Sex machine family...
Anne-Marie and I moved our family to
Italy for two years as part of a family adventure (call it a mid-life
crisis). We sold our house and practically all our possessions (except
the clothes/items we took in suitcases). We lived the first year in a
restored Italian farm house two kilometers from a medieval town that
you could walk across in 5 minutes called
Città della Pieve (on the border of Umbria and Tuscany). The next year we moved inside the city wall of a
larger medieval city (perhaps 15 minutes walking from one side to the other)
called Spoleto (in Umbria).Just after we arrived in Spoleto, Anne-Marie and I went exploring and ended up at a local restaurant. The owner refused to believe that we could have seven children and said that the day we came with seven children we could all eat for free! So the next Sunday after church we paraded our family by his restaurant (but did not stay to eat)! This picture now prominently hangs in the restaurant and the owner is not shy about telling customers about the Americans with seven children. The picture is titled "sex machine family."
Our family was quite a spectacle in Italy. Italian families typically have only one (maybe two) children. The cost of living is so high that usually both parents work full-time. Even preschool is part of the Italian public school system.
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