Where do you Summer?

I remember the first time I heard that question, "Where do you summer?" The question was a running joke on a tv show.  It refers to how rich people spend their summers at their summer homes.  We all know that working folks don't have time or money to summer anywhere other than their regular house; except for military dependents.  On occasion we get to go "back home" and spend part of or all of the summer there.  Now usually our military members don't take all that leave time but sometimes they do.  When we lived in Japan we would take 30 days of leave and go back "home" to visit.  It cost a lot of money and it made the long trip worthwhile.  Many families here in Sicily do the same thing.  They go "home" and visit for the summer.  This summer we did not do that.  Instead me and the kids stayed here and Cody went back for two weeks to begin his PhD program in Pennsylvania.

At first I was jealous that Cody was going to get to go back to the States and I wasn't.  I soon got over that.  I get to say that I've not been back to the USA in three years when we finally do move.  It costs a lot of money to fly commercially back to the US.  When you multiply that amount by 5 for all of us, it's ridiculous.  When we moved here, we made sure to let all of our family know that we were not going to be returning unless it was an absolute necessity.  So far it hasn't be necessary.

How did I spend my summer?  I spent it right here at my house.  I didn't do anything of cultural importance, but I sure did do some family bonding with these three children.  Gavin and Norah took swim lessons.  Gavin wasn't impressed with them, though he did improve.  Norah loved her lessons and she greatly improved from being afraid to be much more comfortable in the water.  We went to the market in Scordia a few times.

We didn't do any traveling, which is disappointing, but not only did we have to pay for Cody's flight back to PA but also the A/C unit in our house in Va Beach went out and we had to buy and have a new one installed.  That was not cheap so, yeah, no summer travel for us.

I will miss the summers here in Sicily.  It's hot and SUNNY!  I love the sunny part.