Happy (early) Birthday to Me!

My husband gave me one of the best brithday presents ever last night! To the untrained eye, it would appear to be no more than a piece of paper, but what it really was....was he's taking leave for my birthday! All week! He had Monday off for Columbus Day, and went to work today, but he's off for the rest of the week!!! Yay! I'm so excited! The weekends always seem too short as it is. Only when he has a 3-day weekend does it feel like he's actually home for a fair amount of time, so now that he'll be off from tomorrow all the way through next Sunday....YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! I'm so happy!!!

And in other news from Italy...while I was offline for a week (and that was one of the longest weeks of my life!) I got to hang out a lot with Kristin which was tons of fun, and we went to the bazaar on base (which reminded me a lot of "Affair of the Heart" that I went to in Oklahoma with my mother- and sister-in-law last year, except with European products) and I even convinced The Husband to go with me the next day to do some Christmas shopping! :D Then Kristin and I went to a sort of festival that was going on in downtown Sacile. I took a few pictures, but they were mostly of the buildings around town and the boys having fun. It seemed to be a wine and cheese festival, or so Kristin figured, given that there were wine and cheese vendor stands everywhere and little else. And on that glorious day....I got my first taste of gelato!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH my GOSH is that stuff GOOD! I've been craving it ever since! It's a MILLION times better than ice cream! Maybe I'll be able to get some this week since I'll have access to the car... :) I really want to try another flavor, but that strawberry was soooooooooooo good! Maybe I'll have to splurge and get TWO scoops... ;)

A loving the waterfall



The boys and me out and about at the festival:



And my first taste of gelato!:

But I need to get going...I'll likely be cleaning today so that I don't have to do it while The Husband is home. I'd rather relax and knit or crochet and enjoy his time off. :) Later!