Archives for November 2008

This picture of Beckett says it all! We had a wonderful day with our friends for Thanksgiving. I am thankful for the great life that we are able to have – family, friends and interesting things to do. We have so much, it is nice to have a day to pause and be thankful for it.

It is hard to believe how big all of the kids are getting. Makenna turned 9 in October and Brandon is 7 and a half. They got to use the good china and glasses for Thanksgiving – big kids now!

Today we are getting ready to go camping for the weekend. We haven’t been out in our travel trailer for a few months and this may be the last time before we move. It is supposed to be a nice weekend at the coast. Thanksgiving one day, and still a whole weekend for camping ahead of us – aren’t we lucky!

From us to all of you, we hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family! We miss being with you on this day. We will be spending it with the Noels, with lots of traditional yumminess all day long! I want to enjoy this day because for the next two years we won’t have the “usual” celebration, and I’ll miss it.

I also wanted to post Brandon’s school picture for this year. I’ll get copies out to family soon.

OK, I feel like I’ve officially completed the cruise, because tonight I finished and ordered our vacation book through blurb.com. My goal was to complete it and get it here before we go to Colorado for Christmas. I used the blurb BookSmart templates for the book inside, but did work some digi-scrapping magic to create the cover. Imagine this as wrapped around the outside of the book:
What I love about scrapbooking is that you get to enjoy the moment as it happens, then you get to relive the moment when you scrapbook it, and then you get to share the moment and relive it again every time to you share the scrapbook. That’s a lot of enjoyment out of one memory!

An Italy update: Today we went up to Portland to get yet another document legalized by the consulate. This time he had to witness my signature on a form we needed for Patrick and Brandon’s visa applications. That is now sent off, along with a signed letter stating that I will leave the country after my assignment is over. We apparently are not allowed to fall in love with the country and stay!

December 16 is the day… our Immigration rep in Italy will meet with the local government on our work permit. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Everything hinges on the work permit. Once we have that we are pretty much home free as I understand it… we can apply for the work visa, go on our house-hunting trip, put the deposit down on Brandon’s school.

That is not very far away! Between Thanksgiving and getting ready for our Colorado trip for the holidays, it will come quickly.

I’m back after two weeks working in Italy! It was a great trip, even though I worked pretty much the whole time, sprained my ankle and backed the rental car into a pole (ok, it was a LOW pole, I couldn’t see it). I spent Saturday at Lake Como (1 hour from Milan) and Sunday in Bergamo (30 minutes from Milan).

I visited two different schools for Brandon and just loved the International School located in Monza. It’s a nice small school, and was a warm, friendly, happy place. That means we’ll be living somewhere around Monza, which is a bit northeast of Milan.