This August we took a break from England to spend some time in Italy.  Over the course of four weeks, we covered three thousand miles.  I learned a lot about what three thousand miles means to our little family. 3,000 miles requires 25+ wraps, 3 bags of baby bell, 3 cases of water, 8 little... Continue Reading →

So…there’s “shut your plug ‘ol”, wishing someone would be quiet, there's “bathwater down the plughole” also known as drains in the US and then there are plug end receptacles.  Who would have thought that these would ever be a thing I would feel the need to talk about? As we have lived in several countries,... Continue Reading →

6 days in.  5 days with no hot water.  4 trips to the hardware store. 3 huge buckets of paint. 4 new power tools.  5 tubs of patching compound.  I’m done. So we spent Friday in Alba and Saturday in Acqui Terme.  Friday was a lovely day; it was a public holiday in Italy.  We... Continue Reading →

One of the things we were very excited about in this house is that some rooms had the original arched brick ceilings.  They have been plastered over so we had them pressure washed before we arrived with all our furniture, etc.  They warned us that it was a messy process and would likely take some... Continue Reading →

I feel like hot water had attained snuffleupagus status during our first week.  We heard about it and other people had it but there was no real proof of it at our house. I lasted from our arrival on Friday night until Sunday without baring my soul to the freezing cold water.  But by Sunday,... Continue Reading →

Neil had been here a few days so he drove to Milan to pick Rowan and I up on Friday evening.  Again, it was late by the time we got to the house but we had a celebratory glass of wine and then headed for bed.  It was SO strange to think that we were... Continue Reading →

We decided to send an advance team (Neil) to Italy ahead of me and Ro flying down on Friday.  He had a short list of stuff: internet, cut grass, get gas turned on and utilities sorted, stop by the bank.  Easy to accomplish, right? After a lot of research, we figured out that it was... Continue Reading →

We have so much stuff but we don’t have enough stuff.  We have been planning the magical move of things to Italy and trying to figure out what we need to bring with so that we don’t have to buy it in Italy (where we would have to find it) and so we can leave... Continue Reading →

We are headed to Italy to close on this lovely house.  We are so excited but have had to tell a bit of white lie to our daughter as she gets extremely upset when she misses school and we have to be in Italy on Friday to sign the papers, etc.  I think she will... Continue Reading →

We had to physically sign the initial documents so the papers went to Switzerland, then Surrey, then to us in London.  I got to meet the fiancé of one of the sellers as he kindly dropped the papers by my office.  We signed and sent them off to Italy – we’re now “officially” committed. So…once... Continue Reading →