On Friday was Hayley 13th Birthday and the first of all our birthdays over here in Italy.

With the girls at school and Ben off rock climbing with a new Canadian friend for the day with the car, rather than being house bound I thought I’d head off on my own adrenaline adventure on such a glorious day!

On Monday we unsuccessfully tried to run errands in Siena Monday after drop off. I tried to buy clothes for the girls, I could not find. We went to the Tribunale to get documents translated, our officer she was not in so we went from one courthouse to the next looking for translations, no one could help us. So we went for lunch at the local Salumeria at the end of our street. Pasta and wine fixes everything on a cold day! Picked up the girls in heavy rain, tried to look at a villa 20 min from school, we got lost so it was almost an hour but the time we found it and then hated it anyway. Fun times!

The last week or so we’ve really settled into a routine with school, after school activities, grocery shopping and still heading to new villages and locations for adventures.

So today is one month since we left sunny Sydney for icy Italy and I couldn’t be happier. In some ways it feels like we just arrived yesterday and in others it feels like we have been here a lifetime already. I said to Ben I am already getting sad about leaving Italy…he was not impressed!

After arriving in Italy 11 Dec, we spent 4 days in Siena at our new home, at school orientation and the end of year school movies night and bake sale. We then packed up again and hit the road Saturday 15 December for a 12 day driving holiday adventure that went something like this:

Just 27 hours after we landed from 25 hours of flying we arrived at the International School of Siena for what we thought was a pop in to see the school, meet the principal and have a tour.

Well it’s been 10 days since our entire lives were packed into a moving truck and shipped off to Brookvale for a year.

Since we signed a lease so late and the tenants wanted to move in so soon, we only have 6 days to pack for a year and organise the house for storage. Not a lot of time.

School update - I have organised Hayley’s textbooks for year 8, the 3 girls need iPads for the school so we went and got them here last week and there was much excitement in choosing colours, covers and Hayley got a keyboard with hers to use as a laptop. The uniform list is all in Italian so not sure what I am ordering the girls but I’ve ordered them to arrive at the school when we land. We have an appointment to meet the teachers and principal the day after we arrive at 930am. The girls will spend the morning in their classrooms, although they will be super jet lagged.