This is a little something I made for my sister with a picture from Christmas. First thing I’ve created in a while. I don’t think she reads my blog, but if she does – Surpise! 🙂

… when we had another hiccup in the project I’ve been working on, I was kind of grumpy.

But then I found out that my cousin’s 3 year old son, who has been in the midst of chemo for the last year, has a new tumor on his brain stem. After the battle they have had this year, I can’t even imagine how my cousin and his wife are surviving right now.

And then I came home and found out that Patrick’s uncle had a stroke today, and he is now on life support. Patrick’s parents are going back to Wisconsin as soon as they can to support his aunt.

So, my day wasn’t bad at all, when you put it into perspective. What was I thinking by being grumpy over it? Mine was just a silly little work problem!

There is no news on the Italy front. There is work going on to get the documentation that we need but it is all up in the air. Our trip that was planned for next week is definitely cancelled – I was holding out a tiny sliver of hope that we could shake things up at work with the documentation once we got back but there’s just no possible way to pull it off this week.

I had a hair cut appointment tonight and made another one 6 weeks out… I keeping thinking maybe I’ll have to cancel the next appointment but no such luck. 🙂

It sounds like Tasha is doing well in Colorado with Heather and family. She has become attached to Heather. That is good to hear! We miss her. Here’s a pic of Stevie I took on Sunday to play around with my camera download settings, isn’t he a pretty kitty?

Finally home and tired of road trips! These last two weeks went very quickly. We had a great time visiting the family. It was relaxing… I read a few books, ate waaaay too much, and still kept up with my Italian lessons. Today we are just doing the usual post-trip laundry and organizing, tomorrow it’s back to school and work. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the trip!

Christmas Eve with Patrick’s parents and sister Brooke’s family

Cousins on Christmas morning – Brandon and Dylan

Christmas morning – Me & all my scarves Heather made for me!

A teary Brandon saying goodbye to Tasha – she stayed in Colorado.

Me & my sister Laurie

Brandon built a snow tunnel

Brandon with cousins Logan and Josh

Brandon was soooo happy to see his Uncle Ryan – it’s been a while!

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…