Grumpy pants and earthquakes

    Sometimes in life, it seems just when you think you've ironed out all your issues, you've got it all figured out now, it's all good, everything heads south and you have to eat some humble pie just to remind you that you never really figure it all out every moment of every day. One thing I am certain of, every single family , including us, most definitely shares in common some level of dysfunction.  When we were younger we used to have our picture perfect families we thought had it all figured out , they were beautiful families, their children seemed intelligent and spiritually minded, they never raised their voices at each other, they never miscommunicated they always were blissfully in love with each  other. The moms never drank to much and danced ridiculously or said bad words, they were sophisticated and always in control.  Then as we grew up and watched these families over time our rose colored glasses cleared up and we saw in every case every family has some level of weirdness. Our family mostly defiantly has a healthy dose of weird. So after a wonderful day together we decided to do some nice healthy reading together, as we aim to do every week. One thing led to another and next thing you know instead of all sitting nicely together for some family time, our dysfunction reared it's ugly head and the evening was ruined .   

   Before long we all kissed and made up because for certain we all love each other dearly, but the next day sadness still lingered inside of me. We spent the day in sienna and I just couldn't shake my bad mood. Perhaps to much pasta and gelato, I don't know, but my grumpy pants were on so tight I couldn't get them off. Sienna was a beautiful city, but I was hot , tired , and after a certain amount of time all the cities started blending together. I started to question was this all worth it? Being gone this long , so far away, will we gain lasting benefit of closeness to each other? 

   The evening ended in our cozy trailer, with me cooking dinner and then Brock reading us big foot stories by candlelight.  My sadness slowly  drifted away and I fell asleep peacefully. But before that, Jimmie and I had some " making up to do" if you catch my drift. The boys were all asleep in their side of the trailer, but before long , Brock frantically ran up to our door," dad did you feel that earthquake?"  Umm .... Yah .. Weird... He was completely convinced the shaking of the trailer was caused by an earthquake. We certainly did not want to traumatize him any farther by letting him know his parents in particular his dad was the cause behind the shaking of the trailer. 

    Brock by the way is growing so fast . He has no clue about his strength and he's clumsy the way pregnant women are when ready to deliver , he steps on us constantly and accidentally walks in front of people or steps on purses in cafés . Yesterday he kicked off his shoes at the pool, one hit me in the face. Five minutes later he threw a ball and it hit me in the head. Five minutes after that he threw the ball and it hit the lifeguard in the head. 

   The next day on our way towards Naples we stopped at another thermal park. This one was even better than the last one. We all had a warm pool of fresh water to lay in. 

   We are now south of Rome in a town called Baia Domizia. The weather is warm and muggy , with occasional sprinkles. Our camp is hilarious, when we arrived the music was blasting at the pool, and I mean blasting!  They were doing some sort of dance competition at the pool. We watched for a while, I'm forbidden by my family to dance, so we headed to the beach. I was surprised that there were pretty decent waves and the water wasn't blue like I expected. We played football on the beach then played in the waves together. It was a perfect family night for our very imperfect family.  So yes I'm still glad to be here and do this but I am getting home sick as are the boys and Jim's work is finding it's way to italy so I feel by the time we are home I will  be more than ready.

  We are driving to the amalfi coast.  We passed through the grossest town I've ever seen in my life. If people saw this place and only this place they would hate italy. Garbage lay strewn all over the streets I've never seen so much trash laying around any city. Filthy. Prostitutes were standing all over the curbs and several police with machine guns! Where are we??? This can't be my Bella Italia!!! Brock said , " speed up!" But we all agreed we didn't want to get pulled over by police with machine guns! We stopped at a light and an old woman with whiskers on her chin took a rag and barely attempted to wash bugs off our car then within a minute was at our window wanting money. We gave her a euro . I hope she uses it to get some wax for her chin. 

  So hopefully the amalfi coast will be what we expect. I'll keep you posted.

    One final note,  when the trailer is a rocking, don't come a knocking......