Goodnight 6 year old Georgie

I just kissed my 6 year old Georgie goodnight for the last time.  I hugged her so tight and she hugged tight back...things were going well.  I decided to pick her up because she might be too heavy tomorrow She wrapped her now long legs around me and snuggled into my neck.  I started to cry but decided not to mush things up for her so I took a deep breath and immediately noticed that she was sniffling.  "Are you crying?" I asked her.  "Yes," she said, "I'm just so sad that I lost my Biddy Baby!"  And her tears flowed a little harder.   That just made me smile because I had thought she was crying for the love of me!! It's a good thing one of us is tough.

In all seriousness though, even though everybody says it, I'm going to say it too.  I can't believe my little girl is turning 7.  She is growing up and it is blowing my mind.  A little bit about Georgie is that while sometimes you wish she would not be so silly and light minded, other times, in more quite moments, she seems quite grown up.  She can be so mindful of others feelings (things you'd never expect her to pick up on) and so emotionally complicated herself.  There are deep feelings going on in that beautiful blonde head of hers that she almost never lets out.  She keeps a lot to herself (the emotional stuff) and almost always only says the nice, positive things.  Every once in a while she lets you in and you wonder how much more of 'that' is going on throughout the day and how much she is just trying to say what you want her to say.  As her mother I wonder how much I should be doing to pull her out and how much I should let her find her own way in life.  It's a hard job...not specifically being her mother but parenting in general.  No one's there to tell you how you're doing, what they need more of and what you're mucking up.

On a more lighthearted note: At 6 years old Georgie loves to be outside.  When she grows up she wants to live on a farm and run an orphanage.  When ever I am doing any yard work she is right by my side, ready to cut out old branches, dig out disgusting grubs, remove old rusty trash that's been piled up in our backyard, clear land, plant seeds and even clean out chicken poo (our newest adventure).

 Since we've bought the chickens she is outside with them first thing in the morning to let them out and immediately after school to hold them, play with them and wonder around their little part of the yard.  She loves playing with Isaac and Juliet more than anyone else and appreciates immensely any time that Juliet wants her or needs her.   She doesn't care too much for school work:) and still prefers me to read her a story than reading one herself (she loves sitting in our laps...Georgie is a cuddler)  and she's rarely the first one to finish her chores, she can't stop herself from playing and talking to herself all along the way.  She isn't intimidated by others and is always very genuine in her behaviors toward both her friends and adults.  Our neighbor was out hunting snails in our yard yesterday morning and Georgie walked right up to her and asked her what she was doing.  They walked around the yard together and chatted in Italian about who knows what.  She spent that afternoon in rain boots and her apron hunting more snails for Bruna.  She found a small bucketful and marched across the street to deliver them.  She does all of this in a quiet, unassuming, unpretentious way, never putting on any shows.  She is real.   She also loves to be in the kitchen with me.  She's taken to making our salads for us whenever she isnt' busy after school.  Like her dad, she prefers them with lots of vinegar!  She is well versed in the ways of different lettuces and vinegars and she LOVES 24 months aged Parmesano-Reggiano Cheese.  She also loves a good feta and a creamy goat cheese for spreading on crackers.  She loves riding her bike while I run and we stop to throw rocks in the river and explore all the little shores on the way.  She's taken to saying that she never wants to leave Italy but I have a feeling she'll be ready to be back in the USA in 3 years.  She misses family.  

For her birthday today we made her breakfast in bed.   My favorite part was this:

Georgies name spelled out with legos, made, of course, by Isaac!!  He's been REALLY 

thoughtful of her all weekend.  

We had a jump castle rented for their party and they spent the morning jumping on it and playing with the chickens while we prepared for their party.  I love this photo:

Isn't she so cute!!!

Hey there Georgie girl!!!

 

I love you, we love you, love, love, love, amore, e un bacio!!

10 Years of Wedded Bliss

 This picture says it all. Ashley and I went out to eat in Venice last night to celebrate our 10th Anniversary. It was perfect. We kept smiling at each other and repeating how fantastic it was and how ecstatic we are to be living in northern Italy at this point in our lives. I may not be a perfect husband, but this is where we celebrated 10 years of marriage together. Not too shabby.

Some people don't like Venice. The water is brown and smells bad, and there seems to be graffiti everywhere. We had a hard time in Venice with the kids in July, negotiating crowds under the sweltering heat and carrying a stroller over the bridges. But this time was sublime. The weather was perfect and the decaying elegance of backstreets-Venezia won us over again.

Here is Ashley attacking a vegetarian risotto like una leonessa veneziana. Or more like una daina friulana, since we don't eat meat anymore. Now is as good a time as ever to get on my plant-based soapbox. It started for environmental reasons, was buttressed by health benefits (shout out to Adam & Michelle Garff), and has been cemented by ethical issues dealing with animal husbandry. Highly recommend "The Ethics of What We Eat" by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. All right, I'm off now. Back to the magic.

 Ashley's potato & cheese cake with sauteed vegetables. I made the "oh" face from "Office Space" when I tasted it.

We meandered back to the train station by way of the Accademia, the Rialto, and the Ca' d'Oro. Here we are at the top of Rialto looking out over the Grand Canal. We have gone out on dates since arriving in Italy last summer, but none like this one. I was reminded of just how much I adore this woman that has stuck with me through the worst of med school, the sleep deprivation of residency, four years in the convection oven that is SW Oklahoma, a massive upheaval of foundational beliefs, the biggest financial blunder of my life (to this point, anyway), three children, three moves, a new language, and the "Merback gastrointestinal affliction," shall we say. She is my everything, and I am trying my best to show her that everyday. Here's to another 10. May they be as wonderful as the first were. Brindisi!

Pasquetta and A Winner!!

We went to a town festival today up in the mountains. It was beautiful, perfect weather and yet another Italian cultural experience which is always cool. Most of the kids friends were there from school so they all ran around, hiding in the woods, playing chase, yelling at each other in Italian, ringing the bell of the tiny church perched in top of the hill where the festival took place while the adults sat around at picnic tables eating Polenta, grilled meats and French Fries. The old ladies (and Georgie and I) hunted asparagus growing wild beneath thorn bushes hidden all around us. There was a coloring contest and Georgie won for her class! She was so surprised;). And her picture was really beautiful. Our friends came along with us, and we all hiked to the festival with half the town who met in the town center. We stopped at a dairy farm on our way up and visited an ancient style bird trap that a certain local family has kept up purely for historical purposes for hundreds of years. The poor people of that time used it to trap birds for Food.

Top of His Class

Top of His Class:

We had parent teacher conference with Isaacs teachers yesterday.  Isaac was given rave reviews in all subjects, including Italian!  The teachers said with huge grins on their faces that he was doing magnifique, one of the best in his class even while only speaking the language for a few months.  HIs handwriting is BEAUTIFUL (a big deal here...I'll post pictures), his test scores are near perfect every time and all of this done in a second language!  We are so proud of you Isaac!  Keep it up dudey!!

xoxo

Mom

Paris

Paris was really amazing...

even in freezing weather and gray skies. 

 I can only imagine what it would have been like if we'd gone in June

...and kind of wishing that we had. 

Notre Dame

The kids enjoyed the stories about the history of the church.  The coolest one is about the row of priests wearing crowns that you see in statues above the kids heads.  During the revolution the revolutionaries believed these statues to be of the royalty/kings of France.  To show their disdain for royalty the chopped off all of the statues heads and left them there in front of the church.  A local teacher saw the heads there and buried them in his back yard.  In the 70's they were found by someone who came along to renovate the house/yard that they were buried in.  

Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

  This is a famous English bookstore in Paris.  

It was the hangout of Ernest Hemingway and a few other 

famous English writers of his time.  

True Story:5
30 minutes before taking this photo I discovered that I had left my wallet on the train with $400, all my credit cards, ID, Georgie's passport inside and on and on and on.  We were completely sick as you can imagine and I felt, once again, like the biggest idiot to grace this green earth.  I reported it to officials in the train station, gave them my cell phone number and the address of our apartment, canceled my credit cards, hoped for the best but settled into the worst that, at best, I would get it back in the mail from the US consulate 6 months later with the money completely gone.  

Here we are at Versailles
And on with the story:

I was told to report the loss to a city police as well so the next morning I tracked down the police station closest to our apartment and walked over there to make a report.  As I range the bell and attempted to tell them that I didn't speak French my cell phone rang.  It was a French number.  I answered, "Bon jour,"  "Ahhh, yes!" the voice replied in al french accent, "Is this Ashley?  Are you still in Paris?"   I began to get excited, "Yes I am and this is..."  "I have your wallet!" the voice replied!  "I found it on the train and I must be the first one to find it because all the money is still there, it is fine and I have been searching and searching for you!"

This beautiful soul had searched facebook for my name, contacted my friends, sent me emails (that I never received somehow), searched my wallet and called every phone number that she found written in there (there were three) and one just happened to be mine.   We had planned to go to Versailles the next day and this kind womanm just happened to lived two stops on the metro away from Versailles...how positively providential!  She met us that morning (she also happened to be out of work that day!!  ha!!) at the train station and as we approached her, with a huge grin, she said, "I recognize you and you and you, " pointing to all of us.  She had seen all our pictures on Facebook (I thought I was private...ha!) I kissed her cheeks and thanked her profusely.  I am still looking for the perfect gift to send to this generous, honest woman!  Any ideas?

Across from our apartment was this awesome park:

Park Belleville

Which was quite convenient for the kids.

This photo was taken just outside of the Louvre,
 the most "Paris as you imagine it" area of Paris, we thought:

We loved the Louvre but it only made Joey and I more excited to visit the Orsay (French 20th century art)  and, for me to visit the Pompidou (modern art) both of which we never made it to.  Even if you're not an art buff, art museums are still so very interesting. I guess we have to go back!!

Juliet is posing in front of a real, live, (no wait...dead) mummy.  Joey took the kids to see this stuff while I toured some of the Louvre by myself.  Then I took the kids to the gift shop to spend their allowance and to eat some lunch in the gardens while he toured the museum.  Its pretty necessary to do the bulk of an art gallery sans kiddos;)

French history is intense (but I thought that about Budapest and Germany/Austria too...all history is intense I guess.  People do crazy things)  This was the exact spot where Marie Antoinette was beheaded after three years of imprisonment.

Our rays of sunshine, The Kuehne family met up with us for our last three days in Paris.   We're grinning from ear to ear in this photo because we had just walked out from our table at the Hippopotamus restaurant (the Chilis of France and one of the only places said to be kid friendly in Paris) for this place, Chez something or other (recommended by Bryant!!, Thanks Bryant!) to eat a good, authentic Croque Monsieur.  They sat us at Hippopatamus, we looked at the menu, didn't like it and then snuck out two by two to find something better and no one even noticed us!  But don't worry, we left a 5 euro tip;)

Isaac was a king in a sea of beautiful ladies!
The Kuehnes have 4 beautiful, sweet girls

Here they are climbing the Eiffel Tower without complaint!  It was long, exhausting and freezing cold and these kids played "Paper, Rock, Scissors" in three different languages all the way up.  The Kuehnes speak Chinese (they lived there for 2 years and take lessons to keep up with it) so they showed each other how to play in Italian and Chinese and, of course, English.

I should have edited this picture...you can't even tell who they are!

Gay Pari!!

At Luxembourg Gardens (another favorite area of Paris) the kids ate the biggest, puffiest, swirliest cotton candy I've ever seen!:

Georgies face!!

Arent' they cute!

Get it Ju-B, get it!

This photo is from our first morning at the bakery (delicious) just down from our apartment.  It was so cold it was uncomfortable taking our gloves off to eat these but once we put the first bite in our mouths we forgot about being cold.

Paris really does have the best croissants in the world.  I am not a croissant person but these...yes I am one of these persons.

YUm!!

Joan of Arc in Notre Dame...a great female role model for the girls,  cool;)

At Versailles we rented bikes and tooled around the HUGE (did I say huge?) gardens.  

The best thing about Versailles is, by far, the gardens.  Spend hours their.

This little beauty is the thing I dream about at night.  It's called Tarte Citrine and its a lemon tarte with the most marshmallowy meringue (in a good way) I've ever had.  We loved them so much I think we bought 4 before we left the city.  This bakery, on the top of the hill in Belleville is exactly what all pastry places should be.  Cute chubby grandmas working behind the counter, bread of all shapes, sizes and crustiness coated perfectly in toasted flour, exposed brick walls, stone fire places and the most delicious bread and sweets you'll find anywhere.  I owe my finding it to David Liebowitz, the official American officionado of Parisian food delicacies.  If you're going to Paris anytime soon don't go without downloading his Paris Pastry App.  Best. Thing. Ever.

A marzipan easter cake and a chocolate eclair

Falafel...yumm...

Another great Paris legend is of the headless bishop you see (second from the back) here.  Here the kids are holding their own decapitated heads.  The story goes that back when Christianity was trying to establish itself in this Roman city the Romans chopped off the head of the first Parisian bishop.  The story goes that he picked up his head, washed it off in the fountain and kept on preaching and converting the people.  This statue is on the outside of Notre Dame in his honor.  

We love Paris...

The kids loved the Eiffel Tower and the playground outside our apartment the best, so they say.  They weren't impressed with Mona Lisa and if they ever come back they want to do it with the Kuehnes!  And I agree, they make great traveling buddies!

xoxo

Ashley