Archives for December 2008

That song is stuck in my head! We got to my sister’s house in Carbondale last night, had a great dinner, and watched the movie Xanadu after the kids were in bed. If you don’t know what movie I’m talking about, you missed a great 80’s movie – complete with feathered hair, legwarmers and roller skating! It stars Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly of all people. The scary part is I haven’t seen it in over 20 years yet I knew the chorus of every song. Such memories. 🙂

On our way up to Laurie’s we stopped to visit some old friends that now live in Fairplay. Their son Aiden is just a couple of months older than Brandon and they had a great time playing Legos together while we talked. It has been fun to visit with old friends – I’m bummed we didn’t have enough time to visit my friends in Denver!

We are enjoying the sunny but cold weather here in Colorado. Today Patrick and I are getting caught up on our Italian homework and I checked on my work email. We have decided to postpone the preview trip to Italy until the work permit is approved. If we go now, we can’t sign a lease on an apartment so it really doesn’t make sense to go look at apartments for a week. We’d probably find something we love and then it would be gone by the the time the work permit is approved.

So, we are still in limbo. Now we are starting to talk about all of the things that we will do if we don’t go to Italy… kind of like a consolation prize. We already wanted to re-do our family room… plan a trip to Europe instead… etc. Something to look forward to if there is disappointing news and our work permit is cancelled.

Merry Christmas to all! We are having a great time here in Colorado. We had a safe and pretty clear road trip out here, we drove south through California and then over on I-80. 500 miles longer but very little snow, so it worked out well. Now we are enjoying the sunny (but cold) weather in Colorado.

Tasha is getting used to her new home, getting along well with Rizzo (her 5 year old golden retriever “cousin”) and getting lots of love from her new family. She’s even going up and down the stairs, which she has some trouble with at her advanced age.

A quick update on the work permit… delays continue. There are still complications with the approval by the Italian immigration authorities in Milan. There is some additional paperwork they would like to see, but with the shutdown at work and the holiday closures in Italy, nothing will happen until January. Even then, it may take a while to get the paperwork together. We aren’t sure that we will be able to go on our house-hunting trip in early January because of the delays, so things are really up in the air at the moment.

It’s a weird situation to be in this limbo. It feels like a real possibility that the Italian government might say No, which I hadn’t really believed could happen before. The people helping with our immigration approval in Italy are working really hard to not let that happen, but we don’t really know at this point. What a bummer that would be. But, until we have an answer one way or another, we keep waiting…

OK, just in terms of Christmas decorations. We took them all down today and packed them away because we are leaving tomorrow for Colorado and our cat Stevie likes to chew on them, play with them and generally cannot be trusted alone for any length of time with them. We were worried we would come back to:
a) A house full of cat puke because Stevie likes to chew on the artificial tree and then will get sick.
b) A Christmas tree on it’s side because Stevie decided to play with the tree
c) Random ornaments everywhere because Stevie figured out how to knock them off and chase them around.

Really, he is a good cat. Christmas is just such a hard time for a cat… so many things to play with…
(Pic of Stevie today, hanging out under the Christmas tree.)

We’ve been having all of this unusually snowy weather – three snow days for Brandon this week! It hasn’t been a lot of snow but we don’t have snow plows here and it keeps warming up during the day, melting and then freezing into ice. Combine that with a bunch of people who don’t know how to drive in snow and ice, and well, you have some hazardous conditions.

Anyway, this morning was GORGEOUS. I used my new little “always with me” camera and went for a little walk at work to take some pictures. The snow was amazing, the morning light was amazing. You can see the results in this album.

Today was the traditional half day at work before the holiday. I am now on TWO WEEKS of vacation from work. Woohoo! This is a much needed break. No news on the work permit front, hopefully I’ll hear something soon!

Here’s another fun picture of a snowy Brandon this morning. Also check out the “ElfYourself” greeting Patrick created. We laugh every time we watch it!

PS – I changed the comment settings so that it is hopefully easier to leave comments. Let me know if this helps!

I didn’t have anything new to write about today, so I was looking for a Christmas-y picture to post and ran across this one I took of our dog, Tasha, last year at Christmas. She’s been the best dog! We got her at six weeks old in October 1996, so she’s 12 years old now. She is the dog that everyone loves – so sweet and calm, wonderful with kids. We are taking her to Colorado to live with Patrick’s sister while we are in Italy. We are so happy that she has a place to live with people who want her, and another golden to keep her “young” and active. We will miss her a ton though! The house is going to feel empty without her here to greet us or snuggle up with us.

So, we didn’t get rejected for the work permit but… we didn’t get it either. There are some complications that the folks in Italy helping with the application are trying to work through. The fact that we are employees of one company but will be working on another company’s site is apparently a problem. There was some additional documentation that our company had to provide and then they have another appointment on Friday. If I’ve learned anything after Tuesday, it’s don’t plan on a date for this stuff!

I liken it to when I was pregnant with Brandon… I didn’t realize until my due date passed how much I was looking forward to that date. And it was such a letdown when it came and went with nothing. But everything came out all right (no pun intended) then and it will now, just have to wait. And learn Italian.