Welcome Charlie !!!!!

Charles David Craig (Charlie) was born on February 19 at 12:58 a.m. He weighed 9 pounds 14.2 ounces and is one of the most beautiful babies ever (that's grandma talking......the other beautiful babies are Grant, Madyline, Micha, Sophia....etc. for four more). In this photo, Charlie is about 12 hours old and, though awake, was having a little trouble learning to work his eyes to stay open. By the way, this picture wasn't posed. We laid the bear beside him and Charlie immediately cuddled.

As soon as I found out Jessica (and David, of course) was going to have a baby, I told the administration at school that I would be going to be with her when the time came. I scheduled my visit for a week after the due date and Charlie was gracious enough to wait until I got there to come into the world. I was able to stay with Grant while Mom and Dad went to the hospital.

Speaking of Grant, he is completely enamoured of he baby brother. As soon as he saw Charlie, he couldn't stop smiling. Grant and I went back for forth from home to the hospital for the three days Mom was in and one time, when we went out for some groceries, I heard him say to himself, "I miss my little brother." (said with a kind of sigh in his voice) All the time I was there, Grant never tired of holding his baby brother. When Charlie was in his arms, every once in awhile Grant would lean down and say something private to him. Just a bit of brother talk.

Jessica says Charlie is sleeping well and that he is the kind of little one who knows what he wants and lets the rest of the family know.

I'm just sad that he will be 8 months old before I get to see him again. Grandmas are supposed to be right there.

Tradition has it....

...that after the apostle Paul founded the church in Siracusa, Sicily, he stopped in the seaport of Catania before he continued on his way. He was also, supposedly, ministered to by Santa Maria di Ognina. The church named for this saint each year has a festival marking the visit of St. Paul. The festival is culminated with the statue of Santa Maria di Ognina being carried out of the church by six strong men, paraded through the streets of Catania then placed on a boat decorated with many lights and floated down the shoreline accompanied by priests and dignitaries. Also accompanied by many, many small highly decorated boats (I lost count at 30). As they floated down the sea just a few yards from shore, there were several places where the all the boats stopped and faced shore for a small ceremony with the onlookers.






Giusseppe and Mimma, Bob and I met some other friends and was able to watch the procession from the balcony of a popular swimming area. This also happened to be one of the stopping places at which time the owner of the swimming area and his daughter took a small boat to meet the saint with an offering of armloads of beautiful white flowers. The crowd clapped and said rosary together with the priests (who had a loudspeaker system) then sang a well-known song together. It was quite a spectacular event. But for Bob and I the best was yet to come.





When the song was done there came one of the most beautiful fireworks displays we had ever seen, and we were only about 50 yards from it's point of origin. Explosion after explosion rocked the air and the rockets and sparkles they made were such a celebration one couldn't help but be awestruck.




These photos can't do justice to having a giant ball of light explode into thousands of shining diamonds almost above your head. But....I do hope you enjoy seeing them.




After the fireworks the procession moved on to the next and the next until it came to the port nearest the church and was placed in a place of honor in the church at midnight.

When the fireworks were over, we went to Aci Tressa to a pizza restaurant. Outside tables were surrounded by fruit trees and you were encouraged to reach up and pick a plumb or some grapes or a banana to enjoy either before or after your pizza. There was even a pomegranate tree near us with pomegranates that, we were told, would be ripe at Christmastime.

I don't understand.......

the concept of throwing trash at the side of the road and yard waste (tree branches, weeds, etc) in the trash dumpsters. Must be a Sicilian thing.

A very short note

I just posted about our new school but Bob and I went to the beach today. Remember the photo of the beach at Giardini Naxos? Well, that was the busy season. I must admit, this was a different beach but this is typical of the beaches today.

We had it all to ourselves. At its busiest (around 11:00 a.m.) there were about four families on the beach with us.

If you double click on the photo you can see Bob's "Tony the Tiger" feet from wearing his sandels all summer. I think it's cute.

Force Protection--a new frustration

Okay, here's our new school. Beautiful isn't it? 33 million dollars for just the elementary part that we've moved into for this school year. Middle School and High School got their new building two years ago. The workers were still putting the finishing touches on our building the first and second days of school (last week) and the new playground will be finished in October/November. This is not to complain about the school. It's great.....I appreciate the new building....but...



"Force protection" is a word that means a way to protect our citizens in case there's a threat to safety on the base. So, "force protection" dictates that the school can be locked down immediately upon being informed of, or recognizing, a threat.


Every outside door is reinforced steel with no window, always kept locked (except, of course, for the one by the front office)...Okay, no problem. Inside that door is a set of double doors for the first floor and another at the top of the stairs for the second floor. So, if I'm in my room and need to go to the second floor I have to go out through the double doors on the first floor, up the stairs and in the double doors on the second floor. I don't have a problem with that either.....when they are unlocked (which half the time they're not) or propped open (which is against regulations).



The building is a squared-off U shape and to get to the office I can go all the way around the building or across the top of the U-shape through a breezeway. (by the way, I love the breezeway, it opens out to a plaza area that always beckons me to stop awhile) Now, since the breezeway doors are outer doors, it's required they stay locked, too. And, I have to go through those doors not only to get to the office but to the first and second grade classrooms. No problem there, either. I'm all for safety.

But now the frustration:

All rooms stay locked at all times, we teachers are not able to unlock them. So, if you go out of the classroom to use the restroom, pick up a student, go run some copies, you'd better have your key with you. In my position, I go to classrooms constantly picking up students for their time with me and have to knock, have someone in the room open the door and disrupt the whole class. Yuck.

And, the big thing......all the locks are opened with key-cards, like in a hotel, and can only be programmed in Germany. So, when the administration needs staff members to be able to get into the, oh, teacher work room for instance, they have to put in a request to Germany to change the computer program to add that room number then, when they've gotten the okay, to call each teacher into the office to recode her key. What a pain...............right now the key each teacher holds opens the outer doors and his/her room only. All in the name of security.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for the safety of our kids, but key cards programmed in Germany? Isn't that going a bit too far?