Halloween in Italy

Hello again! Here is what we have been up to the past few weeks:

We were able to take advantage of a day off from basketball and travel to Lake Como. It is only about a 45 minute drive from us and the weather worked out in our favor and was perfect. Lake Como is absolutely beautiful! (Google it!) I secretly kind of wished we lived there! We took in the gorgeous views, ate lunch right on the lake, grabbed some gelato and ended the day with Carter playing at a playground with the lake and mountains as the backdrop. It really was a perfect day! We are hoping to make it back there once more before the weather gets too chilly. 

On to a completely different topic.... Holidays. Holidays overseas are always difficult. Especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. Up until now, Halloween wasn't really that big of a deal to miss out on. But of course, now with Carter, it's almost as hard as Thanksgiving and Christmas in my opinion! Preparing to head overseas this season, it really did make me sad that Carter was going to miss Halloween in the States. Even though he is young and still doesn't fully understand what it is, I still wanted him to be able to be home and go trick or treating. It makes me sad to miss out on American holidays with our family. Those are the special moments that we miss out on that are the hardest things to handle over here. 

I still wanted to make it special so I got Carter some Halloween goodies to pack up in my suitcase - of course there was already Halloween stuff out at Target in August! I never even thought about taking Carter trick or treating here until Tyler brought it up one day in September right after we got here. The whole team lives in the same apartment complex (which has never happened with previous teams, everyone lived in different locations). So with us all being so close, it would make it super convenient to take Carter trick or treating here. I don't know why I never thought of it but I was so excited to do something for Carter that was Halloween related! 

Once October rolled around, stores started filling with Halloween stuff. I did not realize how much Italy has embraced the Halloween tradition and it is definitely by far the most I have seen while overseas. I was able to grab some cute Halloween goodies/decorations and we were even able to find pumpkins to carve. We found Carter a Batman mask and dressed him up as Batman and he was so stinking cute. He even left the mask on the whole time which Tyler and I could barely believe! He did so great even though I'm sure he must have been thinking "what the heck are these two getting me into" ;) Even though we weren't home, I'd say we had a pretty good Halloween for Carter and I am already looking forward to next year when he understands it even more. 

It might sound silly that I am talking about being sad about missing Halloween in the States, but those are really the moments that matter! Holiday traditions surrounded by family and friends are priceless and I can't wait to have those back again. Thankfully, this year we are going to have a little bit of home with us on both Thanksgiving AND Christmas! This will be the first time ever in the 8 years Tyler has played overseas that we will have family with us on those holidays. Laurie (Tyler's mom) will be with us for Thanksgiving and Erica and Dan (Tyler's sister and her husband) will be with us for Christmas! I am so excited and am so happy we will get to spend the holidays with them. I can't wait for them to experience the holidays overseas. 

I will probably be back with another post after Thanksgiving. Enjoy eating way too much turkey and pie and enjoy the time that you get to spend with family and friends. Don't take it for granted!