Archive | Sicily

making home in Sicily

December 9, 2011 at 5:25 pm

Elliott shooed me off to the library on base to run some errands, make a blog post, and generally have some alone time. Ahhh. So nice to be able to focus on my computer for more than 5 minutes without worrying about where little mobile Lena is off to next!

I’m so glad to finally be able to share some photos of our home in Sicily. From chaos to… less chaos. Here we go!

Last Wednesday (less than 24 hours after we’d flown back to Sicily), the movers brought our boxes to our new home. We took a lunch break in our kitchen halfway through the day. Thrilled to be moving in at last!

The movers left around 4pm, and they left everything in chaos because they needed to find all “valuable items” (of which we have… like… nothing… but still certain things had been listed). So they unpacked and/or went through every box for us! Where to begin?

Here’s what our bedroom looked like:

And Lena’s room:

Ahhh… take a break to look out the huge kitchen window at that beautiful view.

The next morning we tackled the kitchen. Lena was an eager participant. We have these open shelves in our new kitchen, meaning everything dangerous must be moved out of baby’s reach. She’s pulling herself up and swiping stuff off shelves as quick as she can these days.

But oh… how can you resist that cuteness?

Elliott took a few photos of the view from our balcony:

Another morning in front of the kitchen window. That’s the “gentle giant” Mt Etna smoking in the background.

After a few days, Lena’s room looked better!

Now to tackle all our books. Eventually I shelved them by category and in alphabetical order. Whew.

The washing machine is a new source of fascination.

More beautiful views from the balcony. We’re looking down on a valley and then out towards the Mediterranean. We can hear cow bells as herds graze in the hills or watch shepherds tending their sheep.

The books are shelved, the cardboard boxes are gone, the tubs are filling up with things to put in the garage… it’s beginning to look a little more like home!

6 :: in home sweet home, Lena, moving in, Sicily

making home in Sicily

December 9, 2011 at 4:25 pm

I’m so glad to finally be able to share some photos of our home in Sicily. From chaos to… less chaos. Here we go!

Here’s what our bedroom looked like:

And Lena’s room:

Ahhh… take a break to look out the huge kitchen window at that beautiful view.

But oh… how can you resist that cuteness?

Elliott took a few photos of the view from our balcony:

Another morning in front of the kitchen window. That’s the “gentle giant” Mt Etna smoking in the background.

After a few days, Lena’s room looked better!

Now to tackle all our books. Eventually I shelved them by category and in alphabetical order. Whew.

The washing machine is a new source of fascination.

The books are shelved, the cardboard boxes are gone, the tubs are filling up with things to put in the garage… it’s beginning to look a little more like home!

6 :: in home sweet home, Lena, moving in, Sicily

another little update

December 5, 2011 at 1:37 pm

Well, folks, still no internet in our house! I wish I knew when that would change, but unfortunately there’s some issue with the Italian phone company that would install our internet. And so we wait. Hopefully tomorrow I can bring my laptop onto base and upload some pictures. Still so many good ones to share from Thanksgiving!

We’ve been working so hard on our house and it’s really starting to look more like home. There’s lots of odds and ends and lots of photos/artwork just lying around, so the real settling in will be to organize all those little things. Lena’s adjusting well and adds so much brightness to every day. Right now she’s crawling around the library in little mini jodhpurs, a Nordic-style sweater, and little fur-lined boots. The advantages of discovering a box of baby clothes!

I’ve been knitting busily for my knitting business and am ready to mail a couple big orders. Yesterday I uncovered our Pride and Prejudice DVD (the BBC version, of course) and might have watched about 4 hours of it while knitting a very long and lovely scarf. Photos to come of the completed projects, too!

For those of you who are still faithfully reading, thank you. I hope to be back to regular posting very soon!

6 :: in knitting business, Lena, moving in, Sicily

another little update

December 5, 2011 at 12:37 pm

For those of you who are still faithfully reading, thank you. I hope to be back to regular posting very soon!

4 :: in knitting business, Lena, moving in, Sicily

love from Sicily

December 1, 2011 at 6:49 pm

Well, we’re here! Finally back in sweet Sicily, a lovely land that turned lush and green with autumnal rains in our absence. Right now Elliott and I are in the library on base, enjoying the internet for the first time in 3 days. Lena is crawling around as quickly as she can, smiling at the librarians and other visitors. A couple just walked in that haven’t seen her in 4 months and stopped to marvel at how much she’s grown up.

Four months! It has been 4 months since we first arrived on the island. A month and a half in Sicily, and then two and a half months in the U.S. for Elliott’s training… and now we’re back at last to set up house here.

House. Well, folks, you should see it. It’s chaos right now. We arrived in Sicily on Tuesday, slept for 12.5 hours that night in the hotel (!), and then on Wednesday morning the movers arrived with all our boxes. They brought everything crate by crate (7 in all) to our front door, and each crate was strapped in the back of a little pick-up truck because that was the largest size of car that could make it up the narrow streets of our Italian town to our front door. The entire process took from 9am-4:30pm because of the long lull between when each crate was finished and when the next one arrived. We thought we were all set at about 3pm but then realized we were missing some “valuable items.” The movers insisted we go through every box after that to find the valuable things, and we finally found them after we went through each box the third time. Our house looks like a bomb exploded in it. Gaaaah! But at least we can live in this state for long, so it’s highly motivating for us to get moved in quickly.

Today Elliott and I made a huge dent in organizing our kitchen (the most important room in the house, of course) and it looks so much better. I also met up with friends for a playgroup; it’s so good to see those friendly faces again and get back into the community. We also did a massive grocery shopping trip and–

— sorry, Lena found someone’s hair clip on the library floor and was eating it. Gross. Rescued.

Anyway, life is up in the air right now. We have no internet yet, which is why we’re at the library at 5:45pm. I also have no cell phone, but that should change soon, we hope. But we can see shepherds herding sheep on the hills from our bathroom window, and we heard a distant cock crow this morning as we woke up with the sunrise streaming into our bedroom. I can watch horses graze and Mt Etna smoke gently from my enormous kitchen window. We really are living in Italy. It’s a dream. It’s happening!