Archive | family

Good morning from Florence!

March 11, 2014 at 9:05 am

Gil and Lena holding hands as their aunts (Jess and Emily) carry them through Florence!

It’s a beautiful morning here in Firenze (Florence), and my sleeping babies might actually let me finish this blog post! I thought I’d share a few photos from our first couple of days of vacation together. My parents, sister Emily, and sister-in-law Jess are here with Elliott, Lena, Gil, and me… a huge treat for all of us!

We’re totally in love with this city by now, and I just want to move to Florence. The beauty, the architecture, the history, the people, the bicycles, the river, the views, the countryside, the food… sign me up! I’ve been posting photos on Instagram, if you’d like to follow along for more frequent updates.

Here are a few photos of our apartment, which totally exceeded our expectations for location and beauty:

On Sunday morning, our first full day here, my mom and the kids and I were up hours before everyone else. We took a walk through the city in the early morning while the street sweepers were still at work:

View of the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge filled with jewelry shops) as seen from right outside our apartment.

Weird angle of some happy early-morning walkers!

Later we took a walking tour of Florence together, which was rather long (3.5 hours) for all of us, not to mention for our 2- and 1-year-old! The kids kept us laughing and entertained, though, even as the tour guide droned on… and on… and on…

This photo made me laugh. Basically this is how Elliott and I “listened” to the entire tour: with two kids jumping off of us.

We got to see the traditional Sunday morning parade through the old city. It reminded us of our Sicilian town’s medieval festival every August!

Old and young.

A tired tourist snuggles with her mama.

This happy guy wanted to do nothing but walk walk walk, this time with the assistance of “Auntie Ema.”

The famous Santa Maria delle Fiore, Florence’s main cathedral. I read a whole book about how the dome was built, so it was thrilling to see it in person!

Elliott and Lena talking together in the huge Duomo (cathedral) on his birthday. Happy 33rd, dear Elliott!

I love these last two photos: Lena jumping in the Palazzo Vecchio, and Lena and Gil with my dad in the Duomo. I’ve been reading books about the history and architecture of Florence in order to prepare me for our visit, and now to see my family in all these beautiful places is such a gift!

I’m grateful for this season of our lives: happy little children, living in Italy, a whole week with family. I’m also praying that the rest of the trip goes as well as the first part has… can anyone relate to that prayer?!

P.S. If you’ve been to Florence, I’d love to hear recommendations for favorite eateries, views, sights, and surrounding towns to visit!

15 :: in family, Florence, Italy, travel

a weekend in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily

January 22, 2014 at 4:07 pm

We took this trip over a month ago, but somehow in the rush of Christmas and the new year, I haven’t had a chance to post the photos yet! Our weekend trip to the mountains was so beautiful, though, and we had a wonderful time with my mom, who was visiting for 10 days. I literally found my new favorite place in Sicily and really hope we get a chance to go back!

The Madonie Mountains are in north-central Sicily, and they are particularly famous for the beautiful hilltop mountain towns (like the one in the first photo). I was reading The Stone Boudoir, a memoir about Sicily’s mountain towns including several in the Madonie Mountains. The hills literally were alive for me that weekend as I absorbed vistas, streets, and foods in real life and through the pages of my book.

We stayed in an agriturismo (farm stay) because we wanted to enjoy the fruits of the region. The Slow Food movement originated nearby, and our host proudly told us that all but a few of the things we ate were from “kilometer zero,” or were harvested/gathered 0 kilometers away. We loved that agriturismo, and so if you visit, be sure to check out Casale Magherita.

A little fall foliage in December!

We also visited one of the five most famous mountain towns in the region. This one was called Castelbuono and is the largest of the five. We explored the castle, wandered through the streets, and ate an amazing lunch at Ristorante Palazzaccio.

View of Castelbuono from its castle.

Lena and my mom admiring a huge presepe (Nativity scene).

I really liked all the clean laundry, I guess…

We sampled traditional Christmas sweet bread (panetonne) with a spread made from manna, the dried sap of the ash tree for which the region is also famous.

Salute! Cheers!

Even more wonderful (and challenging) than visiting a mountain town with two small children was an incredible and verrrrry long hike we took during our visit with an Italian outdoors group. Photos from the hike coming soon!

7 :: in agriturismo, family, Italy, pretty places, Sicily, travel

our last Christmas in Sicily

December 26, 2013 at 4:54 pm

Christmas Eve

Honestly, it gives me some joy to say “our last” here because we love and miss our family so much! You know how wonderful it is to be with all your loved ones for the holidays. We sent heaps of emails and spent hours video chatting with our family on Christmas Day, but it still isn’t the same as sitting around the dinner table or going to the candlelight service or enjoying Christmas morning together.

Therefore, in answer to my family’s requests that they see as much of our Christmas as I can, I took photos all day long! I know they’re going to love seeing them here. Elliott and I knew our children were getting gifts from their grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, so we chose to keep things very simple and just gave them each a Sicilian Christmas ornament. We also spent our Christmas cooking, reading by the fire, and going on a wonderful hike into the valley below our house.

Here are a few photos from our Christmas!

Elliott has been tending fires in our fireplace almost every day that he’s home this winter. He often banks the fire at night and coaxes the still-warm coals to life in the morning. I totally love this about him.

Gil’s up and the fire’s lit, so Lena is choosing the first present to open!

Love how Gil is admiring Lena’s new-found destructive tendencies here. “Get it, sista.”

Reading the letters on the package before opening it up.

New books from Marmee and Grampa! My favorite is Extra Yarn, a beautifully illustrated picture book about a girl who knits and knits… so you know the knitter in me just loves it!

Speaking of knitting, this was my favorite present: a set of interchangeable knitting needles that I’ve been dreaming about for a year. Elliott and the kids, meanwhile, enjoy his new bath pillow. This man and his baths!

Thank you, GG and Great-Grampie!

The members of the nativity quake in their sandals once again…

Lena’s new lacing cards from Auntie Eden and Uncle Charlie were an immediate hit. I love to see her being crafty…

… so we’ll work on technique later!

He melts my heart about 492 times a day.

OK, 493 times a day!

While Gil napped, Lena and I made cinnamon rolls. I used Elliott’s mom’s recipe at his request, and thankfully they turned out fairly similar to the Christmas morning breakfast he grew up loving. As of 3pm on Dec 26th, all 25 rolls have been eaten, so I guess he liked them!

Taking a break to read some of our new books by the fireplace. While they read, I was enjoying this cookbook… just as delicious as it looks.

When Gil woke up from his morning nap, we took a walk into town, where we found our town’s nativity scene. Maybe it was made by local school children? The sign says, “Christ is born for us. Come, let us adore.”

We hiked down into the valley and came across our farmer friend’s dogs. They’re all so sweet… and there are so many of them…

Picnic lunch.

Our children and our Sicilian town on Christmas Day.

We returned home to video chat with family (which was unfortunately right after the kids’ naps and they cried the whole time… sigh) and open a few more more presents. Gil eats wrapping paper as Lena plays her current favorite game while wearing my new Weekender bag like a “packpack”: “So… I’m gonna go to fool [school]. I gotta catch da bus. Oh no… da pigeon is driving da bus!!!”

She completely fell in love with this learning game from Auntie Em while I made our Christmas dinner.

And our Christmas dinner was the infamous lamb, of course. Elliott declared it “a triumph, my dear”… whew! I had a harder time eating the lamb that I’d expected. There were not very many steps in between seeing that lamb hanging in the butcher shop and eating it myself!

We burned slim beeswax candles that we bought three Christmases ago in Jerusalem; we met there for our first married Christmas when Elliott was on a yearlong solo assignment in Egypt. So much to be thankful for this Christmas, including the fact that we are together, even if our extended family is far away.

After the kids were in bed, Elliott and I spent awhile reading the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke and praying by the fire. I have been thinking a great deal this Advent season about how Jesus became poor, humbling himself to a fragile human embryo, a messy birth process, a cold and rustic world. For us these days, Christmas is all about comfort — family, gifts, food, firelight — but there was very little comfort that first Christmas. I am so grateful for the sacrifice Jesus made so that we have both immediate and eternal comfort to enjoy.

What are you most grateful for this Christmas?

14 :: in family, hiking, holidays, home sweet home, Sicily

thankful & content

December 12, 2013 at 2:47 pm

Elliott took these photos from our balcony. Oh Sicily. Doesn’t this view just give your soul peace?

The houses in the valley right below ours are sometimes pretty to look at — that is, they contribute to that feeling of peace — and sometimes their dogs just bark too much and we would rather live anywhere else. Or the wood chopper hammers away right below us and we wish we’d known about these things before we moved in.

But most of the time we draw a deep breath and thank God for a view like this. What kind of view will we be looking at next winter? We have no idea. I do hope there’s snow in it, though!

A couple of Sunday afternoons ago, we took a family hike down into the valley below our house. We followed the stream (or sewer drainage, for either term would be correct) through the lowest part of the valley until we reached a farmer’s orange groves.

That little yellow house on the very far right corner of the cliff is our house! It looks so tiny and unimportant from down in the valley. But think of all the memories we’ve made in it! Christmases, birthdays, holidays, visitors, bringing Gil home from the hospital, bringing Siena home to live with us, fights and time-outs and tears and kisses. I love that little yellow house.

And I love this beautiful baby. There’s just nothing so cute to me as his beautiful blond curls, which grow thicker and longer and crazier by the day! Even when I tuck them under a hat to keep his ears warm, a few curls escape, and he looks more cherubic than ever.

The sun was setting behind the ridge, silhouetting a few of the apartment buildings in our town.

We made it to the orange grove! I am pretty strict about us not picking oranges from the trees because that seems like blatant stealing… even though I know the farmer would probably pick us a basketful for free if he saw us there. (Such is the generosity of every farmer we’ve ever met here!) As we’ve never met this farmer, we find fallen oranges in the lush green grass under the trees and then eat and eat and eat until we’ve had our fill.

Before I moved to Sicily, I could take or leave oranges. They were great, but not my fave. Now, though, because of the memories laced with the sweetness, fresh oranges are one of my most favorite things in the world.

On the way home, a group of horsemen rode down the hills, across the ridge, and right past us. We watched them, mesmerized. Elliott and I have both ridden a lot in our lives — Elliott mostly when he worked on a ranch in California, me mostly in India and Pakistan as a teenager — and we were gripped with the memories: the tug of leather reins in our hands, the rock of our hips in the saddle, the communicative touch of our heels into our horse’s side, even the automatic shift in our center of gravity to respond to excited rearing. I felt it all again in a moment, in a heady rush that left me breathless.

I was struck by another more sobering emotion, too. Now a horse’s back looks far more dangerous than it ever did before. Now — when I look at the little faces of my children looking up at me — my head feels so much more fragile, the saddle so much farther from the ground. I realized with a touch of sadness that I’ll never ride again like I used to, with the joyful abandon of a girl madly in love with horses, heedless of her own safety. In high school my instructor would say, “Do you want to jump?” and I’d say, “How high?”

But today, well… at least for today, I am content to keep two feet on the ground and two arms around the ones I love. Maybe later Elliott and I will teach Lena and Gil how to ride, or we’ll have a pony of our own*, or we’ll watch Lena jump the jumps that I once jumped.

But that Sunday afternoon, I was content. Content to watch. Content to eat a fallen orange. Content to walk home to our little yellow house on the cliff, tuck my babies into bed, kiss the one I love. So very thankful and so very content.

*And I’ve already chosen a name: Mary Poppins!

Are there things you once did that you’ll never do again?

5 :: in family, hiking, home sweet home, thoughts

my family & the butterflies

November 21, 2013 at 4:08 pm

Ever since the kids and I visited the Casa delle Farfalle (House of the Butterflies) in the spring, Elliott been wanting to go too. We finally got our act together and went for a picnic lunch one weekend after church. I’m so glad we went on the weekend because the park was packed with Italian families grilling out, picnicking, and kicking soccer balls around, and we felt like we were truly experiencing an Italian Sunday afternoon. The butterfly house wasn’t that bad either!

In addition to butterflies, the tropical garden included several crazy insects. That stick insect and that millipede are the biggest I’ve ever seen!

Look at Gil’s face!

The butterfly house also includes a few rooms dedicated to the history of the Silk Road. It was fascinating to see live silk moths and realize what a tedious process it is to extract the silk from their cocoons… even in the 21st century.