Friday No. 1

Howdy! Generally, I think my life is probably fairly boring. Then I remember, oh wait, its boring in Italy. Everything here is different than what we're used to, and that makes for adventures in simple tasks. Here are a few exciting moments from this week:

1. Started a blog. This has been a long time coming, and I'm happy its finally here. We've lived here for a little less than a year now, and we have been on LOTS of adventures. Right now, I'm playing catch up. So far, I've recapped our trips to Cinque Terre, Venice, and Barcelona, and provided a few teaser photographs from our time at Keukenhof in Amsterdam. I basically started recapping from the beginning, but have decided to skip the winter months until they become a little more relevant. (Christmas in July, maybe?!) So now, I plan on jumping forward to Spring, and recapping more recent travels. Visit the "Coming Soon" section on the menu bar above to find upcoming locations! Also, a special should out to my bestie Ashley, you are a ray of sunshine and my biggest bloggin' cheerleader and I love you!!

2. Fixed all of our car trouble, and then almost broke a car. Yesterday was glorious and terrible. Like I said before, everything here is different, and our cars are no exception. I drive an American car, and B drives a European one. My American car's transmission has been on recall almost the entire time we've been here. FINALLY, my parts came in this week from the US (which takes about 6 weeks), and my car is finally running seamlessly! YES!

Well. Now that my car is fixed, its about time for something to happen to B's, right? Right. We just replaced his mirror and door panel because they were both becoming detached from the vehicle. Let's just say I taped the mirror back on, and it wasn't pretty. Anyway. Yesterday, in the midst of a giant thunderstorm, I almost destroyed the other mirror. Our garage is under our house, and our driveway is at about a 45 degree angle, and we have to double park our cars because the opening is only large enough for one car to fit through. So, while backing down our driveway in a stick shift in the rain, I got too close to the wall and got stuck... and bent the mirror backwards!  Again, the car was on a 45 degree incline and its a manual, so lets just say getting out of that sticky situation was NOT fun. I survived, and luckily the mirror clicked back into place. Even though I was pretty shaken up about it, now I can laugh about it. Allora, that's Italian life.

3. Enjoyed our first beach trip! Before moving here, I never put it together that Venice=water and water=coastline/beaches. Thank goodness! We went to the Italian sporting goods store last week and loaded up on beach going essentials, and on Saturday we drove 90 minutes to the beach! It was only 75 degrees, but it was honestly warm enough to enjoy the sun and sand without getting in the water. Glorious.

You can take the girl out of Texas...

4. Wined and dined on a weeknight. We don't like to eat out a lot. I know, I know, we live in Italy and we should eat out all the time. This is one of those key situations where visiting Italy is great, but living here is a different story. Luckily, some of our friends invited us to an evening of wine/pizza tasting, and it was SO much fun. It rained all morning, and once it let up around 1 pm, it was warm and beautiful. Just look at this view!

All the heart eyes!

We drank 7 different wines and ate 5 different pizzas, and then even tasted 2 wines from the barrel. What a fun experience! One of the barrel wines will be bottled in September, and the other one won't be bottled until 2018. To our amateur tastebuds, they were delicious! We had a blast, and it was a perfectly Italian Thursday!

5. Dog children to children children. Confession: I take a LOT of photos of Taz and Bugs. They provide endless entertainment, and if you ask me, they're adorable. If the number of photos I take of these dogs is any indication of the number of photos I will take of our future children, sorry, not sorry!

I mean, come on! So cute!

Have a great weekend!!