Saturday 19 November 2011

The Holiday Spirit

It's only mid November, but the holiday spirit has gripped Olive. Maybe it had something to do taking her to Santa's Grotto in the Gingerbread village at Harrods. She was sweet enough to bring him a gift of elf ornaments for his tree (her idea). It could be also attributed to the school starting rehearsal for the nativity play, which has a matinee and evening performance times, tickets to follow. We have been informed that she will be an insect, which one is up to her choice. Currently she's wanting to be a LadyBird.  Or it could be that she was reading "The Gingerbread Man" in class & each student made their own one only to have them run off. They were kind enough to leave a note "Can't catch me we're the Gingerbread Men!" They searched high and low and couldn't find them. The class even made LOST posters and put them around the school. A day later, they returned with a tap on the window. Olive is still wondering what adventures they had overnight roaming the village.  Luckily they were not hurt and hopefully won't do it again.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

October

We started out October celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary on the 2nd. We went as a family for a trip to Ipswitch for a football match and some time in at the beach in Aldeburg.

Over the next two weeks we took in Ely's Apple Festival,  celebrated at a birthday parties, fought (and still fighting) random illness of the isle, went to the pumpkin patch (with imported pumpkins from Peru!) and O survived her first night with a "stranger" as a baby sitter.

Then we were off to Naples, Italy. Family friends, the Kaspareks, kindly hosted us at their villa and took their time to show us some sites. (see their blog here). THANK YOU!

Here is a collection of what we saw:
Greek Ruins at Cuma

View of Mediterranean Sea

Caserta Palace- Star Wars was filmed here


Caserta Palace at the far end of photo
La Chamade, Local Restaurant for Dinner: Quick story. The men folk wanted meat on their pizza & the menu being in Italian, well, couldn't be read. So, in a bunch of hand gestures, fake Ital-ish, and pointing, the waiter brought out a tray of meats for them to see. Josh being himself said, "Si, Si!" to all the tray and then pointed to the four adults to guester a pizza with meat for all 4 of us. After the waiter left, I asked if he had just ordered steaks for us all... no, not just one steak, maybe, but then started to doubt getting pizza. Low and behold 4 hunks of meats arrive for us each, 16 in total!

One of the many strays of Pompeii

Pompeii
Hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius

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Cappuccino, Naples
Via San Gregorio Armeno, Naples
Duomo, Naples
Lunch in Naples






Last, but not least we celebrated Halloween in a week full of festivities.