W33 of Y6

Senior Recognition

Connor's senior year was definitely unusual... to say the least. 

In an effort to recognize the seniors as graduation approaches the PTSA made these pictures of all the kids and put them up in front of the high school.   

This was Connor's first time coming back to the base or seeing his High School in 3 months.

This was such a nice thing to do for the kids.  It's not much but it was something!

We enjoyed lunch at banditos afterwards to celebrate.  Doesn't Connor look thrilled? lol!

W24-32 of Y6

Hiatus

This has been the longest break that I've taken from my blog since I started it in 2008.  Over the last 9 weeks our lives have been so different, every day has been the same, and the future has never felt more uncertain.  Quarantine brought out the best and worst in all of us.  We are all looking forward to some normalcy soon.  

Things are starting to slowly come back to life in Italy. Very, very slowly though.  The kids are pretty much done with school (virtually). There are still classes but no more assignments will be given out.  This allows them to make up missing assignments before the official last day of school.  However, the teachers already said that they will use the better of the 2 grades between quarter 3 and quarter 4 so now none of the kids are motivated to do anything else this quarter. 

Jeremy is officially working from home for the foreseeable future and I have been tasked to assist with the recovery process for services to be approved to start being open on the post.  This requires me to go into work nearly every day. 

Mother's Day 2020

The day before Mother's Day the Italian Prime Minister put out a decree allowing people to leave their homes for non-essential reasons.  This allowed us to be able to go to the lake, enjoy a short hike, and have a picnic!  We needed this so much!!!

Whitney's a teenager!!!

Whitney had a less than normal 13th birthday but was a good sport about it!

She requested cinnamon rolls for her birthday breakfast!

She wanted vanilla cake, vanilla frosting, and vanilla ice cream! :)

She definitely got a little spoiled for her birthday to make up for not having a party

I love you baby girl!!

We celebrated the rest of the night by watching Trolls

 Memorial Day weekend

Before Memorial Day weekend we got permission to travel for leisure within our region.  Luckily for us, we live in the Veneto region which includes so many wonderful locations... such as, Lake Garda.

We haven't done a pic like this in a long time!

It was a little foggy as we arrived to the Lake but it was still such a beautiful sight to see!

Once again, Jeremy totally scored the absolute best house for our weekend getaway!

Aiden and I found this little tunnel by our rental house that led us right to the beach

You can't tell but we are on bikes!  Our house was right next to the best bike path that went all the way around the lake.  We couldn't go the whole way because half of the lake is in the Lombardy region.  But we thoroughly enjoyed riding and walking along the lake where we could all weekend long!

It was amazing, and also a little bit creepy, to see Lake Garda this time of year without tourists.  The lake is packed almost year round but especially this time of year.   

Our house had the best views and the perfect weather had us outside every waking moment

Much deserved and needed relaxation!

Hanging out with my baby girl!

Exploring the town

Playing Mother May I!

Views from my morning walks - one of my favorite parts of the weekend.

This was a much needed escape for all of us. 

W22&23 of Y6

This is one of the rare occasions that Amy asked me to contribute to the blog, so I obliged.

Not a lot of pictures from the past few weeks I guess.  And this entry requires some written description so I was drafted!  Not all that exciting I know... but if you the reader are locked down like we are then you'll have plenty of time to read this post! 

So today is the 21st of March, 2020.  We are heading into our fourth week of lock down here in Italy due to the outbreak of the Corona virus or COVID-19.  It turns out that Northern Italy, where we live, is the most affected place in the entire world.  It started in a place called Wuhan, China.  As of today most places in China are under better control with not as many new cases and deaths falling to almost zero.  Alternatively, Italy had 627 deaths just yesterday and the total number of cases is now exceeding 50,000.  Today we could hear speakers outside being driven around on trucks which blared that we should stay inside our houses and not leave for any reason.  We are under severe movement restrictions not only by order of the Italian government but also by order of the Senior Ranking Officer of the Army whose jurisdiction we fall under.  We cannot go 200 meters beyond our house at any time unless we're going to the pharmacy or grocery store or work.  Amy is still going to work every day.  Her job is deemed essential by those in charge on post.  My agency (GSA) has mandated that all of their employees work from home full time.  We actually are not allowed to go into the office or we will be disciplined.  All stores are closed.  All restaurants are closed.  All gyms, all schools, all churches... everything is closed.  Something like this has never happened in recorded history.  This is the first time... and we're living through it.  So far the biggest sacrifice is that we're bound to stay at home.  We have plenty of food and entertainment and the kids stay busy with schooling online, but it does kind of get to you after a while of being home all the time and the days kind of just blend into one another.  You can't tell weekends from week days, and there is no looking forward.  We had a trip planned for spring break to go to Ireland and that was obviously cancelled.  All international flights all over the world have been cancelled.  We were fortunate to go on our trip over Christmas break which was a two week cruise to Asia.  We returned on January 6 and at that time the virus was already spreading through China.  We returned from that trip just in time.  If we had left just a few weeks later we may have been stranded on the cruise with no where to go.  That has happened to thousands of people all over the world.  So we were fortunate to make it back to Italy.  Even at the end of February we were able to take a vacation to southern Germany for a ski trip.  When we returned from that trip around Feb 25th we started to hear more and more on the news about the spread of the virus.  At first it was limited to just China and we thought it would kind of stay that way, but as the news continued to get worse we noticed that there were more and more cases here in Northern Italy.  Restrictions started happening in selected cities in Italy around March 2... and then a few days later the entire country went into lock down.  A few days after that everything closed and schools closed.  I had a business trip to Germany planned for March 9 to 13 and that was cancelled.  That week the borders closed so if I had gone I may not have been able to make it back.  Many of the European countries have closed their borders in an effort to stem the spread of the virus in their countries.  As of today Spain and France have a considerable number of cases.  In the US it seems from the news that many people don't believe it's real.  It doesn't seem that they're getting consistent guidance from the President.  Each state is instituting varying levels of restrictions but I'm not sure most are taking it serious.  The one thing they ARE doing is hoarding toilet paper.  Not sure that that even makes sense, but it's going on.  My parents sent pictures last night from their grocery store and it seems that most of the shelves are empty.  Not just the tp aisle.  I can see that many people are still going out and gathering and such in the US and I wonder how long that will last.  The thing that is scary about the virus is that you don't see any symptoms for the first week or so and so you're carrying it unknowingly and spreading it.  By the time you realize you have it, sometimes it's too late.  You've already spread it to who knows how many people.  So that's why the logic of social distancing makes sense.  The idea is just to have everyone stay in their house so as not to be around other people spreading the virus unwittingly.  The only way to control it is to keep everyone separated and isolated.  The health care system here in Italy is almost at its breaking point.  I know that in Milan they are having to enlist the help of the Army to move dead bodies to crematories and burial grounds.  The morgues are overwhelmed with all of the dead and can't keep up.  I wonder how large cities are going to cope when and if they get hit as hard as Northern Italy has been hit.  I hope and pray that they somehow avoid all of this and it's not so bad there.  They keep making comparisons to the Spanish flu which hit around 1918 about 100 years ago.  And during that pandemic they noticed that the number of cases decreased when the weather got warmer.  Experts are saying that the virus doesn't do well in the sunlight and warmer weather so everyone is hoping that when the weather warms up and the sun is out more that the growth and spread of the virus will decrease.  In any case, we're here and we're alive and we're not sick... or at least not sick with the virus from what we can tell.  We haven't been tested and Connor and I have had a cough, but no fever so that's a relief.  I'm kind of going a little bit stir crazy here in the house all the time and really envy Amy's ability to leave to go to work every day.  She can go and talk to new people and interact with people.  I took being able to do that for granted before.  I took being able to just walk down the street to visit my local pizzaria for granted.  I can't do any of that any more.  We're all hoping that this whole thing winds down soon.  People keep saying maybe mid to late May that things will be better.  We're all hoping and praying that that is the case.

W21 of Y6

COVID-19 

The Corona Virus has pretty much taken over our lives here. As of this morning there have been 4624 cases in Northern Italy and 197 deaths. Just about all cases have been in the Tuscany, Lombardy, and Veneto regions which is right where we live. So far no Americans have tested positive but we are working around the clock to prepare for this to happen.... and it probably will happen. The ways it's affected our lives: 

1. School.  The kids are going into their 3rd week of virtual school.  They log in to different website and chat groups for "class" every day.  The school issued 1 chrome book to each family.  Luckily we now have 1 computer for each kid but that is not the case for all of the families here. The boys are really good about figuring out the websites and chat groups and knowing what they have to do.  It has been a little more challenging with Whitney though.  The middle school has totally different websites and groups and it's been hard to navigate.  What I love about it though is that she gets to come to work with me every day!  It's actually been really fun to see kids going to work with their parents every day.

She has her own desk right next to mine to sit and do school work all day!  

Our favorite part of our day is going to the Italian Mensa for lunch together

2. Work.  I had a work trip planned for this week to Livorno this week that I had to cancel.  I have been told to put my projects for my job on hold and help some of the other agencies like the Red Cross, USO, Commissary, and PX/AAFES to handle their increased work load.  So, I have been helping the red cross sort the hundreds of boxes they receive almost daily full of donations from the all over the world!!  It's pretty incredible actually.  We used the donations to set up 80 rooms to house potential cases that need to be in quarantine.  Jeremy was supposed to go to Germany next week for work but that has been cancelled.

3. Church.  All churches have been closed and we are told to have church at home with our families.

4. Activities/sports.  Whitney was supposed to go on her last ski trip this weekend but it was cancelled.  Also her tumbling class was cancelled.  Aiden was supposed to start baseball but that has been postponed. Connor was supposed to go to Germany for a European choir competition that he was selected for but it was cancelled.  The play that Jeremy was a part of at Soldiers Theater was cancelled.  The gym has been closed so Jeremy and I have had to find other ways to work out.  I actually have 4 other ladies who come to may office every day and we do different workouts together.  (Whitney did it with us one day and then decided that was enough lol!)

5. Shopping.  The grocery stores have done a pretty good job keeping the shelves stocked. They had to limit customers on base to a set amount of hygine items per customer because people went in there and bought out all the hand sanitizer, bleach, toilet paper, etc... but it's not too bad now.  We did buy some canned and non-perishable type foods to stock up on just in case.  All the malls and other stores though are closed.

Other than this, it's pretty much business as usual. We are hoping this starts getting better soon but feel like that won't happen for a while. Luckily, we have all been pretty healthy for now. 

W20 of Y6

Birthday Boy!!

Jeremy didn't have a great birthday.  His back is still killing him and he had to work all day, but... we still managed to have some cake so it wasn't all ruined!

That's a lot of candles!!

Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Also this week.....  Due to the Coronavirus in Italy all Italian and American schools in the area were closed.  

The kids were thrilled until Thursday when all of their assignments were posted online.  They have to do virtual school until further notice.  

As of today there have been 1128 cases of this virus and 29 deaths in Northern Italy.