Round Up!

today is a sad day on the ranch. we sold our babies. around 250,000 pounds of them. we have lots of moaning momma cows tonight. it was sure exciting watching the cowboys round up, drive, weigh and sort the calves! lots of noise dirt and sweat. those cowboys sure were cute!

Eggs Beautiful Eggs

GeoTagged, [N28.95728, E95.96403]

after 19 weeks of fussing, feeding, petting and pampering we have eggs! molly and dolly, two of our rhode island red triplets, have begun laying. jack the rooster is very proud i'm sure! they have finally stopped flying the coop to lay outside their pen and have taken to the beautiful nesting condo nino built for them. we get 2-3 per day and we are happy with that! the hens are doing a great job.

Blogging mobile

this is a test of the emergency blogging system. I feel a need to blog and not a single computer is in sight. except of course for my trusty iPhone. that's a computer right? so here's my first attempt at mobile blogging. it might actually result in a few more posts.
:-)

Americani!

our first l s t group is here! we are very excited. me in particular. i came to italy with l s t (let's start talking) in 1988 to vicenza for 6 weeks with friends from pepperdine and really enjoyed serving in that capacity. now here is our own long-stay l s t group. wayne, rachel, zach and erin. wonderful people. i almost wrote 'kids'...as it was noted by wayne, i think, that i went with l s t the year before he was born. so either i'm old or they're kids.
kids or not, they have a great love for the Lord and an enthusiasm that will be contagious among the people here. italians are slow to attach themselves, or open up, but once they do you are theirs, and the church has already become attached to these, yes, kids. i can't wait till sunday when all the church can meet them.

we don't have the readers we would like as of today, but there is time and the main goals are 1) to get people reading the Bible!!! and 2) to get people connected with those in our church. i'm sure that will happen. God works things the way He wants them working and as long as we make ourselves available to be worked through, it'll get done. a nice note, that when i was showing them one of the parks nearby (the villa), a boy called to me and i turned around. it was gabriele from the l s t group 2 years ago! we had lost contact with him and i was so pleased to see him and he us. perhaps God intends for him to reconnect...i hope so. be praying for him, as it seems that he is entangled in some activities he shouldn't be... but as i said, maybe this is the reason he needs to reconnect. he is such a sweet boy and i remember how he loved reading the Bible...so many questions!

what a great time to be here...i do wish we could stay longer, but as we say, 'come Dio vuole'...as the Lord wills.

Torna a Sicilia

well i know it isn't 'torna a sorrento', but we didn't come to sorrento. it's sicily and here we are at the foot of etna, who still smokes in the day and glows at night, and reminds us that although she changes shape a bit each year, she stands a witness to time and it's passing.
after a year and a half in the states we are back in italy again! we are all so happy to be here, to see our family (yes all 300 of them) and to fellowship with our church family again.
although chase is in the throes of teenhood, he still touches me with his little comments...we were in london and exhausted from the first leg of the trip, and he turns to me and says, with enthusiasm, "only eight hours till we get to italy!" i moaned and he looked at me like, why are you moaning? i love that they all have come to love both places completely. all five of us would divide in half if we could, and stay both places at once. one day we hope to have some kind of situation where we can spend 6 months in each...truly one foot on either side of the pond.

i haven't seen michela but 2-3 hours since we've been here. she and her cousin/sister cleide have been joined at the hip since they were reunited the other day. i'm happy to see them so happy. pure joy in one another's company. two 13-year old girls who can't stop smiling and laughing? bottle that and sell it and you'll be a millionaire! chase is in hog heaven with all his cousins and friends from church, plus the autonomy that comes with being a boy in a male dominated society. here boys go out at night starting at about 11 years old...not that he does, but he can, and just that knowledge is empowering apparently.
anne-marie is having the harder time, although still enjoying her cousins. she is kind of in between groups and really has no one her age /gender. she's contenting herself with the littler girls, her 12 year old cousing samuele and 9 year old cousin francesco...until chase arrives and hijacks them. world war 3...or is it 4?

i can't believe how everyone has grown. in the last year and a half there have been two pregnancies and babies born, one nephew got married, one dear friend passed ... it's been eventful. it's kind of hard not to feel left out, having been so far for so long. little by little we find out about neighbors who have moved or died, friends who have split or kids who have gone off the deep end. there is great news too, of course, like the new people at church, baptisms, life changes, growing youth groups, pending mission trips, church camp preparations for the summer... life goes on even without us, and that's what you want...but it's still hard to see your 'kid' grow up and not need you so much any more...

Just Us

yes, it's just us. nino met dia and they were brought the long (really long, like 6 years long) way around to find one another once more, years later, to fall in love, get married and have three wonderful children. now we travel between our two countries and the people we love, our families in texas and in sicily. it's so hard to be just one place! for now we are established in texas, dia homeschools the kids: chase, 14, michela, 13 and anne-marie 11, and nino roasts fabulous italian espresso and sells it to his fortunate customers.
we have three kids, one dog, pepper, who is half black lab and half bassett hound...what a combination, but perfect for us, ... and chickens. we thought we had 8 hens but long story short, we have 3 hens, 4 roosters and what we think is just a homogeneous black and cream banty. it's too small to be either, we've decided. more on that later.
we have a little land, big enough to have a riding mower and a tractor but not big enough to be a farm, according to the county tax people (:?). we love, love, love being together. we tried putting the kids in school this year and that lasted about a month. we were all miserable, longed for our freedom and to be together again. we do have fun together; we are a loud, brash, passionate and hilarious family. i wouldn't trade us for the world.
i might post in italian once in a while, but if you're really interested just do the google translator...not too tough if you're really interested. so that's it. just us.