Mi famiglia di Italiano

This is mi famiglia di Italiano (my Italian family). In the picture, from left to right is E, D, Salvatore (my Italian father), Nunzia (my Italian sister), Maria (my Italian mother) and me! These are the most amazing people you will ever meet. They are so kind and gracious. In the deep poverty that is Napoli, they work hard to make an honest living. They brought us into their home, made us an amazing Italian meal, and shared the best Italian desserts on the planet. I am trying to convince them to let Nunzia come to America for a year and study here- she graduates this year. I just hope it is not another three years before we see them again. I have suggested to E that rather than us take another vacation, we purchase tickets for them to come here.
As for the rest of life...E has a terrible cold and an eye infection... D is fighting a cold and I am *still* having issues with my eye...ugh! We are also still working on falling into a regular schedule although now I have added going to the gym to my regular schedule. Still not working on comps...bad! bad! bad! I am getting close though :)
We are also still awaiting word on E's job. As some of you know he applied for a new position and it appeared that they offered it to him last week. I say appeared because now that he called them to accept it, he hasn't heard anything back. He called yesterday and they said okay, we will get back to you and then nothing today. IF this job falls through, it will not be good...he has already made the mental break from his current job. We have already (after they said "we want to offer you the position") begun to figure out how our new schedules would work. More than anything, E is not the type of person who goes into change easily and this has been a long journey for him. For him to be knocked down now would be devastating. It is SO stressful!
In addition, today we have meetings at the Jewish Day School (JDS) where we are considering sending D. It is such a hard decision- the public school here is great, but still subject to NCLB. We went to visit and saw that the student to teacher ratio is about 20-1 where at JDS it is about 6-1. Not to mention they told us at the public school that they test kindergartners two to three times a year in reading...in kindergarten! I do think JDS is the best place for D...he is creative, independent and not a conformist...the issue is the $$$$$$$$$. It is $17,000 a year! ouch! We are applying for financial aid, which is one of the meetings today. Wish us well
I will post an update on both situations soon.