The week with the del fabios

 The boys woke up before me and went downstairs and said, "who is in our bedroom?" for I share a room with the 2 of them for the week and I mysteriously arrived over night.  Breakfast over the week is choc milk and biscuits- good start to the day... Today there is a carnivale celebration in the next town so Tommaso dresses up in a clown outfit and we head to the parade. (poor Matteo stays home with a fever). The parade is great. All the different clubs of the town put on a different show, for eg the basketball club all dress up as smurfs. There is a lot of effort put into each- there are cars and trucks and music and dancing and terrific costumes. Kids throw streamers and confetti and dance around. Tommy's clown makeup doesn't come off for a few days at least.  The kids have the next three days off school for carnivale too. Monday we shop and eat gelato and meet joe for lunch.  Tuesday we head to thermal spas in Austria. This is cool: you're in a hot natural spring outside with snow all around and skiers just meters away. There's an indoor part with fun things too like fountains and whirlpools. And there's a separate part for the saunas which I don't particularly like but it's so relaxing up there because there are deck chairs in front of big glass windows facing the snowy mountains. The only thing is you have to be nude in the saunas. Elisa and joe couldn't understand why I didn't want to go in the sauna.  After the spas we go for Austrian dinner at Elisa and joe's fav restaurant. Goulash soup and a giant plate of different kinds of meat- sausage, pork and other delicious things - that is meant to be for 2 people- it feeds the whole family, leaves us full and there is still more on the plate!  Wednesday is Matteo's birthday party. Lots of little 6 and 7 year old boys running around playing games I don't understand but which involve swords and masks and shouting. Lasagna, pizza, sausage rolls, biscotti, a giant cake and a coffee with baileys for the adults. I love espresso with baileys.  I take Tommaso for a walk while Matteo plays with his friends. We don't speak but I sing a bit to fill the silence and it's cute. Thursday I am introduced briefly to... The outlet. I return to it on Friday. Thursday I also go for a run around aiello ( the first in three months!). It is beautiful running through Italy's countryside and it is such a warm sunny day. I run through a sweet very small town called joannis uannis and around the back of aiello. It is really nice but afterwards I am completely spent. And the next day ooh I feel it in every muscle in my body. It's the first and last for a while. In the afternoon we pick up the boys from school and stroll and then we go and watch Tommy's basketball match. He hasn't played for a few weeks because he's been sick and so he is very unimpressed with his performance and blames it on the fact that he was playing against a tall big older boy. It's fun and very cute to watch and daniella and Sylvi (Joe's mum) come to watch too.  Friday morning I outlet shop big time- too big. I ride the bike there and it is a lovely sunny day I get sweaty quickly. The backdrop of patchy snowy mountains is a delightful bonus. In the afternoon elisa, tommy and i visit a town that was destroyed by an earthquake. It is not far from aiello. We stop by the church and it is very interesting because they rebuilt it keeping the original remaining parts as the foundations. You can see on the inside the walls of the original change half way up where the new building begins. Next to the church is a small museum of three naturally mummified people. The were found naturally preserved and were now on display. They were gross.  The town is also famous for it's lavender and we pop into a very purple perfumed store to see all things that could possibly be made from lavender.  Saturday we rise early and hit the slopes. The mountain is called zonkolan. Matteo and tommy have ski school there every Saturday from jan- march. It has been so warm the past week that a lot of the snow had melted and so it was a little difficult to ski smoothly and elisa said usually the entire mountain and surrounding hills are all white but today there was hardly any snow surrounding. But I loved the fact that it was so so warm. At lunchtime we could sit out in the sun at the top of the mountain in our t shirts drinking beer.  The morning was good - all 5 of us skied together. When it got a bit tricky for matty- joe guided him from behind. But they were all very good. Tommy liked to go off pist (off the slope) all the time and try jumps and tricks and matty liked to follow. I fell over about three times which meant i had to shout three drinks (which ended up being 1 drink and lunch otherwise we wouldn't have skied straight). After lunch the kids went to ski school and we tried some black runs. I got better as the day went on. I don't mind if I fall over but Elisa kept saying - slow down. It wasn't my fault some times I just couldn't slow down! The view from the top was gorgeous though... Of course.  Afterwards we went to an 'apre ski' or after ski bar where you buy a drink and they put out plates of food on the table. We franks apple spritzers- quite a few as I owed a fair amount from my stacks throughout the day and then drove home at first very merry and then very sleepy. I was in the back seat in the middle with tommy and Matty asleep on each of my shoulders.  Sunday we slept in and in the afternoon we took a trip to Trieste. It was a sunny day but windy and Trieste gets a famous wind called the boen wind. We had gelato and then visited the castle on the waters edge. It had beautiful gardens and got some great happy snaps.  When I wasn't busy with outings and such, time was filled in by playing wii for or foozball with the boys or babysitting Ricky (one of my favorite things), watching movies and massaging Elisa in the evenings or of course eating. Let's see every lunch and dinner had a pasta entree, a meat/fish dish with veggies, bread, cheese and prosciutto, fruit and then coffee and something sweet! It was such a hoorah- each meal took well over an hour to consume and I don't know how they're not all obese! And it was all delicious so you couldn't say no to anything!  Monday it was time for me to say goodbye. I hugged the boys before they went off to school (against their will) but they didn't believe I was going. Elisa took me to the train station with her sunglasses on- I didn't have any so my tears were quite visible. But I'd had a fantastic week and would go back to visit in a heartbeat.