Una vita piena e meravigliosa ....

Questo weekend è stato molto intenso, abbiamo passato due giornate belle e piene, lavorando insieme, divertendoci insieme, creando ricordi, imparando cose nuove, insomma essendo un famiglia a tutto tondo, proprio come piace a me. Devo dire che il lunedì è iniziato sulla scia positiva della domenica ed abbiamo fatto un bel pò di cose, compreso affrontare l'improvvisa tromba d'aria che si è abbattuta sulla zona nel pomeriggio ( tutto ok per fortuna ). Visto che le giornate sono state così piene dividerò il resoconto in tre post, questo primo con le foto del nostro neonato orto e di attività più generiche, i successivi due riguardano 'l'arte di fare le candele' e l' 'arte di fare saponette', per queste attività ci siamo ispirati ai dvd delle meravigliose West Ladies che ci sono finalmente arrivati dopo varie vicissitudini doganali che li hanno tenuti in viaggio per circa due mesi.

Dunque dicevo, finalmente le nostre piantine invernali sono a dimora. Abbiamo messo piselli, verza, cime di rapa e poi un paio di esperimenti dei bimbi, lenticchie e fagioli

Ed ecco invece una bella foto di Milla e Seba al 'lavoro' insieme ed il frutto della loro fatica

.............

Final harvest and much more

Today, as every saturday, it has been our cleaning day. We clean both inside the house and outside in the garden. And today we took off the summer kitchen garden. Before that we harvested the last goodies

Here what i harvested today before taking off all the plants to get the soil ready for winter vegetables.

And here a pic of all the canned goods from the summer. We've been really blessed. I still can't believe all this came from a little seed and love. It's incredible.

And these pictures were taken before processing today's harvest. If my memory serves me right at the moment we have something like 8 kilos and half of tomatoe sauce and i think 4 or 5 kilos of eggplants canned in different ways, and then fruit, jams, greenbeans, pesto sauce, and then dryed herbs and frozen herbs and vegetables.

And here one of the 'little ones' waiting to grow in our winter garden

One of our peas plants.

Then while i was mowning the lawn Fabio called for me in the turtles fence to show me something :

an  Argiope Bruennichi

We immediately called for the kids and we all got very excited as we always are when we find new and interesting  insects . We wanted to try to capture it alive, but then we had to poison the little thing ( we couldn't risk to let our new friend to deliver her up to 1200 kids at home, i'm sorry ). Anyways we'll keep it for a while in a glass jar to study it a little more.

Then in the evening we headed to Ostia and while we were driving to the play park we saw all these Carabinieri Horse Trucks, so we parked the car and went closer. We found out at 7:00 there would have been a parade to the main church, so we stayed there watching the horses and talking and learning until they left, at the sound of the beating drums. We were all delighted. After that we went to the playpark and then to Burger King ( a super special treat ) and while we were eating ( we were just behind the main church ) the firework started ! So we went out in the sidewalk and enjoyed the show. It has been a wonderful evening. I wish i had the camera with me, but maybe not having it let me enjoy everything even more.

We really needed a good day :)

Thank God !

Have a wonderful sunday everybody dropping by !

Our week so far

Busy busy busy ! We've been beyond busy this week. Every morning homeschooling is in full gear and every afternoon and evening there re billion of things to do. But ou know what ? I love it this way !! It's beautiful having a full and busy life and knowing why you're doing what you're doing. Thank God for all this.
Anyways, some news from our household. Summer is really ending, no rain yet, but a chilly night wind has lowered the temperature a lot. The kitchen garden is about to be removed to get the ground ready for the winter vegetables that hopefully i'll be able to grow. The tomatoes plants are really worn out, full of green tomatoes that probably never be ripe. I have to find recipes for green tomatoes, every idea is welcome of course. Zucchini is dead and so cucumber, green-beans are quite tired and the sudden wind has killed the last pepperoni. Salad is almost over and basil too. Eggplants are so full i really hope they'll have time to ripe properly. I've been canning almost constantly and i'm drying my herbs for winter use. Here some pictures from our life.

Eggplants, pepperoni and herbs, time to harvest the last goodies from the garden

Learning the 7 notes in a creative way, a water xilophone :)

Every night after dinner we light two candle-lanters and we head to the boys room (it's bigger then the girls room ) and in the otherwise dark room i read to them aloud. At the moment we're reading the firs Harry Potter. The kids love this, they sit still ( heheheh not easy to run around in the darkness ) and carefully listen to the story, we discuss difficult words, we talk... then they take turns blowing the candles ( for example today was Milla's and Seba's turn )

Fishing math, Whatever i can turn into a fishing session will do the trick at the moment. Practising with the abacus, it took me a lot of creativity and a late night of work, but the kids liked.

Milla's.

For science we're studying the different parts of a flower, couple of days ago we completed the drawing, this morning while they were doing art and fishing math i cut the different part from coloured paper so the could 'build' the flower writing the names on every part of it.

Today's art. We talked about warm colours and cold colours. Then they had to draw somthing related only with warm colours and somethins with cold ones. The first drawing is Leo's warm colours, a volcano and a dinosaur. The second one is Gaia's cold colours, it's a wood in the night, there's a river and the moon reflect into the water of the river. I loved it.

Hope everybody stopping by had a beautiful week so far. Enjoy your loved ones, build good memories, fill your life with happiness :)

Back home !

So here we are. We came back yesterday, but only now i can find sometime to come here.Our little holiday went well, we had fun, had some life lesson, we visited nice places and in general enjoyed our family in a more friendly environment. Coming back was hard becasue this is really a place we don't belong. I was happy to get back at my houseworks and garden and everyday life, that i really love, but so so upset to be here in this place again. I so so hope my preyers will become true at some point and we will sell here, but still i realize that this time of wait is fruitful anyways, we are learning so much and putting all our life in the right perspective and our priorities as well. I feel like now i have a more clear vision of the right path to walk for our family, a vision i didn't have only few months ago so i have faith everything will happen at the right moment for us. Today i had a new kind of feeling. I felt as a whole. I could put together all the different sides of my being and enjoyed the feeling of living the life i wanted, made of so many different colours and shadows. I hope to have this feeling more often. As for the last ten days i have some pics to show,hope you'll enjoy. Now we're moving a bit things around at home to start the homeschooling adventure. It's so so great, i've always felt so bad when the kids had to go back to school, and now finally this won't happen. Thank you God.
I wish you all happiness and faith and joy in your life.

In the woods, walks, slides, making friends ( four legged and two legged, but i won't post the pics of the 'two legged ones' since i didn't ask permission to their parents ) finding interesting and huge worms, building 'loghomes'

He was looking as an angel isn't it ?

Learning how to start a campfire and cooking meat over it

More woods










Bagni S. Filippo, natural thermal water coming out from the rocks in the woods. Kids had so much fun here. And it was so ... weird... this is one of the first places me and PapaF visited as a young couple with no kids(yet) and now we went there as parents of 4 kids old enough to fully enjoy the place. Time goes by, but i'm so grateful for all i had in my life.

In the medieval Castle of Piancastagnaio, and the view from it. The last one is the Radicofani tower. That day we were meant to go there, but since Milla was recovering and Seba had just started fever himeself we opted for a closer place.

p.s. health problems are slowing getting better even if not solved yet. Milla Seba and me caught some kid of flu\cold during our stay in Tuscany but it seems it was just a 'regular' flu\cold and i hope we'll all get rid of it without more medicines.
p.s.2 Kitchen garden is quite ok. A bit wilder then i left it, but we got 5 more kilos of tomatoes ( now sauce) and plenty of eggplants, greenbeans, salad, pepperoni, basils and other herbs. Thank you God!

Update and bye bye for a while

Oh my, how busy i've been this week. Visit to the doctor, grocery shopping, dentist for Seba - in a hurry of course - and canning canning and more canning, sewing a new shirt for Gaia, trying to recover and .... GETTING READY TO LEAVE FOR TUSCANY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Abbadia San Salvatore and we're staying for 10 days !!! We'll be back on 19th and i know i'll have so much to read from the lovely blogs i follow to be updated on everybody. If in the meantime you feel like leaving some notes i'd love to read them when i'm back :)
But back to the update part. It seems that i'm slowing recovering from this nasty nasty infection i got that gave me all kind of breathing problems, very very scary. I must say the fear i lived in for several days helped me to put my life in perspective again, think well to my priorities, grow in my faith, so probably some way it was what i needed, even if i hope and pray never to live this awful experience again.
As for the family, we're fine, some minor health problem for Seba, but nothing bad. I see we're getting in the homeschooling mood. The kids have started doing school work just for fun while i do my chores or cook. We're very relaxed about it at the moment, first of all i want that they start loving school ( meaning *learning* ) again. And then i must say that now i trust that everything will turn out just fine. I just know this is the right thing to do now and i only want to enjoy it now. I don't know how long it will last, depending on the path our lives will take, but NOW i know is the thing for us. As it's beautifully said in the documentary A Journey Home what we need right now is to go back home, united as a family .
And then one of my pride and joy, my garden. We're having a bountiful harvest this year thank God. I think i've already canned ( beside what we've eaten daily ) some 6 or 7 kg of tomato sauce, maybe 4 or 5 kg of eggplants, almost one kilo of pesto sauce and 4 or 5 kilos of cucumber and half kilo of greenbeans beside many herbs drying. I'm so so grateful and amazed by all this. Working the land is so beautiful i so hope this will be my future or at least a part of it. I know i'll be worried for my garden the 10 days we're gone, but we should have taken care of everything and we'll find more ripe vegetables once we'll be back.
But now let's do the images do the talking, some pics of the last week.

Our wonderful harvest, of vegetables and herbs. I can't help but feeling so grateful and provided for. Is such a warm feeling.

Some outdoor fun with water filled baloons.

Gaia and Seba wanted to clean our *pantry* (not really, just that white cabinet in which we keep our supplies ). This is just a part of the canned goods we have.

And this is just i little treat i bought ouselves when i last went doing grocery shopping. Here we use corn only as flour and it's kinda hard to find it in its natural state. So when i found corncob (? is this the right word ? ) at 69 cent i bought 2 . Kids found them so fun and nice :)

Well i think this is all. As i said we're leaving tomorrow morning and we won't have any internet over there on the mountain, so see you all ( or better read you all ;) ) in 10 days !

Have a lovely summer everybody, enjoy your family, hug your kids and kiss their heads and don't forget your dear spouse :)

Eccomi qui

Accipicchia è già agosto. E' proprio il caso di dirlo, quando c'è la salute c'è tutto. I miei problemi non si sono ancora risolta del tutto, ma lentamente miglioro. Vorrei stare bene subito, ma so che ogni cosa accade al momento opportuno, e mi rendo conto che il riposo forzato, la paura e la preoccupazione mi aiutano a riflettere, a dare prospettive ed inclinazioni diverse alla mia vita, alle mie priorità, alla mia fede.

Innanzitutto vorrei ringraziare la cara Sybille per avermi assegnato l' Honest Scrap Tag

qualche giorno fa. Grazie mille ! Prometto di tenere fede alle condizioni nei prossimi giorni :) .

Che cosa è successo ultimamente degno di nota nel nostro piccolo angolo di mondo ? Beh le piccole grandi cose di ogni giorni, ricordi futuri che nascono da piccoli quotidiani avvenimenti, senza bisogno di grandi cose, grandi spostamenti ... vediamo un pò ...

Cominciamo dal raccolto fatto nell'ultima settimana.

Due kg di pomodori da sugo maturi....

Tramutati in polpa odorosa e in seguito in conserva, per condire le nostre paste invernali, condirle di sole, di amore per la terra e per la vita, e per il lavoro umile delle mani.

E mentre si lavora alacremente nell'orto, piccolo prodigio di natura, un pomodorino caduto a terra, una pianta per ogni seme che conteneva. La vita, la spinta alla vita che trabocca letteralmente dalla terra.

Ed ancora, cosa c'è di più emozionante di un intero pasto creato con le verdure dell'orto ? Lo so lo so sono ripetitiva e forse noiosa, ma non riesco a fare a meno di commuovermi nel vedere questo prodigio, questo miracolo della vita rinnovarsi in ogni dove, seme che diventa pianta, pianta che ci dona i suoi frutti, abbondanti e bellissimi, frutti che riempiono la tavola, che ci danno gusto ed energia, che ci riempiono gli occhi con i loro colori, che appagano il tatto con le loro consistenze. Ho raccolto le prime due melanzane dell'anno. Il viola era così incredibile, me le sono rigirate fra le mani, mostrando a Gaia in estasi il miracolo del creato. E la consistenza, la pelle vellutata ... una meraviglia. Le ho tagliate a fette, cosparse di cubetti di pomodoro ( si si dell'orto ;) ) e di origano ( che lo dico a fare .... anche l'origano è nostro :) ) una mezz'ora nel forno e non resta altro da fare che essere grati per quanto abbiamo ...

E poi un piccolo amico, che per un paio di giorni ha stazionato sul nostro melo, ma abbiamo dovuto poi allontanarlo perchè il suo appettito era un pò troppo vorace per le dimensioni modeste del nostro alberello ....

E poi, Milla con il costumino da bagno nuovo, che aiuta a lavare la macchina, o meglio che canticchia volteggiando fra spruzzi d'acqua e farfalle, proprio come si addice ad una fatina ...

Ed ancora, il nostro forno solare, fatto con una scatola per la pizza e carta stagnola, che grazie al sole ci ha regalato una fragrante e gustosa piadina al prosciutto crudo e caciotta ( incredibile, il formaggio si è fuso, la piadina è diventata croccantina, funziona perfettamente, bisogna stare solo attenti a non metterlo sotto l'innaffiatore - come abbiamo fatto con il nostro primo prototipo qualche settimana fa sic ! )

E per concludere la nuova passione bislacca di Seba, i castelli di carte. Qui di seguito la foto di quello che hanno realizzato lui e PapaF ieri mattina , un lavoro certosino durato quasi un' ora.

Per finire una riflessione. Mi rendo conto che ci sono tante cose che ho sempre dato per scontato. E che invece sono un grande dono che ci è stato fatto.

L'olfatto è una di queste cose, il meraviglioso dono di poter annusare un fiore, o di scherzare per un odore non proprio ... gradevole, un dono, grande dono di cui sono immensamente grata.

E il respiro. L'aria che entra nel naso e percorre le vie aeree. Se presto attenzione riesco a seguirne il percorso fino ai bronchi, sento le particelle muoversi, rifornirmi di ossigeno. Anche di questo dono sono grata.

Buona settimana a tutti !