Dear Ho Ho,

I really, really want a computer for Christmas.

I’m always getting in trouble when I get caught  using Mom or Dad’s.  (they are both busy in the kitchen at the moment and Micah left the computer within my reach! HA.)  Micah and Emma get to use Mom’s computer all the time because they know her password.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  Please, please bring me my own computer.  Getting caught and being forced off the computer is no fun.

Oh man, I’ve been caught.  I’m off to sit in time out.

Trying to be good,

Alessia

There’s this billboard  up everywhere around town.  We decided to go check it out.  We were all secretly hoping there would be free samples, we were not disappointed.

There were chocolate makers from all over Italy present at this show.  Check out some of their ingenious ideas on what to make out of chocolate.

Micah and Emma learned where and how chocolate is made from one of the chefs.  They also painted a chocolate Santa Clause.

While Micah and Emma were hard at work, Alessia was chowing down on her Santa while Bubba was wooing a group of girls.

As we were leaving Charlie noticed another entrance.  We walked in and found ourselves tasting all the good products that come from the Campagna region.  Italy is divided into 21 regions and Naples is included in the Campagna.  There was fresh mozzerella, tomatoes, bread soaked in olive oil, salami, and different kinds of honey.  We listened to music, learned how wool is spun, how olives are pressed into oil and Micah even got to try her hand at rolling out fresh pasta.

We had a blast and the two younger members of our family were worn completely out!

Gumbo and Krispie Kreme doughnuts….one word to describe Friday night’s dinner….YUMMY!  Weird sounding combination but oh so good!

The chef’s hard at work.  It takes time to chop all the stuff that goes into the gumbo.

Micah and Cortney give Paul’s gumbo a big thumbs up!

While the chefs were in the kitchen, Charlie and the kids were hard at work putting up the Christmas tree.

Micah and I had a hankering for some Krispie Kreme doughnuts, so we made some!

cutting out doughnuts

doughnuts rising

mouths watering in anticipation

On

OFF

ON

OFF

One light switch=hours of entertainment

Ever not feel like giving thanks?  I have.  We are going to be celebrating Thanksgiving on Sunday and I have had to really work on my unthankful attitude.  I’m not quite sure where it has come from, I just know I have had a bad case of “unthankfulness” lately.

Sunday has come and gone and the turkey has been eaten.  So what about the pre-Thanksgiving blues?  Well,  after reading the following scripture passage  I gave myself a big attitude adjustment.

Ten Healed of Leprosy

¹¹Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance ¹³and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

¹⁴When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

¹⁵One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t  want to be one of the nine that got caught up in themselves that they forgot to go back and give thanks to the one who cleansed them.  The one that went back praising Jesus for his miracle and threw himself at Jesus’ feet not only was healed he was made well.  What do we miss out on when we don’t come back and fall at the feet of Him who can not only heal us but make us well? Let’s not forget to give thanks each day.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Thanksgiving day

Now that my blood pressure has had a chance to come back down let me fill you in on an emotion packed Saturday.

Saturday.  Micah and Emma go to an all girl birthday party.  (I stayed home to fix dinner for the team we have in town)  They were dropped off about 8:30pm and the first words to come out of their mouths were these.  “Mom, you should of seen us dance!”  “Everybody was saying we had the coolest dance moves.”   Micah at this point breaks out in a Hannah Montana song and Emma continues, “We won the dance game cuz I told Micah to just follow my moves.”  By this time I was really curious about these “dance moves.”

We walked in the door (the team had left, however a few of our teammates were helping clean up) and they went straight to the living room to show off their moves.  The music was put on (the Hannah Montana song, of course) and they got to “moving.”  Emma was showing me a bit of break dancing down on the rug while Micah was doing a spin, can you guess what happened next?

Micah somehow got tangled up or tripped on Emma and fell backwards…the back of her head hit the border of the entertainment center…and she screamed.  She came crawling to me with her hands over the spot she banged, crying hysterically.  I didn’t see any blood right away, however that changed as soon as she let me pull away her hair.  After a quick Daddy and Jason assessment (our teammate who is also a nurse) we decided Micah need to be taken to the E.R.

Now, we have not had to take any of the children to the E.R. here in Naples, so we were a little a lot nervous about it as we have heard all kinds of things.   I walked next door (we live in apartment like houses so I had to walk out my door to hers) and quickly explained the situation to Marissa and asked if she would take us.  She quickly ran into my house to check on Micah and ran back to hers to call her husband.  The whole family came running back and Luciano (the husband) quickly took control.   “This is not that deep, I can close it with butterfly bandages.  I’ve done it a million times on my own children.  She will only be traumatized if we take her to the E.R.”

Luciano and a friend of his quickly disinfected their hands and the kitchen counter top.  Charlie held Micah as Luciano got to work.  He got the bleeding to stop, shaved around the wound, disinfected it, and rigged up some butterfly bandages.  (some of you may remember the story about my finger and Assuntas’ butterfly bandages in a previous post)  He did all this under the watchful eyes of a kitchen full of people.  Micah was very brave and Charlie kept her calm.  At one point when Micah was crying pretty hard Charlie asked her a question to try to keep her mind of what was happening.  Micah’s response, “Dad this is not the right moment for you to be asking me these questions!”

We went back home and reassured Emma that it had not been her fault.  Once all tears had been dried we sat on the couch and watched a movie.  Luciano came over to check on Micah and to make sure she still liked him!  He told her he was sorry he hurt her and whispered to me he was gentler than they would have been in the E.R.

What a way to end a somewhat calm Saturday night!

The kids and I had been looking forward to the “retreatment”(otherwise known as a team retreat) ever since Charlie told us about the Bed and Breakfast we would be staying in.

Welcome to the Locanda Cincerella. This is no ordinary Bed & Breakfast.  First of all it is “hidden” in the mountains and it not only takes google step by step directions, two maps of Italy, Charlie’s gut feeling and several stops to ask for directions in order for you to even find it!  The following description can be found on their website (Locanda Cinciarella)

“Cinciarella” is a little, intimate guesthouse in the middle of the country, in the hearth of Caudina valley, that is one of the most interesting and evocative place in Sannio, halfway between Benevento and Avellino. We are in the Partenio’s Regional park, where Sannio clambers up the mountains of Irpinia. There are wild, extraordinary and very beautiful landscapes. Cinciarella guesthouse welcomes the guests in a good ambiance. You can see refined living rooms, a beautiful chimney and the antique cellar where you can taste food production of this area.

There are also big glass windows and small loggias, that appear at a 6.000 square metres garden. There are two double rooms and three junior suites;all the rooms have different furnishings and adornments. Bathrooms are very wide and well-groomed, they have a whirlpool bath or a shower unit. There are also two wide rooms at guest’s disposal: one is a room with billiards and the other one is a romantic dining room. You can find also a beautiful garden , an outdoor swimming pool, a terrace with flowers and plants where guests can talk and stay in the open air during summer evenings. Food is delicious and fresh: you can taste home-made pasta, farm-raised cold cuts and cheeses , and finally wines, selected accurately. What they fail to tell you is that this beautiful Bed & Breakfast is actually the hosts’ home.  We took over their rooms, their whole house for the weekend.  It was a cultural ezperience to say the least.  Imagine being guests in someone else’s home.  We took their rooms while the mother (the cook) slept on the upstairs couch and her oldest son slept on the couch in the downstairs area.  The Dad and younger son slept the nights at the 82 year old grandmother’s house who turns out rolled the gnocchi (potato pasta) and baked one of our desserts!  It was like being guests in someones home you didn’t know, being waited on and made to feel at home in their home!  (Wheh, did you catch all that?) Carmella (the mom and cook) spent hours in the kitchen making some fantastic meals.  Micah and I felt so at home that we offered to help out!