in the States!

boarding a military flight in Sicily

Yep, I'm back in Virginia... again.  For the fourth time this summer!  (Find photos of other trips home here in May, here in June, and here in July.)  We were all planning to come back in October for Elliott's brother's wedding, but Elliott has to travel a lot for work for the rest of September.  We decided that Lena and I should go home early so I could spend more time with my family.  As this will be my last trip home until next summer (when we have another babe in arms), and because we are all deeply grieving the recent loss of my little sister, we thought these three weeks would be a valuable time for me to be at home with my family.

exploring airports along the way home 

& fun times in Auntie Em's room once we got back to Virginia 

I took a bit of an unorthodox route home: a military flight.  Are you imagining cavernous cargo planes and Lena strapped into a jump seat?  I did too, but then I actually tried space available military transport, and it is so different than I expected!

First of all, you ride on a normal commercial airline, complete with regular flight attendants, hot meals, and movies.  The military contracts North American Airlines* to fly these "rotator" flights for them, and so every two weeks a regular Boeing 767 will start in Norfolk and fly through Rota (Spain), Sigonella (Italy), Bahrain, and Djibouti, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way.  On its way back this time, the plane picked us up in Sigonella; took us to Rota; dropped all of us off in the terminal on base for about 2 hours while it refueled, stocked up hot meals, and took on new passengers; and then flew all of us across the Atlantic to land in Norfolk around 3:30am on Friday morning, where my sweet parents were waiting to drive us all home to Fairfax (3 hours away).  It was a long, long day for everyone!

*(Have you ever heard of North American Airlines?  No, me either.  For all I knew, it could have been a fake airline.  Wouldn't that be a perfect setting for a horror film?  "Everything seemed safe and secure for Captain Ghenty and his family... until they boarded a chartered flight home on an unknown airline... and somewhere over the Atlantic, everything changed....")

Thankfully, the trip was uneventful for Lena and me.  We paid only $60 to get home ("taxes... sorry, ma'am") instead of close to $1,000 as on commercial airlines.  We could have been stranded in Rota if there wasn't room for us on the plane, but we weren't... this time.  Lena and I will repeat the adventure again in October to get home and we'll see if all goes as smoothly next time.  I've heard tragic tales of unaccompanied dependents (ie. wives and babies traveling without their high-priority active duty husbands) getting stranded for a week at a time along the way while full planes leave daily without them and I've heard of them eventually buying one-way commercial airline tickets just to finally get home.  I hope I don't have to write my own horror story on the way back!

***

Check back later today for some fun photos of a festival I went to in D.C. on Saturday.  It's good to be back in the U.S. of A!

a picture an hour

I took a picture an hour (or almost) last week, the same day that I filmed Lena "discovering" she was going to have a baby brother by mixing up blue frosting.  I realized as I put this post together what a fun record this is of an ordinary day in our home.  Well, okay, it's not every day that you are celebrating that you are going to have a son!  But in other ways this day was completely ordinary and filled with things that make up the pattern of our lives right now, like Lena's Raisin Bran in the morning (3 bowls, please, with extra raisins), playtime with her new IKEA stacking toy, her nap times while I work on projects around the house, summer afternoons on the porch splashing in her little pool, and lots of play time and meals with our beloved Arthur family.  Someday I will look back on this post and say, "Oh, there is Elliott in his Army PT clothes... back when he was still in the Army!" (although will I say this in 5 years or 20, I don't know) or, "Did that toy really once look that new?"or, "Wow, their kids have grown up since then!  I'm glad we still know and love them."  (Because I truly hope we do.)

Funny to think of the future.  Sweet to savor the present.

Enjoy a few snapshots of the rest of the day, including some more behind the scenes about how those cupcakes came into being... and then were rapidly consumed (by me).

  7 o'clock

  8 o'clock

 9 o'clock (welcome home from running a 5K, Daddy!)

 10 o'clock (time for a nap)

 11 o'clock (putting together my new Home Management Binder, more about this in a later post)

 12 o'clock

 1 o'clock (want to share some frosting with me?)

2 o'clock 

 3 o'clock 

 4 o'clock (admiring my baby boy)

5 o'clock (playtime with friends)

 6 o'clock onwards (homemade Indian spice chicken burgers and chocolate cupcakes with friends)

(otherwise known as: I struggle to participate in conversation as I stuff my face with cupcake... s)

Happy Friday, everyone!

last granite of this Sicilian summer

Yesterday my friend Becca commented that our favorite biscotteria in town would stop selling granite (previously mentioned here and here) at the end of the week, so we ought to hie ourselves over there for one last granite date before the end of the summer.

This morning over our cereal I made the mistake of telling Lena that we were going on a walk to get granite with Miss Becca, all exciting buzzwords for my little girl.  She decided she was done with breakfast right then and there.  She ran to get both her shoes and mine.

Since we had awhile to kill before our granite date, Lena and I wandered through our town, enjoying the fresh morning air and taking a few photos of our favorite scenes.  Enjoy!

 street signs on a corner 

& the steep hills of our town

 a book helps when the walks get long 

& how I love my cinquecenti

  parents and grandparents stop for an espresso at the drink kiosk ("chiosco") after dropping their kids off at school 

& I wish I could grow a vine like that over our doorway

 we love Miss Becca! 

& "fragola e limone, per favore" (strawberry and lemon, please)

 all gone! (can you see the faded marks of those horrible mosquito bites on her arms... 3 weeks later?)

& "it's okay when the adults talk because Miss Becca lets me play with her phone"

 We stopped in our town's pet store on the way home to admire lizards & mice...

... and birds & whole buckets full of tiny little turtles!

We love you, Italy.

links I love

Love these beautiful scenes from Martha Stewart's grandchildren's nursery.  Could I please have some of those bright wooden toys for Lena and Baby Boy?

One task at a time.  A lesson in mindfulness.

No more dishwasher?  I can totally relate to this since we don't have a dishwasher here in Italy.  Well... we do, and it's me.

Free stress test.  How do you measure up?

Her thoughts on the quiet calm of Europe made me want to savor every moment of the peace of living in Italy.

Love this slick quiz to see who you side with in the presidential election.

How I would love to use more Ball jars in my kitchen!  But this lovely blogger doesn't have a one-year-old.

Cool reading and study program my friends are doing this year.  I'd like to do it when we live back in the D.C. area.

Just ordered this highly recommended book about parenting.

I love a handmade gift, particularly if it's a knitted one!

Join my book club this month!  Read this book! 

making cupcakes for our little boy

I did absolutely nothing to commemorate the revealing of Lena's gender, so I'm not sure why I decided to make it a big deal this time.  Maybe it was because we really were hoping it was a boy and maybe it was because Elliott said if we end up with three girls then we're adopting a boy.  I know, I know, we only have one girl so far, but I was already feelin' the pressure.

My friend Mary here in Sicily made cupcakes to announce the gender of her baby girl.  I looked for other fun ideas (piñatas filled with blue confetti, opening a box full of blue helium balloons) and finally decided, "Who am I kidding?  I love cake and frosting.  Let's make cupcakes."  Also, our beloved Arthur family was going to come over for playtime, dinner, and dessert that night, and I knew the kids would enjoy eating through sugar to find out if they will have a new boy or girl for a companion sometime next year.

Oh, and one more thing.  Making cupcakes with a 1-year-old is no joke, folks.  There were tantrums, time outs, and more sugar consumed by both of us than I care to mention.  Don't try this at home.

It's a...

And here's the long-promised video, everyone!  We are so thrilled!

I'll post some pictures of the finished cupcakes later today. We put the colored frosting inside them so you could discover the baby's gender when you bit into one. They were quite a hit with some little friends later that evening, too.

Ahhh... aren't you excited?!

something new...

See anything new on this fridge?

This photo is from this week when we had our 19-week ultrasound and found out the gender of our baby!  We are tickled pink (or umm... blue?) around here.  Lena and I spent much of the morning (and some of the afternoon... it's a long process with a little one) baking cupcakes with colored frosting in the middle.  Tonight we're going to bite into the cupcakes with our friends and reveal the gender!

I took a little video of Lena mixing up the colored frosting and "discovering" if she was going to have a baby sister or brother.  Right now I'm just sharing it with the family so they can know first, but I'll post it here on Monday morning!

Any gut feelings from you all if we're having a boy or a girl?  We'd love to hear your guesses!