Just a couple more quick videos

Well he's not running in circles Sofia, but I took these videos of Caleb today! The way he uses his hands and tells stories cracks me up.

We've become foster parents...

...for dogs. A few weeks back, we ran into a situation that landed us with a stray rottweiler mix. It was obvious she was someone's dog and had been abandoned, which unfortunately is a HUGE problem here in Naples. So we ended up taking her in, cleaning her up, and began the search for a new home for her. We could tell by her underside that she had had puppies not long ago, she was house trained, leash trained, and crate trained. We named her Mya, she took to all of us immediately, and treated Sucre like her own pup. We had her for a couple weeks but unfortunately there was a little slip up and to make a long story short, she's back out on the streets somewhere. We hoped to see her again and I've looked around to try to find her, but we haven't seen her since. It was a very sad situation, and thankfully she was at least cleaned up and well fed, but there wasn't much more we could do for her once she left. That brings us up to last night. A guy in Michael's section came to us asking a huge favor. He had two dogs that he had adopted out while back. The new guy didn't take care of the dogs, and finally said he didn't want them anymore. Michael's co-worker and his wife already have two labs, and I don't think 4 dogs are allowed in the on base housing. So last night he went to pick up the dogs, they took in one of the dogs, and asked us if we could foster the other one while he finds homes for them. This dog's name is EJ and he's an American Bulldog. He's about 10 months old, looks like a mean, solid piece of meat, but is such a lazy little baby! He's very quiet and well behaved, and he absolutely loves Sucre, which is good because Sucre is getting a lot of social interaction with other dogs now. Speaking of Sucre, he has a tiny little slip up once in a while, but he's pretty much fully potty trained now at almost 3 months old. He also sits, stays, shakes, and lays down on command. His biting has gone down a lot, but his teeth still bother him and he's still a playful little puppy so he does still nip when he gets excited and wants to play. We keep lots of toys and bones around, so thankfully we've never had a problem with him trying to chew our furniture. Michael, Caleb, and I are all doing great. The school goes through applications and does call-backs the end of August/beginning of September, so hopefully Caleb's teacher will be giving us a call! Being E4 status, we are highest priority among the ranks, but now it comes down to us and all the other E4's trying to get in. Caleb is excited about school, he talks about it all the time and really wants to go. We've been working on spelling words and he's picking up on some simple words now. He can usually spell his name, and he knows what little words say, for example "stop." Nothing else is really new right now. Michael works, I spend my days with Caleb and the dogs, we've been trying lots of new foods, working out a lot, and just enjoying the weather! I have a few videos and pictures. They're nothing exciting, just us and the dogs in our every day life, but it's an update. Oh and one more thing, it's official, Jenna is coming out to visit us in December! She's flying out of Boston the 17th, we'll pick her up in Rome on the 18th, and she'll be here until the 30th. We are so excited! We also have Vonage now, so we have a stateside phone number. I will send out an e-mail with the number.

Quick Update

I mean it this time, this will be quick! Not much has been going on. It's been insanely hot (which I love, but no-one else does haha) The sun feels like it's burning your skin when you walk outside, it's so bright and sunny. We got a decent patio set finally. This is the first time Michael, Caleb and I have eaten at our OWN kitchen table since we lived in Albion about two years ago. Speaking of eating, I made a three bean chili tonight for the first time tonight and it came out FANTASTIC. I used kidney beans, pinto beans, and black beans...chopped up some green pepper, white onion, fresh garlic, and fresh tomato...obviously a few other little tweaks I can't tell you about :-) Caleb loved it so much he was actually picking out the beans to eat them! Well nothing else is new right now, but we'll keep you all updated.

Gaeta

Saturday we went up to Gaeta for the day. The scenery was incredible. We originally planned on going to the beaches up there because they're cleaner and nicer than in Naples, but the day turned out differently. Because of traffic and driving up there for the first time not really knowing where exactly any good beaches were, it took us about 2 hours. We didn't mind so much because we got to see some pretty stunning sites, between the rolling mountains on one side, and the Mediterranean on the other. After we got there we were told that it's not a good time to go to the beaches because they haven't been cleaned yet, so there would be broken glass and garbage, so instead of going to a beach we decided to walk around and explore the city. I tried to take pictures of everything, but there's not one picture that comes close to seeing it in person. It was so amazing it felt like it wasn't real. We would just stand there and stare out into the water and looking for the little villages scattered atop the mountains. It was almost too perfect. The water was sparkling too much, the sky was too blue, the sun was too hot, the mountains were too clear, the flowers were too colorful, but we can never get enough gelato! We walked through all of the buildings and up and down side roads through some of the most beautiful structures I've ever seen. You had to look closely because you never knew when you might find a hidden staircase, or walk up some steps and look through the bars of a door and see a church inside with beautiful statues and pictures. There were winding staircases and random doorways everywhere, wrapping up and down buildings throughout the whole area. We spent a few hours just walking around taking pictures, then headed back to a gelato shop to get a little treat, and then headed home. We found out today about a free beach up there that's plenty clean enough to go to now, so we'll definately be driving back to Gaeta soon. There's not really much more I can say about our day yesterday, it was just a lot of walking around and gawking at the scenery. But we do have some more great news from the "Caleb trying new foods" front! Today he ate corn on the cob for the first time! We grilled it along with talapia (which he LOVES), and cooked up some gnocchi. Check off another vegetable off the list! He wanted me to take a picture of him eating the corn, which is posted here on the blog, but the rest of the pictures from Gaeta are on snapfish and I'll be sending everybody the link, so let me know if you haven't gotten them.

Life is a bowl full of cherries

Yesterday I made strawberry varenyky for the first time all by myself. For those of you who don't know what that is, it would be like perogies with a sweet strawberry filling. I used fresh strawberries I had from the vendor right outside the base, and after I cooked them I topped them with fresh cut up strawberries and a little sugar. They came out really good, everyone liked them a lot. Caleb wanted me to take a picture of him eating them, which are the only real pictures I have right now, so I'll post them on here instead of snapfish. We also have more good news. We stopped at the vendor this morning to buy a watermelon and some more strawberries, and the man gave Caleb a few cherries before we drove away. He has fantastic cherries, we've bought his cherries before, but Caleb has never tried them. On the way home, Caleb gave a cherry to Michael, gave one to me, and then ate one himself! He loved it! Caleb likes cherries! Then at dinner tonight I put some salsa inside his taco and he ate that too. It's so nuts. He has his good days and his bad, just like any other kid, but more and more he's starting to eat anything you put in front of him, even fruits and vegetables. We're so proud of him. Today we went to the pool on base. There were a lot of people there, but it wasn't crowded to the point where we couldn't swim a little and enjoy ourselves. Caleb had a BLAST, and it was definately refreshing as it's been blazing hot. It's a really big pool with different areas sectioned off for people. Only thing is that on our way out I actually stopped to read a sign and we realized you're supposed to buy a pass when you come in. Oops. Tomorrow we're going to the beach. We've heard the beaches up in Gaeta are really nice, so we borrowed a GPS and we're going to head up there in the morning. We'll make sure to take lots of pictures!

YESSSS!!!

Caleb is eating broccoli!!! We needed a quick dinner tonight so I baked up these Chinese vegetable wraps, cooked up some broccoli with a little cheese on top (to try to make it more appetizing for Caleb so he would maybe try it) and rice with a seaweed seasoning on top. He ate everything! We couldn't believe it! He actually said he LIKED the broccoli! Like I said before, by the time we leave Italy we'll have that kid eating everything! :-)

Downtown

Type in "Naples, Italy" in google images and take a look at some of the pictures. That's what it looked like today. These were some of the most beautiful sites we've seen so far, and we only went to downtown Naples again. This time we were alone, and we walked a LOT farther, until we ended up leaving all of the traffic and hub-bub of downtown life. We reached the water and were about ready to jump in. Unfortunately Italians have a trash problem (they like to leave it everywhere) so we saw a few piles floating through the rocks, but as long as you didn't look right at the shoreline, it was absolutely stunning. The pictures I took don't even do it justice. There's no way to capture how beautiful it is without seeing it yourself. While we were walking through downtown to get to the water, there was some sort of parade or protest going on, we're not sure what it was. There was a huge group of policeman leading the way, and men and women waving signs and flags walked by singing songs together. It was awesome. The battery on the camera ran out while I was filming the first video, but then while we were standing there they started singing "Yellow Submarine" by the beatles...but in Italian of course, so I switched batteries and caught a little bit of the song. As we left the busy part of downtown and made our way to the water, there were a lot of flowers, and a nice large stone sidewalk with little vendors, statues, and trees everywhere, and it seemed every couple minutes we'd walk by a couple making out. Apparently love was in the air today. We also saw a lot of sunbathers out on the rocks, as well as two different weddings. I couldn't imagine getting married in one of those churches or castles, and then having my pictures taken up on a ledge against the water, holding onto a pole kissing. It was breathtaking just watching them. We got gelato on our walk back to the bus stop. It was PHENOMENAL!!! Caleb got chocolate, Michael got some sort of oreo looking stuff, and I got a scoop of caffè with a scoop of menta on top. YUM YUM YUM! By the way, for those of you that looked at the last link of photos I posted on snapfish, the reason we had so many pictures of sushi was because I made it myself for the first time. It turned out wonderful and we'll definately be eating it more often! We hope you all enjoy the pictures and videos.

Here is the link to snapfish with the photos we took today. http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=912407007/a=37864239_37864239/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/