Home Again

"It's MY house!" "Home sweet home" "I love my house, my bed...I'm so happy to be home in Italy!" These have been the words of our children repeated over and over this week. What a blessing for us to see, hear and experience their excitement for returning to Italy. Their adjustment seems to be coming more quickly than ours, but in time this too will all seem normal to us again.

We arrived safely with a small delay in getting in on Wednesday. The kids did well despite only sleeping for a few hours during our travels. For the first time, we left precious items on the plane that we were unable to retrieve. Thankfully the loss of Emma's "Hushie" frog and Samuel's new Leapster and games did not turn in to a major loss of self and hysteria in the Frankfurt airport. We had so much stuff it's amazing we didn't leave more things behind. Apart from that everything went super smooth. We were warmly greeted by Brad, Pino & Adrianna who were amazingly able to get all of our luggage in the two cars.

Our friends from church did more than give our house a quick clean. Everything was thoroughly cleaned from the drapes to the floors and looked awesome. Not to mention the dinner left for us and a stocked refrigerator. They literally saved my back and a week's worth of cleaning. It was nice to just be able to dig in to our bags and begin to put things away. The house has a lingering smell from the flooding and mildew that followed. We thought our heat was turned on a month ago but there was a block in the gas line and so there was no heat to dry out the basement. It was fixed and turned on the day before we arrived. There were a few books that were sustained water damage, we lost our printer, but the carpet seems like it can be salvaged once it dries out thoroughly and gets a good scrubbing. And the guitars do not seem to be damaged although there is evidence of the cases being wet. All of our cardboard storage boxes in the garage are ruined but thankfully most everything inside them was in plastic bags so only 2 large bags of clothes are needing a good wash before they will be repacked this time in plastic storage bins.

Upon arrival our first task was to clear the driveway of icy snow so we could get our van out of the garage. It took Jonathan 8 hours to do so! It was a great way for him to reconnect with our neighbors as he had to borrow a pick ax and shovels since the stores were out of stock in the shovel department. He was able to have great conversations with all of our surrounding neighbors and everyone seems happy to see us back. So although it was an all day back breaking task there was no better thing than for him to be exposed outside all day to people coming and going. Our neighbor, Angela, even gave him a hand for a while.

On Friday, our van was in the shop all day getting tuned up to pass it's overdue inspection. Therefore, Samuel and Emma could not go to school. They will start on Monday instead. The kids have been sleeping in until 9am each day and would sleep longer if it weren't for us stirring them up. Saturday we did the most insane but necessary thing by going grocery shopping. It will be my last time shopping on a Saturday! One could hardly manuever a cart through the aisles and the lines were horrendously long even with every one of the 50 registers open!

It was a blessing to be back in church today and warmly greeted by everyone. There were new births, deaths, marriages and so much more than took place in our absense. We are anxious to reconnect with so many people. Continue to pray for us in the language as we are most definitely rusty. We are filled with joy to be back and thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers for us as we reaclimate to life in Italy.