Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, it’s such a great time of the year.  It was hard not to spend it with family back home, but we made the best of it.  We invited everyone from the EOD shop, whoever wanted to come, could.  We had it at the shop since there is a large oven there and it’s centrally located.  Dan cooked a 22lb turkey and we made mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing and sweet potatoes and people who came brought dishes as well.  We had baked ziti, turkey enchiladas, beef taco’s, green bean casserole, pumpkin bread and pies.  We had a great spread of food!

The sunrise was beautiful Thanksgiving morning. Here are a few pictures I took on our way to the base.

Dan using his gas mask to cut the onions…too funny

Dan cutting the turkey

Tons of food

People chatting before the big meal

 

The day after Thanksgiving we had to go into Aviano and it started snowing.  It was the big clumps of snow that stuck together, but once it hit the ground it melted.

 

Yesterday (Saturday) Dan and I went to Venice, again   It’s just so close and when you have nothing else planned it’s nice just to hop on the train and go there for a little bit.  We spent some time looking the stores and just walking around.  It was a beautiful day, but pretty chilly.  We stopped at a gelato shop and since it was too cold for gelato we got crepes. Dan had nutella and banana and I had apples and cinnamon, they were amazing!  Here are a few pictures we took.

All in all, it was a great four days weekend with Dan.  I wish we could have been close to family, the holidays just don’t seem the same without family.  I got to talk to family on the phone and also skyped with family as well.  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving as well and I hope you enjoy the Christmas season!

EOD Family Day

Every year the shop has a family day. They bring in people from family readiness and also the chaplain so they can give you information on their services. They also bring out the bomb suit for you to try on and a robot for you to play with.  They cooked us lunch, we hung out and all in all it was a good time.

Here are some pictures of me getting the bomb suit put on

 

It was pretty interesting being in the bomb suit…especially because they didn’t hook up the air supply to the helmet. It’s pretty heavy and hard to move in seeing that your whole body is protected. Wikipedia’s info on EOD bomb suit. 

So…What do a whole bunch of EOD guys do when they get a spouse in a heavy bomb suit???

Lay them down, of course!  Watch them struggle to get up.  I have to say, I did pretty well. They put me down on my back and I rocked from side to side a few times and got momentum to get up on my knees, then stand up. In this picture above was when I was rocking and made it onto my side. I felt like Ralphie’s brother in the Christmas Story where he was stuck on his back in the snow because he had too much winter gear on, but it only took me about 30 seconds to get up off my back and stand up, so not too shabby.  Once I got up, they wanted to test me even further, so they places a small object on the ground and had me pick it up.  Seeing that you barely can see anything in the suit, I couldn’t even see what they put on the ground. First instinct was to take a knee and pick up the object that way (there is no way you can bend over in this thing.)  Then I heard from someone “That’s exactly how you would do it.” 

 

So, during that whole time I was stuck in a closed helmet with no air supply. In this picture below Dan was generous enough to finally lift up the thick plastic part of the helmet and allow me to breathe fresh air

Me and My Husband, Dan

 

Overall, it was a great afternoon. It’s always fun hanging with the EOD people at the shop. I am so thankful that these men and woman are SOOOO smart and do the things they do…one of the most dangerous jobs out there. I am proud to be an EOD wife!

First few months in Italy

Like I said before, I didn’t have a blog yet when we first got here, so I decided that I would post pictures from when we first got here. There are just too many beautiful things not to post.

This is a picture taken on base

My Sweet Eddie with a bottle of Moscato. This was is TLF on base.

This is Sacile. We went here the first night we arrived in Italy for dinner. Now we live about 5 minutes away from Sacile.

Lake Barcis

Gelato in San Daniele

 

When you first arrive here in Italy you go through a program called Right Start. In the class they teach you the culture, very little amount on the language, stuff about housing and driving. One day of right start class they take you on a tour around the area. This first few pictures are of Gorgazzo Spring, it’s about 5 minutes from where we now live.

 

Dan at the market in Porcia

Snails…yuck

A church in Pordenone

They also took us to a vineyard with very cheap, but very good wine! 

Sinbad came on base one day we were there eating lunch

 

We took a drive up to Piancavallo, which is the main mountain you see when you are looking from base. In the first picture you can see the base.

While we were up there we could see the water clear out there. It’s hard to see in the pictures

 

Back to Lake Barcis on a sunny, clear day

 

Back to Gorgazzo Spring. When they took us here on the tour, it was the first stop in the morning.  We have heard that there is a statue of Jesus under the water here that you can see on a clear day.  They put the statue down there in memory of the divers who lost their lives trying to find out where the water was coming from.  So, on a clear day around 1pm Dan and I went back to see if we could see the statue. We couldn’t, but we were in shock to see how BEAUTIFUL the water was. It was beautiful before, but since we were here in the afternoon on a sunny, clear day the water was illuminated and gorgeous!

I think I’ve got everyone caught up not on things we’ve done in Italy, along with my other posts.  Now that I am using windows live writer (thanks to Monica) I can upload a lot more pictures and it’s so much easier than using blogger.  I feel in past blogs I haven’t posted as many pictures as I would have liked because it took so long, especially when I had slow internet. So from now on, no more skimping out