Zucchero Zollette (Sugar Cubes)

On Monday, I hosted a book club. As I pulled out the fixings for cups of tea, I thought to myself how surprised I was that the children had not eaten all of the sugar cubes, especially since they were still in their marked box. They did eat a fair amount during book club, and I threw away that box. 

This morning, I went to open the new box, and to my surprise....it was empty! I'm not sure if they suddenly knew we had some and ate them all in a day, or if they had been pilfering from the bottom box the whole time! 

Lucky for all, I had picked up a box from the Italian grocery store. I present to you Italian sugar cubes, still called cubes, but it seems their math skills may be lacking here. These cubes are most certainly rectangular in nature.

Today's Italian lesson is Zucchero- sugar. Pronounced zoo-ker-oh, this is a useful word when one drinks coffe (with or without sugar. Though now that I think about it, sugar is never in the coffee, it is always served as packets on the saucer or on the table.)

Found!

Mom! I found it! I knew I would find it! I found my favorite cup!

This was Noah's that he bought ay Niagra Falls when he was Judah's age,  and I fear I'll never be able to get rid of it. It's the only plastic cup we have! 

24 years later..

Bryan and I were back in a DLI classroom together learning a new language. 

It was a bit different than the cassette tape days of old-with a smart white board that gave our instructor all kinds of tech issues but also all whiteboard notes emailed to us after the class!

Our class started at 7 am, so a cup of cappuccino with cocoa sprinkled on top was much needed afterwards. 

Salt with no Spice.

Mmmm, mom this so good with that salt that is not spicy!! (Sugar. He is speaking about sugar! He's eating dry cinnamon chex because mom went to spain for the weekend and need tp go grocery shopping!)

A few minutes later, completely randomly-

Mom, never give me away, okay? (Maybr He's worried about the mess he just made eating those chex. And I haven't a 220v vacuum,  yet.)

Jude quotes

Mom, did you buy that mac and cheese? 

I did. 

It's so big! I don't think I can eat all of that right now!

I should hope not! It is family sized!

Mom, did you know i have another jello cup hidden away in my secret drawer?!

I do now!

Italy in Color

I apparently never finished linking videos recently.

There a new link for family videos from Italy. Included is a tour of the house by Elijah.  He missed all the interesting things about the house,  so I hope to someday make you another.  Until then...

Wilhelms in Italy

A House!

After 99 days in a hotel, we have a house! 

It is a very large house, even by American standards. It is a rather odd house, by American or European standards. Custom built, I am sure, and could use some serious updating, but fingers crossed we can find a way to make this a comfortable home! 

The landlord is a super sweet old Italian man. Not much English (though more than our Italian) but so friendly. We met his daughter and she was just as nice and spoke great English. She is probably close to our age and I hope we can become friends. 

Truly though,there is plenty of space, and even a guest room. Come visit! There are also a couple of odd little storage rooms (with windows) that we might be able to use as extra guest rooms for any kids you bring along! 

We walked into town for gelato with Elijah and Judah last night. I didnt try it, but Bryan said it was incredible and the boys both loved it, as well. 

Well, pray for us. The owner was still moving out Friday as the truck with our stuff was here unloading. There is stuff everywhere, some ours, some theirs, and I haven't even had time to figure out how best to set the rooms up. It'll be good, but it'll take a while to get this situated! 

Weekly Randoms

We've finally started bringing Jude toys to restaurants. (You're going to be there a while and the alternative is a screen in his face.) So here he is ordering me to take my turn trying to balance the penguins when I'm trying to snap a quick picture. 

Last night was Brunch Republic for dinner. (They try, but it just isn't quite America.) I love their yogurt- granola bowl, but since I had yogurt for breakfast and lunch....I tried something new-  avocado toast with poached eggs and chili flakes. Jude ate my eggs. And the rest was,  well,  let's just say they REALLY should take a page from the Americans and have salt and pepper on the table. Things here are so bland, and I'm not even someone who likes much flavoring! But alas, there is always sugar on the table, usually oil and vinegar, but almost never salt and pepper. 

While doing laundry earlier this week, Elijah realized the coffee machine had definite cappucino.  He begged money off of Selah after the machine ate his American coins (because it took Euro) and then proclaimed it was the best thing he has ever had to drink. 

The older kids love that Jide crosses his eyes and are always telling him to do this for their amusement. 

The kids went to KFC at the mall for the millionth time, so bryan and I tried to get dinner at the hotel restaurant. There was quite a wait, even for two, so we checked out a little place down the street. 

Finally! A little Italian place just like you would expect. I wish I had taken a picture of the gentleman who served us. 😔 

Also, finally good food! 

I had the house made Bigoli- homemade pasta with a pepper cream sauce. Incredible. 

Bryan had some kind of soup made from creamed beans. He said it was actually quite good, despite the stew look. 

Secondi,  I was excited to see caprese with buffalo mozzerella on the menu (secondi is normally meat or fish) and while it was decent, it needed salt and vinegar! Tomato, cheese, olive oil, basil... I'm just not that Italian. 

This was lunch the same day. A four cheese pasta. This is why we complain about the food here. What is in my simple four cheese pasta?! Blue cheese?! Needless to say I didn't finish it. Selah ate even less of hers. Secondi was grilled chicken- actually grilled! Too bad there was no seasoning whatsoever...

Judah, giving me a heart attack! Just peeking out the screen-less second floor window 😳😳😳

Mom! What day is it?! 

Monday?! I hate monday! 

A picture stolen from the high school's instagram account from last weekend's tennis meet. 

Just a Little Jude

This kid. A day in the life. Need I say more? 

my phone and I are not friends. The sideways pictures are making me crazy. I did read how to fix it, but it requires editing the code on every picture and my tech savvy kid lives in Germany...

Etiquette Training at Its Best.

Mom, you always do this to me! 

Do what to you?!

Make me use a fork!!!

Unrelated to forks, I cannot remember if I have shared about the Italian breakfast juice. It's called Ace, which is pronounced Ah-chay. It is a combination of orange, carrot, and lemon juice and available everywhere, even in juice boxes. Judah actually enjoys it quite a bit. 

Writing Names

It is a much needed cooler morning here, only 74 with a high of 80 today! 

We are waiting for the laundry to finish and Judah asked to draw while I worked on some emails. 

He wrote his name. I am so proud of him. We will work on the upside down u and the crazy d. It was such a good start! I didn't even know he was ready to start working on this. 

A Day With Judah

Judah- Mom, do you want to play with me? 

Yes , I do. But these dishes will not wash themselves. 

J- It's your job to play with me you know. 

Yes, but it's also my job to wash the dishes! 

J-Hmm. I wish we could use electricity to make those dishes wash themselves!

........

A LITTLE LATER WHILE PLAYING PLAYDOH...

.........

J-Mom do you want some more?

Well, we are going to be leaving in all few to take micah to tennis. We should start cleaning up.

J- I'll take that as a yes. Here's more.  

Tennis Season Has Started.

Micah decided he wanted to try out for the High School tennis team- and he made the team! 

We are very proud of him, even though we now have no other life. I think 12 boys tried out and 8 made the team. Not bad for a freshman with no experience other than playing for fun occasionally! 

So, we now spend much time sweating on the tennis courts while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. He has practice M-Th for 2 hours after school and each Friday and Saturday he will have matches. Now, since we live in Europe but aren't European, it seems we play other European located American military schools and a few international ones. Which means travel. The good is that we only travel 3 weekends and we stay in Italy. One trip is to Rome and two to Naples- unless Micah does very well. Then he will also go to Germany for the Eurpean DODEA (DOD schools) tournament at the end of October. 

It seems that it is also customary to have private lessons, in addition to the team practices. So, here we are at 11am working with an instructor. It's still school, do not worry. We are getting all the PE in that we missed all those years in MI!  (Plus, I told him school still must come first and he has been great about starting school around 7 am to make up for the shorter day.)

Elijah is working on the practice wall behind Micah. 

And Judah is building and putting out fires. 

today we went to sciovie Verena 2000 - guest post by Elijah

Today we went to Sciovie, Verena 2000 it's a ski resort in the winter but in the summer it's a place to hike. First you ride a chair lift to the top and than there is a world war 1 fort and some really amazing views. then you can ride the char lift back down or walk back down. we walked and it was very pretty but very hard with Jude. 

This is in the world war 1 fort

l

This is an Italian swing

  Hear I dont know but there were a lot of motorcycles and that's it

-Elijah wilhelm