OUR NEW HOME in CANEVA

This is our new home!  Caneva is a small town about 20 minutes from Aviano down the mountain highway.  Aviano is situated at the base of the mountains in the plains, and we are up quite a bit in the foothills.  Just another 20 minutes up into the mountains is a ski resort that is supposed to have great skiing, so you can see how quickly the mountains rise out of the flat plains.  We have corn fields all around us and right up to our fence along two sides.  Our house is about a half mile from the town center just off the mountain highway down a little dirt road.  We have an automatic gate like everyone else in this part of Italy, and a huge fenced yard perfect for Lucky and the boys.  Our garage is below the house and is actually big enough for 4 cars.  The basement is partially finished with tile floors and is bigger than we could possible use.  It makes a great play area for the boys!  That's where the laundry room is, too.  Upstairs are three bedrooms, two baths, a living and dining room and den, and a nice kitchen that actually has built in cupboards and a pantry - a real rarity here.  None of the rooms have closets, so we have wardrobes in every room.

As nice as our kitchen is, there is no garbage disposal or dishwasher, so I've been doing a lot of dishes by hand!  We have just about unpacked and settled into every room, and sometimes we even forget where we are!  It's amazing how fast a place can come to feel like home.


Left:  The view from my front porch.  The sun sets just over those mountains creating some gorgeous sunsets we can see from our dining room windows.

Right:  Washing my new car in our new driveway.




At the Medieval Festival we ran into the Italian who sold us our car, Mario and his wife, all dressed up for the occasion.



                                                    
Chase's first day of school!

Chase is attending the ASILO in Caneva, which is the Italian public pre-school system managed and run by local nuns.  All the kids wear smocks which make them look so cute!  They have a curriculum and are to be in school from no later than 0930 to 1530.  That's a long day for someone who's never been away from Mommy!  His teacher, Paola, speaks English pretty well, and part of the curriculum at the school is actually English.
Chase was very excited to start going to school like Glen (who's going to school at the DOD school on base, by the way).  He cries every day when I drop him off and says he's NOT going to have any fun!  But when I pick him up he's so excited to tell me about all the fun things they did.


                                       
Castello di Caneva

Our town has a medieval castle!  It's up the mountian from the town, practically straight up!  That's the town behind Glen.  The walls have deteriorated over time, but there's still quite a bit of the original structure. 


The bell tower and church look like they've been kept up through the years.  We weren't able to go inside this time, but we enjoyed wandering through the cemetery!  As we were up there a storm was just blowing in over the mountains, as they do here often.  You can see the dark clouds approaching in the pictures!  The wind really started howling and the boys were getting a little spooked amid the ruins and graves so we had to leave.  And its a good thing we did because this was no ordinary storm blowing in - it blew over trees, destroyed many of the cornfields, and took out power for most of the afternoon!
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