Life after Europe

We didn't live in Italy for too long (20 months) but due to my kids' ages (they were 5, 4, just turned 3, and 14 months old when we arrived in Vicenza) apparently they didn't remember as much about life in the US as I thought they would. We've been In Texas for about 36 hours now and here are some of their discoveries/joys:

-Just moments arriving in our hotel room, Connor starts hollering "Mom come here! Mom come here! This hotel is awesome! The bathroom has the coolest thing ever" so he literally take my hand, leads me to his bathroom and exclaims "our hotel has a clubhouse!"....while showing me the CLOSET.

Yep. Just a closet. But we moved to Italy 2 weeks after he turned 3, and our house in Italy didn't have a single closet anywhere. So to him, this door led to a secret room.

-Our flight from Italy took us to San Antonio where we stayed one night, and then drove to Houston. We stopped on our way and picked up Sonic for lunch. All the kids got wacky packs and I asked "Do you want French fries or tater tots?" All the boys immediately (excitedly) responded "tater tots". Except Maggie who said "what's that?" And I realized she had never had a tater tot. She had also never had the pellet ice, which fascinated her.

-Logan went to the bathroom and then came out to tell me that he was able to flush all by himself. "It didn't have two buttons mom, it has a thing hiding on the side and I could reach it!"

-We get to Houston, we're driving near downtown when Maggie wakes from her nap. I tell her that we are almost there and she is staring out the window. She says "what's that?" and I turn to see what she's pointing at...it was the overpasses. I had to explain that there were cars up there, which she then said "I not see them". She was fascinated by the skyscrapers downtown as well. It took a lot of explaining that they were tall building with offices and that the little squares were windows.

Other things were:

-the size of Target and the toy department (7 aisles of toys, not 2 like our PX had). Maggie went CRAZY when she saw all the LaLaLoopsies and the boys had the same reaction to the 2 aisles of just superhero stuff.

-Arby's at the airport...how did they make the fries like that and had they ever had them before? (it was Ryan and the answer was yes).

-There are yellow school buses just like in my book (Connor).

We have been stateside for less than 2 full days and they love it!