Happy Friday! The kiddos had half a day of school today and Monday they are off, so hopefully we'll have a fun-filled weekend ahead of us. We're waiting to see if David has weekend duty before we make any plans. Well, want to know my news? I'm going to be a Challenge Host for Stamp Out Alzheimer's! I'm so excited that I get to participate in helping this great cause. I wanted to do more than just donate some money and participate in the challenges, so I asked Jen if I could be a challenge host. Since I have some extra goodies stashed away for giveaways, I was able to join in! You'll have to wait until opening day to find out just what all the challenges are! In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a little blurb I stole off the SOA website's main page:
"Welcome to Stampin' Out Alzheimer's and Thank you for participating in this event. It's going to be a fast-paced, fun-filled week with amazing giveaways and a chance to reach out and make a difference for a very worthwhile cause. At the end of this event, 100% of the funds raised will be donated directly to the
Alzheimer's Association to help with their efforts to provide and enhance care and support for all those affected by this heartbreaking disease."
In case you want more info, or if you want to join in the fun, you can go to the SOA website HERE or click on the widget on my right column and you can donate to the cause. We are SO CLOSE to reaching our $2500 goal! I know we'll hit it and go WAY beyond! I'm making a predication of doubling our goal! YEP! I think we'll hit a $5000 donation! I really hope you all help out with this cause, even if it's just a $5 donation or just spreading the word through emails or blogs! Everything helps get us one step closer to eliminating this horrific disease. Now, on a lighter note, Italy is blooming! As we drive around, I see all kinds of beautiful things I want to share with you all. Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. First up, some gorgeous roses from a neighbor down the road:
And here is a Lily bush from a neighbor across the street from the roses!
And here is our house. Please excuse the ugly, grey, rolling shutters:
I was able to get a bunch of free flowers from a local nursery so I have a ton of them in pots decorating the front of the house. In the two top windows are some rectangular pots with marigolds in them. To the side of the front door are a couple more pots. One is hanging around the drain pipe and has marigolds in it and here are the two on the ground:
Those leafy baby bushes are going to get HUGE and need to each be in their own pot. Right now there are about 5 in the pot! I love the deep two-tone colors on the leaves. I don't know what those flowers in the other pot are called but they are going to grow into HUGE bushes too so eventually I will need to repot them as well. When I got them, none of them were in bloom so I took the nursery lady's word that they would bloom into pretty flowers, and they have! The petals are all gorgeous ad different. Some are two toned even! Here is my little potted garden at the other end of the carport:
It's the same setup as the ones by the door. Well, I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of Italy and I hope to hear that you all joing our SOA event!
Until next post, be blessed.
ETA: if you want to see any of the pictures closeup, you should be able to click on them for a bigger view. BUT, if you are reading this post on your emil, you will first have to actually go to my blog. Hey, if you do you will see my pretty background and hear my fantastic music!
SNOW! This may not seem like much for some of you, but for us it was a BIG deal! And for where we live... well, this is not normal winter weather, lol! The kids thought it was absolutely fantastic, and even though it was still dark out and not even 7am, they had to go outside and play. Here is Ashton on our trampoline:
Well, after a lot of phone calls between all of us that were supposed to be driving up to Austria together, and a lot of stressful decision making... I headed out to our meeting spot. I didn't make it! I slid on the road, DID NOT crash, but scared myself so bad that I pulled over and refused to drive any further! Now, I admit it, I am a big fat wuss when it comes to driving in the snow. After all, it wasn't even that bad compared to some places, and our truck has 4-wheel drive, but it had just started snowing that night and the roads hadn't been cleared or salted and everything was slippery. I made a couple phone calls and our friends ended up driving our truck. In case you were wondering, David had to work so he wasn't going to be able to come to Austria, that's why he wasn't driving. So we finally got on the road and about an hour (or two) of driving in this:
And this:
We had to turn around and head back home! The Autostrada had been closed down in an area we needed to drive through because of an accident with some Semi trucks, and we decided that our trip really just wasn't going to happen. It was OK though! We ended up picking up David (who got the afternoon and evening off work because of the snow) and having dinner with our friends then staying over at their house that night. We still had a great time, and we loved the snow! Maybe we'll go to Austria in the Spring when everything is in bloom and it's warm. It is definitely one of our must see places while living here in Europe.
We saw a guy with the BEST parking spot for his TINY truck.
Happy Sunday Friends!
Where was I? LOL!
That was not the biggest one we saw! And here are some pics of what the hail did:
Those are HOLES pelted right into the doors and roof of our shed. Here is a pic of the PVC drainage pipe for one of our airconditioning units:
And here is our house. Please excuse the ugly, grey, rolling shutters:
I was able to get a bunch of free flowers from a local nursery so I have a ton of them in pots decorating the front of the house. In the two top windows are some rectangular pots with marigolds in them. To the side of the front door are a couple more pots. One is hanging around the drain pipe and has marigolds in it and here are the two on the ground:
Those leafy baby bushes are going to get HUGE and need to each be in their own pot. Right now there are about 5 in the pot! I love the deep two-tone colors on the leaves. I don't know what those flowers in the other pot are called but they are going to grow into HUGE bushes too so eventually I will need to repot them as well. When I got them, none of them were in bloom so I took the nursery lady's word that they would bloom into pretty flowers, and they have! The petals are all gorgeous ad different. Some are two toned even! Here is my little potted garden at the other end of the carport:
It's the same setup as the ones by the door. Well, I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of Italy and I hope to hear that you all joing our SOA event!
That's HAIL! It wasn't even all that cold and yet there was hail. Also, there was only hail for about half a mile! Wierd Italy weather, I tell ya! And here's a pic of my latest Rock Star Anya card:
I stamped and colored this RockStar a long time ago when I was making my trading cards and she's been hanging out on my desk ever since. I decided she needed a card to call home, so I whipped this up really quick.
YUP, those are french fries on the pizza. Apparently it's a popular thing to eat here. It's actualy pretty good, depending on the type of fries used. This is the Pizzeria that we got the yummy pizza from:
It's a great little place just past Area 1 of the Base in a little town called Pedemonte. It's owned by a Sicilian family that doesn't speak english, but we communicate well enough to get some delicious pizza from them. Here is a picture of a gorgeous Italian home somewhere that we passed on one of our drives:
I love the rocks in the walls! And here is a beautiful flowering tree down the road from my house:
Someday I'll have a house with lots of beautiful trees like this around it. And here is something that I thought was pretty cool:
I love that lion spigot! Well, This Sunday is Easter but our base had their Egg Hunt early. Here is a pic of Ashton stealing eggs from a little 3 year old girl:
Don't worry, I made him give them back and he ended up with a hoard of eggs anyway. Here is Angel getting eggs in her first egg hunt:
She had a ton of fun, and even tried to walk a little to get the eggs but realized it was too slow to walk so tried to crawl. The grass was a little wet and there was mud so I didn't let her crawl much! LOL!
Yes, it's orangey-peach and NO, it's not that pretty-yet! I still have to add all the "homey" touches to the outside such as plants in the windows and a little patio set outside the front window. That front window has it's shade down but it opens up to the living room. The door is big, green and heavy-very secure. We just have the carport-no garage-but there is a plastic shed. See it on the left? We actually moved it to the backyard so you don't see it when you drive up. The two upstairs windows that you see are our bedroom on the right and the master bath on the left. Not much to look at, but it's home. Next up is a cute Italian home with blue shutters and doors:
This is a TINY two-lane road and everytime we pass this house I think of a little old lady sitting in her little alcove there (see the little square window with flowers in it? That alcove) sipping her tea, and a car coming CRASHING through the wall and hitting her! Yes, I think that may happen. The roads are NARROW! LOL! Well, that's all the pictures for this post. I will get more up later. I need to get my To-Do list done for today and Angel just nodded off for her nap so now's the time for me to complete most of my list. I hpe you all have a Fabulous Friday and hopefully I'll get a chance to post again later, or tomorrow. 