Life is good: Lake Barcis

I am so awful at blogging. It has been like a month. Well, life is super busy and crazy and at the end of the day I just don't feel like messing with adding pictures to my blog (to be honest!). So I will tell you about what we did this weekend and then try to back pedal and get caught up (haha maybe, I still need to blog Disneyland in February...).

Life in Italy is, well interesting. I mean it is fine, just so different than Utah. I'm not going to lie that I lay in bed a lot at night and think about how amazing Utah was and how much I miss it. I might even think about what I wouldn't give to be 5 minutes away from the Layton Hills Mall again! I miss the convenience of everything more than I thought possible. I just want Target, Cafe Rio, HomeGoods!!!

So anyway.... Quinn started Asilo (Italian Preschool) and she seems to really like it. Her teacher is very nice and speaks English which makes me feel better about her being there because at least I know she can talk to somebody (as well as the other handful of American kiddos that are there). Between her school, dance and soccer our days are pretty busy. Everything is about 20 minutes from our house so I do a lot of driving in the car. Which is super fun because Finley hates the car! Weekends are a blur honestly. Dave is home and we try to get things done on the house but with 3 kids and trying to relax, that is slow going. I hate how our house doesn't feel like home, I know (hope) that it will but right now it doesn't and that is hard.

Ok- on to this weekend. I love this picture Dave took of the kids, it is perfect. I think Q was pouting about not getting her way, Leo is a mess and is hitting Finley with a bat and Fin is outta here! It sums up our life. Also, I love that I can start putting the girls in matching outfits, in this case pants!

We ran a few errands on Saturday morning and then decided to head up to Lake Barcis which is about 30 minutes away from us. It was so pretty and I feel like we will be back there many times. Next time we are going to take Charlie with us because he would love it. The water is so pretty and there are playgrounds all around the walking trails. The air is crisp and it feels like fall. We walked around a bit and let the kids play. Then we decided to go take the train that rides around the lake. The man at the station didn't speak much English and we don't speak much Italian so we tried to communicate the best we could about when the next train was. We just missed the one train so the kids got popsicles and we waited for the it to come back around. While we waited the man was shocked we had 3 kids (which is a large family here) and he looked at Dave and said, "Bravo!"

This slide was super fun. While at this play area Dave took Quinn to wash her hands and I was holding Finley. Leo kept trying to climb on top of the monkey bars and I kept yelling, "no!" I could not get him to stop and so I was going to put Finley on the ground and grab him so he wouldn't fall on his head and a nice man came over and said "no" and grabbed him. He of course started crying and ran right over to me. I was thankful that guy came over and grabbed our little monkey!

Some nice views of the lake.

We piled on the train and had a wonderful ride. The weather that day was perfect and the train ride around the lake and up to a little mountain town was perfect. During the ride I asked Leo if he was having a fun time and he simply said, "no." I do think he had a great time!

After we got back to where we got on the train, it was going back around the lake again (the part we missed earlier) so we asked if we could stay on and the man told us we could. We thought we were just getting a little bit of a longer ride. As we pulled up to the stop the people in front of us (who spoke English) told us that they thought this was the last stop for the day. They went and asked the driver and it was! We were not near our car and were not sure what we were going to do. We got off the train and strolled through town in the direction of our car. We ended up finding a path that went around the lake and to our car. It ended up being my favorite part of the whole day was walking back to our car. It was a great family day and I loved getting to spend time together at such a beautiful place.

We couldn't stop and enjoy any wine or gelato in town because we literally had zero euro so we just walked through and admired the cute little town!

On our drive home we came to an area where we had to wait for another car to pass so that we could go (this is pretty common here) but I was cracking up at the man walking that was hugging the wall so he wouldn't get smashed.

On Sunday we got up and went into our town and enjoyed a cappuccino and croissants. We found a new bar (cafe) that had opened and bought some yummy apple juice. The kids played on the playground and then we went and found Charlie his new easily digestible dog food. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry (because it is cheaper on Sundays) and hanging out around the house. It was a great day and the perfect end to a fun weekend. They always go by much too fast.