So it turns out that what we thought was true love with the vineyard house was just a temporary infatuation.

We have THE HOUSE. We’ve signed papers. Failing any disaster with inspections or something, we’ll move in to the house in a little less than a month.

Telling you right now, pictures don’t even do this house justice.

So, backing up. This house is one I first saw on homes.mil before we even left the United States. I loved it immediately, but figured it was unlikely to still be available by the time we arrived. To my surprise, it actually was. Since our arrival, I’ve been stalking it even more obsessively than before, like a 13-year-old with a crush and access to Facebook. Every time I logged on I was sure it would be gone. When it wasn’t, I was sure it already was gone and they hadn’t bothered to take it off the website. (Possible: there are houses from 2007 on there still). To our great surprise and relief, it was STILL THERE when we compiled our list for housing and we were intending to see it last week with the others. However, the owner’s husband was hospitalized and we found out that morning that we couldn’t see it. I was pretty crushed, at the time (though the vineyard house helped solve that!).

Anyway, so you know we were completely smitten by the vineyard house from the first. But the longer we stayed away, the more my concerns grew about the location. In particular we were worried about internet access (I work from home and need internet) which might be limited to very slow/unreliable options, and about getting Owen to school on base in a few years. I was also wondering whether we’d regret not having a house with neighbors closer by.

This villa, however, had almost everything we liked about the vineyard house (except the vineyard, obviously, and a sea view), minus the concerns. It is located in a neighborhood, with one American neighbor with a kid on one side and the rest mostly Italians.

Neighbors are close but not on top of us

It has an amazingly beautiful yard with flowers and fruit trees, which thankfully (for the plants) a gardener tends so I won’t be able to accidentally kill them. Plus, it is entirely fenced and there is plenty of room for the kids to run around and even a spot that is practically made for a basketball hoop. And did I mention there is an awesome view of Mount Etna?

See the volcano?

The landlord says the oranges will be ready in December, and there are mandarins too!

Even better, it may even be walkable to a grocery store and possibly a restaurant or two because it is right in town. I’m not sure how much we will do that because, as I think I’ve mentioned, there aren’t a lot of sidewalks here and since the roads are so narrow it can be a little nerve-racking walking on them. But I like that it is a possibility!

So, we were already practically sold before we even walked into the house because the grounds were so nice. And then it got better!

On the first floor is a living room, dining room, two bathrooms (curious thing here, often they’ll put two bathrooms right next to each other), a guest room and a kitchen. A main floor kitchen! I’d given up on hoping for that. Just about every room has a door to lead outside, and the kitchen is bright and sunny and large by Sicilian standards. It has a ton of storage space as well.

Not pictured: large pantry unit in the kitchen. We’ll get loaner full-size American appliances through the base. Only tiny complaint is that the dishwasher will have to go in the storage room next door. Minor thing.

Upstairs are four more bedrooms, which is great for us since we can all be on the same level. There are two very nice bathrooms, one of which is actually an ensuite, which we haven’t seen many of. Each of the bedrooms opens up onto at least a small balcony, and the room that Chris and I will probably take opens up onto an ENORMOUS balcony.

They said this balcony is great for watching eruptions!

Five bathrooms in all, and they are all pretty nice!

The basement is enormous and we can even park our car down there (though I’m not sure we’ll bother since the doors don’t open automatically and it doesn’t get too cold or snowy here). More likely, the kids will just be running around like crazy people down there because there is an insane amount of space. Woo!

There is also a wood-fired pizza oven we should learn how to use

We were supposed to go see the vineyard house after seeing this one, but we ultimately decided not to bother because we were so sold. We didn’t even end up asking for much from the landlord because the things we wanted were mostly already done, including screens on many of the windows. Sicilians seem to LOVE having the windows open at all time (and who can blame them, the weather is great) but it seems like we rarely see screens on the windows. Partially as a result of the maids’ insistence of opening the windows whenever they clean our room, we all have a bunch of mosquito bites. I was SURE that there was something I was missing — some kind of Sicilian remedy of keeping mosquitoes out — but when I asked our housing counselor she said no, “mosquitoes are a really big problem.” Glad we’ll have some screens!

The housing counselor also warned us repeatedly to be conscious about our heat and air-conditioning use in this house, lest we run up huge bills because it is so large. She said the last people left because they thought the utility bills were so high, but she insisted that the problem was that they were “using them like an American. You have to adjust because it is Sicily.” She said that we should turn off the heat/AC when we leave, and flip them back on when we get back and “it’ll warm up in like half an hour or 45 minutes.” She also said we shouldn’t be trying to keep it “as warm as American houses always are.” This seemed a little funny, given that Sicilians around here seem to think that it is now winter because it is the end of October, even though it is still about 80 degrees. So many people are bundled up already!

The kids have not yet seen the house because we decided to take them to the base daycare for a few hours so we could look in peace. They both had a bit of a rough morning — Owen threw an epic fit this morning because he didn’t want to go, which we eventually figured out was because last time they tried to make him eat his lunch and he was worried they’d be on him again about “eating disgusting food.” (By “disgusting,” he means noodles. Have we talked about how a few months before we moved here he randomly decided he doesn’t eat noodles?). We finally got him to pull it together by promising to tell the teachers that he didn’t have to eat anything at all. Fiona, on the other hand, cried as usual at drop off but we assumed she’d stop. Instead, we got a call an hour later when we’d just finished walking the grounds of the house, telling us she was still sobbing and asking for suggestions. We couldn’t exactly rush back given that we were like 35 minutes away, and the landlord had left her husband’s bedside to show us the house. Apparently they got her calmed down without Owen’s assistance (our suggestion), but then when we were almost back home we got the call that a kid had bitten her and she was upset again. She was calm by the time we got back, but man — the kid really did take a chunk out of her back. Poor thing!

But really, I’m sure they’ll get over their trauma when they find out we got them a house where they can pick their own oranges!

This picture again, because PRETTY.

The post It’s love — for real this time. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post It’s love — for real this time. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

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 houses today, one of which I was absolutely dying to see based on pictures I’d seen online. I was super disappointed, then, when we arrived and found out that we wouldn’t be able to see that one until next week. Instead, he replaced it with a different house he I guess thought we should consider, which we hit up first.

House One: I knew the second we walked in that we wouldn’t be considering this one. The front door swings open into the “kitchen” — a wall with a couple cabinets, a stove, etc. I can’t imagine how anyone could have thought this was a good set up? Anyway, it was too small for us anyway and — hilariously — it also contained stairs of death (though a bit less death-y than the last ones lol). The bathrooms were nice, and there was a very nice community pool, but that was about it. And it didn’t even have four real bedrooms.

House Two: Chris really liked this one, actually. It had four bedrooms, they were willing to install a main floor kitchen in a perfect area and the grounds outside were lovely. It even had a large garage, which was a big selling point for Chris. It was clean and open and pretty.

This is where the kitchen would go

However, it was just too small. Four is the minimum number of bedrooms we want with our two kids (and any future ones …) and guests expected to come frequently. Four could work theoretically if we had one guest room, one bedroom for Chris and I and if the kids could share a bedroom some day if we had another kid. I don’t generally think large bedrooms are all that important (and frequently make fun of people on House Hunters for this obsession) but these bedrooms were so small that there was no way two beds could have fit in them. There was also no place for our computer desk and book shelves, and no place for our dining room table. Chris thought these obstacles might possibly be overcome, but I did not. But it didn’t matter because …

House Three: Cue chorus of angels as we walked into this house. Heck, on the drive up to it even. We were worried at first because we got all excited driving through a nice little town, thinking about how nice it would be to be closer to town. I was originally hoping to find a home that was walkable into a town, but as we’ve been looking I haven’t really found anything that looks promising in this department because a) we are looking for larger houses, not apartments and b) in the areas we’ve been so far, sidewalks aren’t really a thing. At least, not in a way that would make things walkable.

But I digress. Anyway, we got excited about an area being walkable but then turned down this road for a while and realized that wouldn’t be the case:

So, we immediately got worried that we were going to some house in the middle of nowhere. I should also mention that this house did not have any pictures posted on the website we were searching; in fact, we almost didn’t put it on our list at all because the only details available were the town and the number of beds and bathrooms. In the end, we popped it on the very end of the list because you are only allowed to list six at a time and we had one more space. I’m SO GLAD we did.

It’s in the middle of a vineyard, guys. Like, on three sides around it there are grapes. There is a view of Mount Etna on one side, and of the sea on the other (though it was too hazy to tell yesterday). The owners claim that on a clear day you can see to the mainland!

So, we walked it and it was just beautiful on the inside. Very, very charming. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures (which has definitely annoyed Chris) because I was just too excited). There are three levels: on the main is a sitting room, bathroom and three nice-sized bedrooms. On the lower level is the kitchen (this seems to be a thing here, so I am just over it lol), a living room/dining room area and another room currently being used as another office or sitting room. Upstairs are three more bedrooms and another nice, updated bathroom.

Like most of the houses we’ve seen, it has beautiful balconies that you can reach from just about every room. It also has this nice big area where I imagine setting up our patio table.

House Four: So just to wrap things up, we did see a fourth house that I actually liked second best. It was two stories and had a nice open concept kitchen/living/dining area and four large bedrooms upstairs. It was also in a complex and was located a bit closer to base than house three. I thought it was significantly more functional than House Two, but it was less pretty (ugly tiles instead of pretty marble floors, for example). However, it was basically a nonissue because we were still too star-struck by House Three to even consider it. Neither of us even took a picture.

We were going to see a House Five, but ended up bailing at the housing counselor’s suggestion. It was a townhouse (which we weren’t wild about anyway) and he said that the person only wanted to rent it furnished, which isn’t an option for us given our stuff is hopefully making its way across the Atlantic as we speak.

So, as you can probably guess we are leaning heavily toward House Three. I’m not without concerns on this house, all of them related to the location. It is further away than we wanted to be (probably about 50 minutes from base), which will mean a longer commute for Chris immediately and a longer commute for Owen in a couple of years when he goes to kindergarten. It isn’t in a complex like others we’ve seen, and part of me wonders if our kids will miss out on having neighbors close by to play with. I also worry that we should wait and see the other house that I liked next week.

That said … we are leaning towards going for it, if we can get a few questions answered. Chris insists that the drive is about as long as it was in Bloomington, and he doesn’t mind. There is a bus that Owen will be able to take to school, or Chris could potentially drop him off on his way to work. And we can always have play dates with friends. Our housing counselor also has us very concerned that if we don’t go for it, we may miss out.

I still like the four-story house that we looked at with a realtor last week, and it is a fair bit closer to base than the vineyard house. However, we’ve since been warned off that picking a house that isn’t already pre-approved by the housing department is a recipe for long delays and the chance of things falling through. So, we probably don’t want to mess with that.

Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted on what we decide! Cross your fingers for us.

The post House Hunters International, continued first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post House Hunters International, continued appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

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 house and are living in Sicily. How ….?

Anyway! We had a nice day for Owen’s birthday, despite having to spend half of it in the car doing house tours.(Side note: we may have found the house. More on that later). After we got home, he spent the afternoon building his Star Wars legos with Daddy and playing play-dough with Fiona. We talked to grandparents, went out to dinner, sang, had cake and read Harry Potter before he informed me, “Mommy, I need to stop now. I’m EXHAUSTED.” Didn’t realize it had somehow gotten to be after 10 p.m., so whoops.

I could not be prouder of my big boy, who is so smart and so goofy and so thoughtful. He thinks deeply about things and asks great questions. He worries about how people are feeling. And he loves to make up songs about whatever we are doing (or just takes existing songs and adds the word “poop” to it. He IS 4, after all). In the past year, he’s really gotten to be a lot more bold where before he was a little shy and nervous. He loves wrestling and “special missions” with Daddy, reading Harry Potter with Mommy, Star Wars, plain hamburgers, strawberries, apples, swimming (but not putting his head under water), Legos, building things and then knocking them down, dressing up in costumes and a bunch more that I’m certain I’m forgetting. I can’t wait to see what he gets up to in the next year.

Just for fun, here’s a look back at Year 3 for Owie-O.

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The post Happy birthday to Owen! And we might have found a house appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

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 dealing with administrative stuff and trying to learn how to navigate the insane roads here. Well, Chris has. I haven’t even tried yet because, uh, it looks terrifying. My thought Day One was, “how will our minivan ever manage on these tiny roads?” My thought Day Two, on the other hand, was “thank God I’ll have my minivan because I’m coming out on top in a collision.” Chris says he’ll buy me spikes for my rims and a battle helmet. WATCH OUT, FIATS

Speaking of driving, here’s a picture of Motta Sant’Anastasia (town we are staying in at present) taken from our car.

We still don’t have working cell phones because we can’t get them until Chris receives some kind of Italian ID number (Friday at best) so apologies to people who have been trying to get in touch with us. We have WhatsApp and Facebook messenger, but obviously we can only get messages when we are in our hotel room on wifi.

This afternoon’s adventure was checking out three homes in what turned out to be our own little game of House Hunters International, with the added excitement of the owners having English fluency ranging from fairly decent to none at all. And — as I mentioned — we don’t have any Italian ourselves. Like, I didn’t even realize that I was saying “thank you” wrong until today. Embarrassing.

Anyway, when we go through the Housing Office on base they’ll drive us to the homes we want to see and then escort us through. Since we set up these particular showings online, however, we were on our own. Luckily, our sponsor loaned us a GPS because otherwise I have NO IDEA how we would have ever found these houses. One of them seemed to require us to go through someone else’s yard to get to it, and another was on a street that was unexpectedly blocked by a random wall.

All three houses ended up being absolutely lovely. All three had balconies (is this the right descriptor?) that went around the entire house — sometimes on multiple levels — so you could enter from practically every room. All three had beautiful sea views, nice grounds and security gates. Allthree were better than I expected. All three DID have some quirks though that mean none of them is the clear winner.

House One: Enormous 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom home in an area that turns out to be only about half an hour from base. It was on four levels, and the flooring was all either marble (very common here) or parquet. Our only real complaint was that while it previously had two kitchens — one on the lowest level and one on the main level — they had decided to take out the main level kitchen and leave only the lowest level one. To me that seems a little nuts (why wouldn’t you want the kitchen on the same level as the living/dining room?) but I’m not sure it is a deal breaker. The showers were also hilariously tiny, but the owners said they would be willing to expand at least one of them to a more reasonable size. So that’s good!

This view!

House Two: Was billed as a 5 bed, 4 bath, but turned out to be only three bedrooms. It actually took us quite a while to even realize that though because we were DAZZLED. It was so unbelievably gorgeous inside, and the kitchen and bathrooms were perfect. It also had a pool with outdoor showers, outdoor kitchen and the like, which is shared with just one neighbor. However, it is probably off our list since it doesn’t have enough bedrooms and because of the Stairs of Death. It boggled my mind that someone had installed these things because it was terrifying for me, as an adult, to try to climb them. Not only was there no rail, no back to the stairs and a much-too-large gap in one spot, but the things also WOBBLED. The non-English speaking landlord summoned her son to tell us, rather unconvincingly, “it’s safe” before we even started walking on them. Yeah, no.

So death-y, right?

I’ve always been opposed to having a pool, but damn this is pretty

House Three: This one was also massive, 6 bedroom (or possibly 5 beds plus a dining room) and 4 baths. We loved that right down the street from it was a town square of sorts, with a really beautiful church in the center. It was also a little further up Mt. Etna, so beautiful scenery on all sides. The house was pretty similar to the first one in that it had all marble/tile floors and stairs, but it was a little less quirky. We loved that there were four bedrooms on the second floor, plus a large room upstairs that is being turned into a master suite (however, the slant of the ceiling means a lot of the room isn’t as usable and the bathroom will be tiny). We didn’t love that the kitchen was pretty tiny though, and it is a bit further away from base than we hoped to be.

Whichever house we choose, I’m pretty sure at least one kid will knock his or her front teeth out falling down the marble stairs some time

We’ll still see more houses through the Housing Office soon (there is one in particular that I’m dying to see) but we saw some really good options today. Exciting!

The post House Hunters Int’l — Sicily first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post House Hunters Int’l — Sicily appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.