5 reasons we're moving to Italy and a Pan Con Tomate recipe that really hits the spot right now.

Plus, a bit of This & That.

5 Reasons We’re Moving To Italy

Even though things are moving at hyperspeed speed right now, our journey to deciding to move our family to Italy has been long, slow, and thoughtfully considered. It's been an all-consuming idea for years, a "what if…" we could not stop thinking about. Italy was the end goal for a long time, the dream Andre and I would live after our kids had grown up, but once Bruno arrived and the cost of living in Los Angeles continued to rise, we started to question that idea of waiting. What if we decided to start living our dream now and not wait 20 more years? What if we could make the kind of life we fantasized about a reality now and not later? What if our kids could be part of that dream and share the experience with us? I want to repeat that last one for you to read again because it was the question that floored us... What if our kids could be part of that dream and share the experience with us?

Andre has held this dream of living abroad longer than me. Growing up with an Italian father and spending so much time in Italy, his love of the country runs deep. A few years ago, he decided to start the citizenship process for him and the boys so that he would have it sorted if we ever wanted to move there and because wait times at the US Consulates could take years. At the time, it wasn't on the table that we would move there when the kids were young. I was adamant about staying in LA after our Denver stint. After all, it's my comfortable place, the only real home I have ever known. But, after Bruno was born and I turned 40, something shifted. I started to think about the next half of my life in a much more critical way and what kind of childhood and experiences I wanted to be able to offer our kids. I let go of the old ideas of my life I was holding onto so tightly and let myself fall into the idea of something new, of having an adventure as a family.

Once I got to this place and told Andre I had finally come around to doing it, things started to become serious, he jumped into high gear, and we committed ourselves to seeing if we could make it happen. By now, we've spent countless hours exploring all possibilities, laboring over the complicated logistics of an intercontinental move with three children, and talking to anyone who would share their experience of living in Italy (so many people who have never met us have been so unbelievably helpful to our family), and working on setting up our business in an efficient way so it can still thrive.

All of our lists of pros and cons eventually boiled down to these five main factors that kept resonating with both of us: