Italian 101

I was doing my Italian homework and had my books sitting on the table all askew and thought it'd make a great picture. Some of this is really difficult. I'm not getting the prepositions. Argh.

A Boy and his Band

It's so exciting seeing our kid out there on the field. I believe I took about 30 pictures of just Brad. This year he has been choosen to be in the jazz band. I'll probably be taking a million pictures of him doing that.

Brass Section

I haven't posted many pictures lately since after our trip to Tuscany, we haven't been anywhere interesting. You can only take so many pictures of an apartment and there's not much to take on base. We attended our first highschool football game where Brad participated in the band and we enjoyed being Band Boosters.

Give a Boy a Box...

...and let his imagination run wild. Colby and Napoleon have been fighting over this box for about a week now. Colby carries it around and puts it in his room so Napoleon won't play with it. When it's void of a little 8 year old, the box has a kitty jumping in and out of it. Naploleon will come running from the kitchen and leap for the opening and pounce inside. It's so true when people say that kids play with the boxes more than they do with the toys. For Christmas I'm just going to get them a few big boxes. Now it's true for kittens too.

Attention

Band practice. The Wildcat Band's first game to march at is in two weeks and most of these kids have never marched before. The band director acts just like Mr. Wilson (Midland High's Band director). He yells and gets on to them for moving during attention, looking around or not being loud enough during the attention yell. He also makes the entire band drop and do push ups when someone does something wrong. That may come from his military background (Mr. Wilson never made us do that). Boy does it bring back a lot of memories though. Brad looked great out on the practice field. They are supposed to keep their elbows up the entire time they're out there and that's hard to do. As I was watching, Brad was the only one with his elbows up. He did a great job and looked like a pro. There's only about 50 kids in Marching band and Brad is one of the youngest.

Band Boosters

Marching Band at the Naples American High School is new. The band boosters are painting lines on a practice field. It's so cool having a kid old enough in a band that gets to do things other than sit and play during class. We've been volenteering as band boosters.

Me and My Gelato

Fabro Italy - August 2005. Brad is a loaner. He likes to go off by himself. In that way, he's just like me. He doesn't seek out friendship, he is not the one to start it, but once he has a friend, he's loyal and fun. He can be perfectly happy staying at home and twiddling around...just like me. But then get bored and feel sorry that he's a loaner...just like me. Or maybe he's just a teenager that doesn't want to be seen with his parents and little brother.

Celebrations

Looking from our balcony at fireworks. The Italians are celebrating.

Can They Hear the Priest?

Castello Brolio - August 2005. This picture was taken in the Church of the Castle Brolio. There was this ornamental grate that we could see down into and we found out that it was a crypt down below. The boys all investigated while I looked down on them. Why do you think they had this here? Was it so the people below could hear the priest? Anyways...I'm amazed I got the picture with all of their faces showing through the grate. I had to ask them to stand still and focused on Colby, but didn't realize I caught all of them so well.