For Christmas this year, we decided to go to Italy to spend the holidays with Matthew and Emily.  This was my first trip to Italy and it was definitely one to remember!  We really packed in as much as we could to each day, and it was a super busy two weeks.  We had such a great time though and it was fun for us to be able to spend so much time with the kids.  We also had a few days just to ourselves, which was nice as well.  It was certainly a trip to remember — here are some of our favorite moments!

We left on Sunday, December 24th and pretty much spent the entire day traveling.  Between the time change and everything else, we kind of lost the whole day!  We made it fun though, with time spent visiting the airport lounges, taking silly SnapChat pics, and through the magic of Tom’s platinum status with Delta, enjoying our flights and yummy meals in first class and Delta One!  All things considered, it was a great day of traveling and not too bad considering we were on the planes for 12 hours!

After arriving in Italy, we decided to take the scenic route to Pinerolo (where the kids were) and made a stop in Como.  It’s a beautiful little lake town, and despite some morning sickness and jet lag, it was still really enjoyable!  We even stopped in at a Christmas Day mass.  The churches and scenery were just so beautiful!

After Como, we made our way into Pinerolo and were able to spend just a couple hours with the kids.  It was great to be able to meet them, and while the language barrier did prove to be a challenge, overall it was fun to be together and Tom was really good about being the go-between translator!

The next day we took the kids into Pinerolo to spend time in the city, and we had a great time!  We went ice skating, ate yummy pizza (my first authentic Italian pizza — DELICIOUS!), spent time walking around visiting old buildings, coloring and building Legos, and of course taking lots of pictures to capture the memories!

After we dropped off the kids, we had a few hours to ourselves where we went to a concert at the Chiesa Evangelica Valdese.  It was really beautiful, even though I didn’t understand any of the words!  We also stopped at a bar (similar to an American cafe, not an actual BAR) and I discovered what would become one of my favorite treats on the trip, lemon soda!  After that, we had dinner at a fun restaurant where I had my first taste of authentic Italian pesto — delish!

The next day, we spent time with the kids mostly just hanging out — we did homework, played card games and video games, colored, built more Legos, and just enjoyed being together!  We even spent some time finding a “geocache” that was hidden in a local city — it took all of us working together, but thankfully we figured it out and left our names as some of the finders!

Our few days in Pinerolo with the kids were really fun!  Blending families is never easy, especially when there are language and cultural barriers.  Overall though, we definitely witnessed lots of tender mercies from the Lord and were able to start establishing relationships that hopefully will be eternal as we continue to bond as a family!