Weekly wrap up

It's Friday!  Wow, this week has gone by so fast!  Tuesday was our last day of swim lessons for Session I and I can't believe the difference in both boys.  Lewis will be moving up to Level II next time, his teacher said he could have been in that level this session but his confidence wasn't up to speed with his skills.  He's thrilled to be moving up.  William has made great progress with Miss Sarah and will remain in her class next session.  He wasn't happy about not moving up a level so I told him all the things he would have to do in Level I and he quickly decided that he will be happy in the Preschool class again.

After class on Tuesday we played at the pool when it opened for regular swim and Lewis learned some new tricks!  His friend was doing flips in the pool and he decided he wanted to do them too.  I helped him the first few times by flipping his legs over in a back flip, then he figured out how to do it all by himself - and a front flip too!  He really wants to go off the diving board, he sees some of his friends down there having fun and it's just killing him not to be able to do it.  I wonder if he'll work up his confidence and do it by summer's end?

We've been planning on taking the boys to LegoLand in Germany the first week in August - a special treat for them and a way to escape the heat for us.  Yesterday Lewis said "Mom, we don't need to drive all the way up there, just buy us some Legos online and we'll be happy."   huh?  I'm not sure what to do with that.  Maybe they are a bit young for amusement parks?  Shifting gears trying to think of something fun to do as Paul has already taken off two weeks in August.  Maybe I'll finally get him on a cruise?  Or maybe northern Italy in the mountains where it will be cooler?

Here's something I want to share about living in Italy.  Judy, you'll appreciate this.  On the road leading to my house a big pothole formed - BIG!  Knowing it would take forever to repair it some industrious person put a stack of tires in the hole to warn people since you couldn't actually see it until it was too late.  That's right, a stack of tires - does that tell you how big the hole was?  So, one day I'm walking with Judy (Oma, my MIL) to the market and we pass the pothole.  Looking closer we discover that not only is there a big hole but there's absolutely no foundation to the road!!  None!  For as far as you could see into the hole and all around there was nothing but air!  No wonder the hole was so big, no support whatsoever.  Anyhoo, weeks passed and they finally repaired the hole, yippeeee!  But, in true Italian road fixing fashion the hole came back just a week or so later.  Why?  They didn't fill it in!!  They just scraped a bit of asphalt over the hole and left it at that, no filling in no support no foundation - basically a bandaid.

You can see the dark spot is the "patch" -and  notice to the right at the top of the patch there is another small hole forming in the light gray area?  It's much bigger now, the whole area is collapsing.  What you can't tell by this photo is that on the other side of the manhole cover it's started to collapse as well.  So what do they do to warn you of this hole?  It's not big enough for tires yet so-

That's right, just pull a garbage can over there and stick the wheel in.

Perfect.  Heaven knows they don't use the trash cans for anything else.

This is how it looks while driving.

So now it's July 16th, August is quickly approaching and absolutely NO work gets done around here in August so I'm betting they won't get this fixed until the end of September. and even then it will only be another pathetic patch.  Viva Italia!

This is a picture of a bag full of bottles thrown onto the sidewalk next to the potholes.  Less than 10 ft. from a trash can and less than 50 ft from a glass recycling bin.  Seriously?

 

Just to let you know - it's hot, I'm sweaty and I smell like a camel.  And yes I've been close enough to a camel to comfortably make this comparison.  It's not pretty.

Have a great weekend!