Tired as a Mother

Just another day in this perpetually sleep deprived life of mine. Why can't I sleep you might wonder...well tonight...My oh so lovely father is snoring in the other room, sounds like a freight train is coming through..or maybe a tornado just hit on the street next to us. I can here every time my brother turns over in the room next to me because the floors squeak. The lady in the apartment above us likes walking loudly in heels right above my room. The guy in the apartment next door to ours must be rearranging his entire house, the cars are honking, the dog down the street is barking, our neighbors have decided to have a heated discussion outside the apartment building, it's cold and rainy and as I already mentioned above this beautiful house....squeaks, creaks, snaps, pops, it might as well talk! But honestly it's kind of nice to have some alone time to think at night! Ah...the thinking. Wouldn't it be just exquisite, if our brains came with off switches!?!? But unfo...

Ah Milano....we have an Apartment! :D Wahoooo! What a relief! No more living out of suitcases, smelly, wrinkly, smushed clothes, sleeping on "porch like cots", or sharing 5 square feet of space with 4 Americans! That’s something to celebrate in and of itself!! The apartment is actually very pleasant, w/ 4 bedrooms! :) Room for quests, as well as Corey and I to have our own rooms! Yet, there are some things we have found quite intriguing to say the least, such as the washing machine! Picture, four American people squished into a closet i.e. the laundry room) like sardines, crisscross-apple sauce, scratching their heads trying to figure out how in the world the washing machine works as of course...it’s in Italian! Surprise, Surprise! And the only thing we have to go off of is the millimeter size pictures next to the words, a leaf, a tree, a racecar, and a caution cone. What do those mean exactly?? Needless to say we still haven't really figured it out..After 4 and a half ...

Ah, we have arrived, in uhm...well...the UK/The United Kingdom/ England/Great Britain, it's all the same! So you can call it whatever your heart desires! As Churchill once stated, we're two country's separated by a common language.   We may speak the same language but we are defintely far from the same! While we drive on the right (yes, right as in right/wrong;) they drive on the left! And as we all have seen in the movies they actually have their steering wheels on what would be our "passenger side", the right side. So, as our plane landed, and we collected our baggage, we saw our nice British driver standing with the sign with our name on it. Once again yes like the movies. But as we approached the car..and he went to the passenger side, I kinda wondered if he was expecting one of us to drive ourselves to our hotel. Alright, Alright, I'm totally exaggerating but it did take my brain a second to remember, that that is normal! First we started in Cambridge w...

SO now I'm up at 1 a.m typing this....why you may ask?? 3 reasons. #1. I spent the last hour and a half typing up this entire post, only to, as I hit spell check have the entire browser close, and 2 page long blog post, fall somewhere into outer space never to be returned again. Lessoned learned though! This one was typed in Microsoft Word! #2 reason why I am up at 1 a.m, I can't sleep because it's the middle of the day in the U.S and clearly my body isn't quite adjusted to Milan time. It better hurry up though or I'm gonna start drinking Benadryl through a straw until I chemically induce myself to sleep so I can function. And reason #3. My oh so lovely brother can't sleep either and is playing Angry Birds with the volume as load as it can go, so I can hear Birds, chirping and being flung through sling shots across a screen...gotta love that noise.   Alright, more about Italy I know! Let's start with the people..everyone dresses very nice to say the least, ...

As most of you probably will know, in less then 48 hours, I will be leaving  the lil', pleasant, city of Peoria, for the Up-tight, Milano, Italia for a year. This has been a LONG time coming and I now have mixed emotions about leaving :). In February, my parents came to me with this Idea, and I immediately rejected the Idea, stating I would do anything, as to not leave home. I was more than upset with the idea and began for the next 6 months to pray, that something would happen and my parents would change their minds, or monkeys would fall from the sky and all flights would be suspended forever! As my parents continued, to speak of nothing other than, Italy, and how wonderful it would be....and blah, blah, blah. But as you most of you will come to find out, my praying clearly did not work, and God had an entirely different plan for me, than the one I had developed for myself. So in preparing for our journey, we have spent months in government offices, we have gotten ...