W32 of Y4

Field Trip

I love living in Europe and being able to travel to so many interesting places and learn about so many different cultures that are all relatively close.  HOWEVER, I think the one thing that I love MOST about living overseas is our "campus" lifestyle.  All 5 of us go to school, work, gym, grocery shopping, doctor appointments, after school activities, sports practices/games, etc...  together every day.  Our commute is only 10-15 minutes from my house and there are school busses and shuttles that come right to our house and transport the kids so they can come and go when they want.  I can pop in to see any one of my kids during lunch or a school activity and I always see Jeremy multiple times during any given day.  This sure is different compared to our lives in Kansas before moving to Italy where I had to commute 45 min to 1 hour each way for work!  

Today, Whitney's 5th grade class walked from their school to the movie theater to watch a Wrinkle in Time and then they walked to the big track and field right across from my office for a picnic lunch.  It was so fun to look out my window and watch them playing. 

And, yes... it was raining on and off the whole time but no one cared!

Olympic Gymnasts

Today Whitney got to attend a special gymnastics clinic run by 3 Olympic Gymnasts, including Laurie Hernandez, 2016 Gold Medalist!  

During the Q&A, this little guy asked Laurie if she had a boyfriend! LOL!

Whitney asked the girls if they ever got injured doing gymnastics.  I loved Laurie's answer...  she told the girls about several injuries that she's endured but said everyone falls and gets hurt, even Olympians, but that you get back up and keep working and keep trying and are better because of it.  

Whitney loved this!  What a great opportunity!

Memorial Day Weekend

Jeremy took the scouts to the American Cemetery in Florence for their annual Memorial Day ceremony.  They went Saturday morning to help prepare the cemetery for the event and camp out for a couple of days.

The boys spent all day Sunday getting the cemetery ready for Monday's ceremony.  They worked side by side with the Italian troops to clean each and every cross and place over 8,700 flags at the graves of the 5th Army that died during WWII as they entered Italy. 

The American and Italian troops

What did Whitney and I do all weekend?

Long over due deep cleaning and reorganizing EVERYTHING!

W31 of Y4

Italy vs America

Aiden's baseball team had an extra game this week against a local Italian baseball team.

It was a great game.  The 2 teams were pretty equally matched but in the end they won.  

Whitney's 11!!

Whitney has been counting down to her birthday for the last 2 months.  :)

She was up and ready for school earlier than usual.  She couldn't wait to go to school on her birthday so she could wear the "birthday hat".

I can't believe she is almost as tall as me at age 11! 

She requested pizza instead of cupcakes.   Her friends seemed pretty happy about that!

I did sneak in one cupcake just for the birthday girl

The boys sit on one end and the girls on the other.... lol!

These kids had me cracking up at recess!  They kept coming up with different poses and asking me to take pictures of them.  I was pretty impressed with some of the things they came up with!

They're all making a 'W' for Whitney

Whitney was loving all of the attention! 

Kayla even got into action for the party and got groomed.... she looks so pretty!

After school we told Whitney we wanted to give her her birthday present early, before all the kids showed up for the party

I bought my coworkers used bike because Whitney has outgrown hers.  This was really just a decoy "present", but she genuinely seemed happy about it. 

Then we told her to ride her bike down the driveway leading her to the back of the house, where her REAL present was waiting!

Jeremy and his friend spent the entire day setting this thing up.  

A well deserved break! lol!

Whitney and her friends were sooooooo thankful and happy!!!  (Kayla too! lol!)

Next was setting up our "movie theater" for the party.  I had to include a picture of Jeremy's MacGyver skills....  He creates a great sound system when he puts the large speaker inside the cooler.  After our last outdoor movie party I accidentally fried our Blue-ray player.  We had a DVD player but Whitney wanted to watch the new Jumanji and that was only available in Blue-ray, so we borrowed a Blue-ray player from one of our friends.  We set everything up and tested it out and everything was working perfectly!

As kids came in they had some pizza and decorated a T-Shirt while we waited for it to get dark enough for the movie

The kids were very creative!

Singing happy birthday while Jeremy protected the flames from blowing out on the cake

So many nice presents!!

All the kids were saying "start the movie already!"

After we loaded it up and got through the previews we pushed play on the Blue-ray player and it would not play.  Nothing we did would work.  We did not have a remote and could not play a movie without it.  So, we hooked up our DVD player and tried to play a different movie but the kids didn't like any of our other movies.  They all voted to go inside to watch Jumanji on the TV.  I couldn't believe it!  After all of our hard work to set this up just to have it fail because of the remote.  So sad..... 

The kids were all good sports about it though and we were able to watch it inside. 

Good night!!

Breakfast of champions!!

Sweet girls!  Now... go home! lol! :)
I hope you liked your birthday Whitney!