HANNAH SHARES

Our Christmas season kicked off on November 1st thanks to my inability to wait to put up the Christmas tree. Since we had family visiting throughout November I thought it would be fun to have the apartment festive for the holidays, and it was! Lucy even got her own little tree in her room. I had way too much fun decorating it!

Vicenza finally got dressed up for Christmas on December 2nd, the official “tree lighting” night. They put star lights up over the streets in the entire downtown area and a huge canopy of lights covered Piazza Signori, the city center. They were setting up for weeks beforehand, and I couldn’t wait for the lights to come on. The night of the tree lighting we headed to Piazza Signori. As we rounded the corner from the street to the center, we could hear the local student orchestra playing O Christmas Tree. Coming up to the main square I seriously had tears in my eyes it was so beautiful!

Starting that next week there was a Christmas market set up throughout downtown. Tons of booths set up with local treats, hot cocoa, vin brulé (Italian-Style mulled wine), Christmas decor, and toys for kids.

Since Lucy was only six months old and has more than she could ever need right now, we decided to just do books for her Christmas gift this year. The idea was to get 25 Christmas books and open a different one every night to read at bedtime. I wrapped them up and put them in a basket by her little tree in her room. It was such a fun way to celebrate her first Christmas! Honestly it was probably more fun for Michael and I, but I know these books will be something we treasure every Christmas. We have some classics and several new stories neither of us had read before. Aside from the old favorites, our top five new-to-us were: Dasher, When Santa Was a Baby, Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, The Spider Who Saved Christmas, and Construction Site on Christmas Night.

We celebrated Michael’s birthday on the 13th at home with cake, balloons, and chili, per his request. Later that week we had a Christmas Party at Michael’s work. It was mostly for the kids, but fun for us too! A very poorly dressed Santa came to visit the kids and brought them cookies to decorate. Even one of the little three-year olds said to her mom, “that wasn’t the real Santa.” 😂 We apologized and said he was busy that night so we had to have a soldier fill in. His spirit was great and that’s really all that mattered! We watched the Polar Express and ate pizza we had catered thanks to a successful gift wrapping fundraiser we held. It was nice to see several of the families before we headed home for Christmas.

We had the party two days before we were supposed to fly to Chicago. That day we got an email from the airline that our flight was cancelled and a “sorry”. After spending all day on the phone with Delta we got rescheduled to leave on Saturday instead. It was a disappointing start to our travels, which I was already so anxious about (being on a plane with Lucy for 9+ hours), but we were thankful to still be able to get home.

Lucy did fantastic on the flights, all things considered. She took several naps and hardly fussed at all. The worst part of our travel to the States was honestly the customs line we had to stand in once we got to Chicago Saturday afternoon. We were in line for almost two hours. It was not fun!

Lucy’s baptism was on Sunday, so my family was also in Chicago when we arrived. We celebrated Greta’s birthday Saturday night at the Shares’ house. It was so fun for Lucy to finally meet so much of her family. I was bummed that we didn’t have the planned extra day of buffer to deal with the jet lag, we were all very tired that day. Lucy did her best, but it was a struggle. Still, it was a beautiful day, and Lucy was baptized by Fr. Joel, who married us two years ago almost to the day. We spent the next few days celebrating our second wedding anniversary, Michael’s sister Grace’s 21st birthday, and celebrating Christmas with his family.

We flew to Omaha on Christmas Eve morning. The quick hour flight was much easier than the ten hour one to Chicago. We spent a laid-back Christmas at my family’s house. We were able to get together with several friends and spent the evenings playing games and cooking dinner. Italy requires a COVID test within a limited time frame before traveling back. We were scheduled to fly back on New Years Day, and tested on the 30th. Since testing was so busy, we didn’t get our tests back in time and initially had to reschedule our flights for the following day. To our surprise, our tests came back positive that evening. To make a long story short, we spent the next two weeks testing and rescheduling flights daily. We watched the entire Harry Potter series and did a lot of puzzles! It was nice to have the extra time at home, but also a huge pain dealing with the airlines every day. On the day we both were finally negative, we celebrated by taking Lucy to the Zoo and flew back to Italy on the 12th. Our flights on the way back were fairly smooth, and it felt good to be back home and finally unpack our suitcases. We’re planning to be back in the States in June to celebrate Lucy’s first birthday!