the hideous Capri pant originated










We even managed to get that ever elusive all-family photo. Thank you nice lady from Ohio who took our picture for us!


One of the things that distracted me on our climb were these tiny shrines everywhere. We noticed these not only in Capri, but all over the Amalfi Coast. They were outside of private homes, built into the side of public streets, and outside shops.

Basic Math

+


(it was actually a small hill right outside of this park)

=


Eating pavement.

It was really swollen yesterday, and we were afraid it was going to turn black. But it seems to have de-swelled today.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Brits refer to any American as a "Yank", and now it will be official. We are moving to New York in August.

We are very, very sad not to be going back to Arkansas. Our friends and house are there. Hopefully it won't be long before we can make our way back down South. Those of you who know me well know that I don't do cold. So winter in the Northeast is going to absolutely kill me.

There is so much to do before we head back across the pond, and I'm starting to get just a tad overwhelmed thinking about the logistics of not only moving back to the US, but going to a completely new area and having to find a house, schools, and making new friends.

City Boys & Girls Getting Down on the Farm

Saturday was the rare sunny day when the temperature broke 70 degrees (a London heatwave), so we decided to take advantage of the great outdoors and take the kids down to a farm in Surrey. We took Kate here for her 3rd birthday last year, and poor Michael had to spend the entire time in his stroller since he was not yet walking or crawling.

Now that he is a busy boy who knows all his animal signs and sounds, we thought he would enjoy it more this year.

Kate was initially not keen on feeding real, live animals. But she soon came around after I bribed her with a marshmallow.




My kid feeding a kid:




Kate rode the same donkey she did last year. This year though, there was no fooling her and she said straight away "That's not a horse. It's a donkey". But she didn't care.

They had a pig race. They were so cute when they ran! Their ears were flopping all in their faces and they didn't seem too bothered to make it to the finish line very quickly.









What is this stuff? Grass...what is that? My poor kids and their city life.





Just because she rode a donkey doesn't mean she doesn't want a horse of her very own.
"Pleeeeeeease daddy?"




The farm has a huge playground with tons of trampolines, sand pits, and playground equipment. The kids were completely knackered afterward, so I would call that a successful day.

How to eat like a Pirate

One of our favorite treats is a Pasty. A pasty is a traditional Cornish pastry that is filled with various savory fillings. It was the traditional lunch for the miners who worked in the tin mines throughout Cornwall. They were so deep underground that they could not return to the surface for lunch. The legend is that they were covered in dirt & arsenic, and they could hold the pasty by the folded crust and eat the rest without touching it, discarding the dirty pastry. It is so thick that supposedly it stayed warm for 8-10 hours, and also helped to keep the miners warm when carried on their person. I'm not sure exactly where the pirate comes into play, but pirates make everything cool.



Argggh, Matey.

La Dolce Far Niente

La Dolce Far Niente is Italian meaning "the sweetness of doing nothing". Which is mostly what we did in Lake Como. We did take some trips to the neighboring towns in the region, but we really just enjoyed relaxing in the warm air, drinking some wine, and eating delicious food.

We went to visit Villa Balbianello, which is a *gorgeous* villa in the town of Lenno. It has been used in many movies, and when Danny & I got there we realized it was in the James Bond movie, Casino Royale. It has also been in Star Wars II & Ocean's 12. It was absolutely breathtaking.






This one is not my photo, but it is the villa in its entirety:


There were tents being dismantled as we were there, from a wedding the night before. It is a popular wedding destination venue. The people who had been wed there the night before were Americans. You too can rent the villa for an event for the low cost of 100,000 Euros! And that is just the rental fee, not including catering, drinks, flowers, lodging at a neighboring town, etc.


Ciao Italy! We'll see you again in a few weeks!

Lake Como, Part 2

Danny & I love Italy. When we made a list of our planned holiday destinations for this year, different places in Italy came up on the list 4 times. We love the food, the landscape, the culture, everything.
It is such a wonderful place to vacation with children, as they are so welcoming towards little ones and really delight in them. I love to people watch, as the Italians take a lot of pride in their appearance and even casual outfits are very chic & pulled together. I often turn on the tv and leave it on, just because the language is so pleasing to my ear. I really haven't a clue what they are talking about, I just enjoy hearing it so. Italian culture centers around food, family & friends. What more could there be to life? (answer: not much, unless you ask Danny, then he would include "Aggie Football")
You've probably already realized that the title of our blog, "La Dolce Vita" is an Italian phrase meaning "the sweet life", which incorporates & focuses on those three (or four) things.


The sole thing I don't love about Italy? The inability to get a cup of coffee to-go.
Everyone knows that Italians take their coffee very seriously, it is almost an art form. There are different coffee drinks for different times of day & different moods. This is all well & good, but sometimes I just want a cup of joe to sip on in the mornings while wandering around. The older I get and the more kids I have, the more dependent I have become on caffeine in the mornings. Small children are not always conducive to sitting in a cafe and enjoying a leisurely drink. But you can not go to a cafe & order coffee to go. Last time we were in Rome, I was so desperate for my morning caffeine fix I went into a McDonald's and tried to order a coffee. I was met with a disdainful look and told "Non serviamo il caffè". No self-respecting Italian would ever drink coffee from McDonald's. Or Starbucks, for that matter. There are none of those either.


So Kate's naughty behaviour on the first day of our trip lost her gelato privileges. I am a mean mom, and still got some and then proceeded to eat it front of her.

Gee, can you tell that my legs have not seen the light of day in almost 2 years?

Lake Como is Italy's deepest lake, which of course means it is quite cold. It doesn't appear so in our pictures, but the water is turquoise blue. There were not many lidos, but rather steps leading down into the lake if you wanted to take a dip in the lake.



It was hot while we were there, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was the first time since we moved to London that I have broken a non-gym induced sweat, and I loved every minute of the hot air. Kate liked it too, and wanted to go splash in the water.
I took her socks and shoes off, and then she slowly proceeded to strip everything else off too. Danny was mortified, but I figured it is the European way and let her have her fun.


We took a boat trip down to the town of Como, which was much busier and metropolitan than the town we stayed in, Bellagio. On the way, we passed George Clooney's house, and everyone got very excited and whipped out their cameras.