The Day He Turned 37...

 happy birthday mr.

 we celebrated joey's birthday for days...it was that kind of weekend.  on saturday, you saw the post from joey but I'll give you just two more;).  we hiked and explored and picked asparagus until we couldn't wipe the grin off our face.

 it was a magical day:

 on sunday, the actual day we headed up into the mountains for lunch at a a cheese farm way up at the top.  our italian friends deemed it a family favorite: malgo di coda del bosco.  the food was rich, heavy and cheese laden.

 megan and greg joined us

 after lunch the rest of the crew came over for cake and games outside

 the guys played petanque, a game they learned together in france and haven't stopped talking about it since.  i'm sure we'll introduce you before too long.  it's a great yard game. (what am I saying, i've never played it...!!  but the guys sure seem to like it!)

 here's joey being goofy with his cake.  our friend ben, next to joey, came straight over, immediately after getting off a flight from the US.  crazy!!

i can't believe i sleep next to a 37 year old.  it's weird.  

the best part of joey's birthday, in my opinion, was this sweet letter from georgie, who wrote this days before his big day and stashed it safely in her room in a private drawer until she could give it to him (spelling errors included, so you can see how the Italian is effecting her;):

My Dad (star, heart)

My dad is the best.  Wene my sister get's hurt he cams (calms) her down like magic.  He never get's to mad (but sum tims he dos a litel bit)

I luve him like crazy.  He is funny to, he dos scary things but today is the best day cuse (the e has a tag over it like in Italian;)  it is his BIRTHDAY!!!

(heart) yor Georgie

p.s.  You ar the best dad in the hol world if I had to choose any other dad's i wudent choose enie cus you are the best.

(A picture of she and Joey)

This letter brought them both to tears.  He bent down and hugged her for 2 whole minutes, at least, and when they both stood up (so cute!!) they both had little wells of tears in their eyes.  xoxoxoxox!!

Love you guys!

xoxo

Asparagi selvaggi

Early spring is when the wild asparagus is in season around here. Last year Ashley had picked a few stalks but this year we decided to go all out. Right behind our house is a hill literally covered with wild asparagus bushes so we didn't have to go far. As an added bonus, we got to watch Yorba and Verna, Greg and Megan's dogs, as well as Ava, the McDowell's German Shepherd puppy.

Ava obviously thinks that Juliet is crazy. Georgie is holding a handful of the asparagus shoots. The small, dark green bushes in the background are wild asparagus.

So cute how much our kids love these dogs. After we dropped them off Isaac pouted in the car for a few minutes saying, "I want to keep those dogs!"

Here is a video of Georgie explaining the ins & outs of wild asparagus hunting:

As we continued to explore the hill behind our house we found a clearing with trees planted in neat rows and ground cover in between, including beautiful blue flowers that reminded us of Texas bluebells.

After coming down off the hill we crossed the highway and followed a dirt road up to the top of another hill where there is a large vineyard. The owners have a couple of bee boxes that the kids were very interested in. The bees flew all around us but were very calm and didn't seem threatening at all.

Here are the kids with Verna and Ava in front of the main part of the vineyard. Not sure if they are red or white wine grapes but the owners no longer make their own wine and instead sell the grapes to other wine makers.

We meandered back home to play fetch with the dogs and the girls decided to climb the pear tree. Juliet is very independent and gets upset when I try to help or spot her.

Georgie likes to show off just how high up she can get. This poor tree has a fungus growing on the bark, which you can see as white patches all over the place. Last year it produced over 250 pears but they were hard, inedible, and nearly every single one was infested with worms and bugs. Not sure what we need to do to turn this thing into a productive asset. Same with our apple tree. But I do have high hopes for our walnut and fig trees this year.

It was a fantastic afternoon. I really enjoyed the wild asparagus hunting and would like to have asparagus bushes as part of a productive food forest on our future property. We ended up with two colanders full and ate half of them for dinner. We'll have the rest tomorrow morning in some omelets and then share some with our guests tomorrow afternoon for a small party. Somebody around here is getting old.

Sirmione with the Alcocers and Joneses

In late March our great friends the Alcocer family came to visit. Nick and Tanya are both from Upstate New York ("Oop-state!") and we met them in Altus in the summer of 2011. They have five kids, all of whom came with them on this trip: Trinity, who turned 18 while here, Arianna 10, Andres 8, Alyska 5, and Athan 3. They drove the 25 hours from Altus to Baltimore, flew on the worse-than-coach-on-domestic-flights rotator both ways, then drove the same 25 hours in reverse back to the dust bowl. And Nick didn't commit even one homicide the whole time!

They stayed with the Jones family and went with them to Verona on Friday morning. We joined up in Verona later than night and then all headed to an Agriturismo near Lake Garda. Amazingly, breakfast in their rather fancy and glass-item-filled restaurant went quite well despite having six adults, a teenager, and eleven children between the ages of two and ten. We did get kicked off their brightly green lawn for committing the unforgivable sin of playing soccer on their grass and were directed instead to the concrete sports slab. Europeans are so bizarre.

That Saturday was all about Sirmione, a medieval island village that is at the north end of the peninsula that divides the southern portion of Lake Garda in half and makes it look like...well, you know.

The Italians get a huge kick out of the shape and the fact that Garda is the biggest lake in Italy. Although I think he's got a tumor on the left side, he should get that checked out.

Here is most of the crew: Nick, Juliet, Georgie, Samantha, Tanya, Aly, Ari, Athan, Isaac, Andres, Payton, Landon, Angela, and Jacqueline. This is the Sirmione castle that was built in 1277, exactly 700 years before I was born. The large vertical gaps in the wall above Nick's head are part of the drawbridge that separated the castle & island from the peninsula and mainland.

Inside the castle Jubie is showing off her core strength.

Here are Tann and Juliet with a modern reproduction of what the drawbridges looked like.

I can't quite remember what Georgie, Samantha, and Aly are going for here. Nice navel, Gigi.

The boys are very interested in all the sundry items that have fallen between the cracks: shoes, toys, trash, etc. Nice face, Isaac.

Georgie just hanging out on the mini pedestrian drawbridge support structure. Tann put her up there and I probably yelled at her to get down.

Here is Nick putting Jubie up to copy her sister. He really is a better dad than me.

But Andres took the cake with this daring climb up the chain.

We walked through the town, along the beach, and out to the end of the peninsula where there are ruins of a Roman villa and an olive orchard. We watched the Alcocer kids while Nick and Tanya toured the ruins. I entertained them by having them work on building olive wreaths.

Doing my best Caesar impression.

Tann tried to help me attach it together up front but to no avail.

We then had dinner outside at a great pizza place in the middle of town. The big kids sat together while I sat with the medium kids and entertained them with the silent game. Landon and Aly held out for about 15 minutes (!) until Aly final broke down crying to her mom, "I don't want to play the silent game anymore!" Landon was the champion. Juliet was out before the game began. That girl can talk.

The big kids loved having their own table. They told jokes and played games and were very well behaved.

We finished the evening off with gelato (of course) and then headed back home. At the Jones' house had a light evening snack of various Italian cheeses and balsamic vinegar garnishes. We established that Nick, Tann, and I cannot tell the difference between European and American Coke, but that Angela can tell the difference between expensive and cheap balsamic vinegar.

We have had several Altus reunions here in Italy now. The Joneses, the Keuhnes, the De La Torres, the Edstroms, and now the Alcocers. We are still waiting on the Alleys, the Bahrs, the Binghams, the Harters, the Lillys, the Mumfords, the Linders, the Dawoods, Ruth, and anyone else that would like to reminisce about Oklahoma while enjoying the magic of Italy.