Google Maps is dead to me

... ok, Chris keeps insisting that I'm being unfair to Google Maps here because it is (probably) not its fault. But my phone's entire GPS system is dead to me, at any rate. The good things from today: -We had a great play date with our friends/sponsors! Owen and Fiona had a blast playing with their kids, and I ha [...]

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Small explosions, (inflatable) mountains climbed and Siracusa

Note: This was written last night (Sunday), but didn't get posted. Whoops. Today (somehow) marks two weeks since we arrived in Sicily. It's been a bit of a blur with everything we've had to do and there have definitely been some "why the hell are we doing this, again?" moments, but all in all I think it is [...]

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On driving: A for effort, B for execution

Yesterday, I tried driving somewhere other than to the two bases and I'm pleased to say it went pretty well! We made it to McDonald's at a local mall a few miles from our hotel, and you know what my fries tasted like? VICTORY. That's what. Anyway, the trip was not without some minor misadventures and an unreasonabl [...]

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House Hunters International, continued

So, we think we may have found THE house. Gulp. We haven't pulled the trigger yet because we still have questions and a couple of concerns (ok, mostly me with concerns) but as soon as we walked in yesterday, it was love. But I'll back up, because playing House Hunters can be fun. We had appointments for five hous [...]

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Happy birthday to Owen! And we might have found a house

Today my first baby turned 4 years old! I can't believe how quickly time passes and how much our lives have changed in four years. Four years ago, I had just stopped working at our local newspaper and we'd just moved into our brand-new home in Indiana. Now, we have a 4-year-old AND a 2-year-old, have sold the dream hou [...]

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Our first day trip — Taormina!

Well, yesterday was the one week anniversary of our arrival in Sicily so to celebrate we took our first day trip! As an added bonus, we made it through an entire day with only three major messes and one wardrobe change: 1) Fiona and Owen covered in chocolate ice cream from their first-ever gelato

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Driving in Sicily, now that we are here

I posted once before about warnings I'd read about driving in Sicily. Turns out, descriptions such as "the seemingly erratic driving nature of Sicilian traffic" were a bit of an understatement. Last night, for example, resulted in us and others having to go the wrong way on a one-way street because we ran into an u [...]

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House Hunters Int’l — Sicily

Things that we should have done before coming to Sicily: 1) Learn the metric system. Kilometers/meters? Uhhhhhhhh 2) Learn how to order a large diet coke from McDonald's in Italian. 3) Learn ALL THE ITALIAN. Whoops. So, these first few days have been absolutely insane adventure. We've spent a lot of time [...]

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We’re here!

Well, we made it! And in one piece, though the airline did lose one of our car seats (luckily we brought three for various boring reasons). Our flights did not end up being too bad, though we had our doubts about how things were going to go when we got to the airport and Fiona was already in a super defiant mood. [...]

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On the day before we leave

Well, I certainly didn't imagine I'd go this long without blogging but ... things have been insane. And now we leave tomorrow. And tomorrow starts in an hour and a half at the time of me writing this. We're at Grandma's, and I'm finally feeling like everything that I can get done before tomorrow has been done. Our [...]

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