Eeeek! Ha preso il mio bambino!

Eeeek!  He took my baby!!

Yes.  That little Sicilian man walked over to Chrissy, grabbed her hand, and took her...................... back to the kitchen.

From the beginning.

This was back in December and it was the first time I've ever really interacted with the Italians.  December 18th, my mom and Jim arrived.  It was so nice to finally see familiar faces.  And yes, it had only been about 2 weeks.

Luckily the base had an indoc trip planned to Motta Sant'Anastasia.  Indoc:  this is a 2 week class we all go through when transferring.  It explains all the stuff you need to know plus they teach you about the local culture and then take you out to experience it.  Motta Sant'Anastasia is known as the "Little America" here because a lot of people who are stationed at Sigonella live in Motta.  Everywhere you go, you see castles.  On the 19th, "indoc" had a trip planned to Motta to visit Castello di Motta Sant'Anastasia, and olive oil factory and then a local dairy farm.  The castle was interesting but I can't find all the pictures I took there... So I can explain all of this stuff but I don't think you'll really enjoy it like you'll enjoy our trip to the farm.

Driving out to the farm took FOREVER.  We had gone to the castle and the olive oil plant as well.  Talk about cool.  We saw how they make olive oil and even got to taste and buy fresh, made within the past 24 hours, olive oil.  That's one of my favorite things about Italy.  I love olive oil.  They love olive oil.  We love olive oil together.  Anyway, the drive was long.  We kept going up, and up, and up.  Farther and farther.  I think most of us were trying to fight to stay awake.  Poor Chris having to drive the whole time...

So we get to this sheep farm.  The sheep here are different than the sheep I'm use to.  These sheep are for milk and meat.  Not wool.  They are scraggly and ugly.  Not pretty and fluffy like you'd think.  They herd them like we herd cattle back home.  One or two men, up to a hundred sheep, couple of goats, couple of dogs.  All in the middle of the road.  Sometimes it can be frustrating because if you hit and kill one, your fines are OUTRAGEOUS!  You actually have to pay for the genes of the animal if it's a female.  If it's a male, you pay for the price they would get out in the market if they slaughtered and sold it.  And you better believe if you're having to pay for it, you take that sheep home.  Dead or alive.  Not that you want to actually kill one, but they get in the middle of the road and you have to wait.  They surround your car.
So there we are at this little farm.  It's also a restaurant.  We meet the owner of the farm (who doesn't speak English) and he invites us back to this hidden room.  In the hidden room, they make Ricotta. 
Let me tell you about the smell of fresh sheeps milk being heated up and cooked to make cheese.  It's gross.  And the air is thick.  You feel like you're breathing milky-air.  Which really sucks when you hate milk like I do.  So getting my gagging under control, I walk over to where they are making this cheese.

You have to add the enzymes from the stomach of a baby sheep who's never eaten grass, only milk.  This is something different than the ricotta I've been told how to make.  You can look up a recipe online and learn to make this with whole milk and buttermilk.  It's completely different.  They cook this milk a certain way, they add certain ingredients and then they recook it.  It's a very private thing here in Sicily because everything is precise.  If you mess up, you ruin the whole batch.  We were very fortunate to see this process happen because of that. 
After we watched this process, they took us into the restaurant and showed us how to make the sweet ricotta cheese they use to fill cannoli's.  This is the most creamy, delicious, amazingness I have every eaten.  It's so much better than the ricotta at home.  (Every time you read ricotta, you should envision me rolling my R's like a true Italian.  I say ricotta just to roll my R's.)

  While the Cannoli making is going on, the girls are sitting down at the lunch table.  They aren't in the best of moods because we've been going all day and they are starving.  Before I knew it, this Sicilian man walked over to Chrissy, said a bunch of stuff she didn't understand, reached out and took her hand and off they went!!  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Wait a minute. HOLD THE PHONE. What are you doing with my baby?!?!  He walks by me, puts his hand in the air saying "Noh!" "Stay!"  ....  'Cuse me??  You're taking my baby and tell me to "Noh, stay!" ???  Have you lost your ever-lovin mind???  So I suck in my breath and stopped.  Yeah, I did.  I stopped.  I let this man walk away with my baby!!  He took her back into the kitchen.  Cannoli making is no longer in my interest.  I'm now curious as to what they are doing with my baby Mew Mew, Mew Mew Mew Chrissy Cat.  The mans wife is an absolute dolls and comes and pats my arm to let me know she's OK.  Chris looks into the kitchen and sees that they have all been taken by this beautiful little blonde haired American girl and they are feeding her!  Cutting her fresh bread and giving her fresh cheese.  Eventually she comes back out and skips over to her sister and sits back down at the table.  Ha!  Seriously!  They love the kids over here.  My babies have these people over here wrapped around their little fingers.  It's so amazing to see.  And as soon as the girls start speaking the little bit of Italian they know, it gets that much worse!!


I don't really have time to proofread this.  I hope there's not too many mistakes.  I understand I'm not the best writer in the world.  Especially with grammar and such.  I just try to write from my heart.  So if my mistakes bother you, I apologize.  Here's a couple of pictures I took from the farm. :)

Until next time..... Ciao!

Come si fa a farlo?

How do you do it?

How do you muster up the courage to pack up and move across the world?  Honestly, I just don't know.  It just kinda happened.

I talked to my Papa for the first time tonight since we left Oklahoma.  He knew who I was at the beginning of the conversation and then again at the end.  He lagged just a little in the middle. 

It's so hard.  As much as I'm loving being over here and seeing the world, I miss my family.  I never moved away because I didn't WANT to move away.  I liked being around my family.  It's hard to think about not seeing them for another 3 years. 

My cousin told me the other day that my dad was going back to Texas to visit and take a family picture with his siblings.  It really got me to thinking.  He's been living apart from them more than half of his life.  I can't even tell you how many times he's seen his brother in the past 5 years.  Heck, even 10 years.  I don't know if that's OK with him, but being away from my siblings for that long and not seeing them is NOT OK with me.  Right now, anyway.  But I don't want it to ever be OK. Honestly.  I don't want my kids growing up being that far away from family.  Yes, I'm enjoying this experience and they are too.. but still.  And what's so bad about that?

I had soooo many people telling me how "great traveling the world is going to be for you and your kids."  You have "no idea how great being away from your family and this bubble is going to be for you."  Question... Why is it so bad that I was in that bubble?  At least then I didn't feel this heartbreaking, can't breathe because it hurts so bad pain.  I get it, I do.  I've been given this opportunity.  And I'm grateful.  But the price I'm paying right now... wow.

This must be one of those "God gives you more than you can handle to make you turn to Him" things.  Because right now, I can't.

I'm not publishing this right away.  Well, I am, but I'm not sharing it on my page like I normally do.  It amazes me the people who will pop up and give their two cents on stuff like this.  About me and the "real" Navy.  Like I haven't been apart of the Navy the past 11 years I've been with Chris.  Just because my experiences aren't the same as theirs.  I guess I never realized it was a competition.  I get some people have had it worse and some have had it better.  I'm just here to live my life and get my own experiences without judgment.  I did have one friend who told me to "buck up" and I wasn't upset with her for it.  But she also told me, that's all you can do.  It sucks.  It's hard.  It's not pretty at all.  But in the end, that's all that's left.  You either buck up and deal or you let it consume you.  She put that perfect to me.  And she meant it from the bottom of her heart.  I have no doubt in my mind that she never once judged me for being scared, upset, pissed, happy, sad, this way or that way about this transition.  She was there for me, as a Navy Wife who has lived her life this way and moved with her family, and as a true friend.  And boy do I wish she was here right now to let me cry on her shoulder.....