family

May the Force Be With You

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

So, I let my preschoolers watch a PG-13 movie. I know, bad mommy. In my defense, it was Star Wars (that makes it OK, doesn’t it?). It was also Tony’s custom version, expurgated for three- and six-year-old eyes. And, we LIVE on the planet of Tatooine. Besides, the damage had already been done six years ago when Axa saw it multiple times in the theater as a baby in the Philippines.

Bizarrely enough, Star Wars is something my children can really relate to. As we were preparing to come to Tunisia in the wake of the revolution, I cast about for a way to explain the events to them without overwhelming or frightening them.… Read more

The Sneakiest Parents on the Block

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Last night we perpetuated a brilliant scheme. Our babysitter couldn’t come until 9:00 p.m., which is a very normal time to go out in Italy, but is also an hour past our family’s bedtime. Yes, Tony and I usually go to bed at the same time as our children. Pathetic, I know, especially in Italy. But we do get up a lot earlier than they do, at least. Our children love babysitters, and get very excited about the prospect of one coming, which excitement often culminates in running through the house, hiding under beds, and erupting in sudden peals of hysterical laughter.… Read more

A Few Thanksgiving Thoughts

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

It’s Thanksgiving in the United States today. Last year we had Thanksgiving with Grammy and Pampa and Uncle Curt on our back porch in sunny Fallbrook. I was sick and depressed. Tony was between jobs again. Grammy mostly cooked the whole dinner herself. I don’t remember if I even did anything besides feel tired. This year things aren’t quite back to normal, but they are better. A lot better. At least I can picture them getting back to normal, which was hard to do last year. So this Thanksgiving I feel thankful for some really big things, and a lot of little things.… Read more

Gardening for Dummies

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We have snow forecasted for this week. Every day we watch the snow march a little further down the mountain towards us. Tropical birds that we are, it is all an adventure for us. Axa and Dominique have been wearing their snowsuits for days in anticipation of the big event. They were thrilled the other day when our neighbor Beatrice invited them over to help her prepare her yard for the snow. They knocked down leaves, each got a ride in the wheelbarrow, and helped to wrap her twelve-foot banana tree in plastic. Yes, our province is statistically the coldest in Italy, yet in Beatrice’s yard live a banana tree and a palm tree, which have both obviously been flourishing for years.… Read more

Chinese Buns

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

You know you’ve been in Italy too long when your daughter’s copious drawings suddenly all consist of huge psychedelically decorated depictions of candy. Is she attempting to visually portray the sensation of a sugar high? Her latest covert source of caramelli is our next-door neighbor, who in all fairness does gift her seed pods of various sorts as well. They seem to have a special understanding. Who else would have intuited that the offering Axa would appreciate most (aside from those caramelli, of course), would be random yard clippings?

Yesterday we also inadvertently netted birthday cake, syrupy baked pears, and chestnut cake.… Read more

From Zappos to XUBI

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Once upon a time, I used to spend hours a day hammering out business strategy. I read Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. I interviewed potential employees, approved new products, designed magazine ads, and wrote telemarketing scripts. I lived between laptop and blackberry. The business my husband and I started from our cinderblock apartment in college eventually grew into a company that did things like selling nationwide to high schools and colleges and sponsoring Team USA at the World University Games. Along the way, we gained a lot of practical experience in manufacturing, supply chain, import/export, and marketing. But most important were the things we learned about ourselves and each other, managing people and relationships, and juggling work and family.

… Read more

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

After a long morning deep cleaning and organizing the house, we had finally piled everyone into the car last Saturday at noon, almost two hours later than I had anticipated. Coats were off, our lunch was stowed in the back, and the children were buckled when we looked up and saw our 62-year-old widowed neighbor out chopping a gigantic pile of wood. She had her automatic splitter hooked up to the tractor, but still. Tony and I looked at each other, hesitated a moment, and then acknowledged we’d better get out and help her. So much for our already postponed outing.… Read more

And now you know . . . the rest of the story.

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I hope you enjoyed our little jaunt to the Philippines yesterday. Now back to Italy. We had decided to move to Italy by October 2007, which at the time was one year away. Now all we needed to do was to collect birth, death, and marriage certificates for Tony and all his ancestors in a direct line back to Domenico. It came to a grand total of 32 certificates, plus the Naturalization papers for Domenico. The documents had to be requested from the vital records offices of five different states and two different towns in Italy, and then most of them had to be sent to the Governor’s office of the various states for an Apostille.… Read more

Another Angle

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

If you’ve missed the beginning of this story, I’m telling about how we moved to Italy. The rest of the story can be found here:


Since Grandma Familia had been a good source of information about her side of the family, Tony decided to call his mother and see if she knew anything about whether and when Domenico was naturalized. As fate would have it, she had recently paid a visit to her uncle Blaine (Domenico’s grandson and the genealogy guru of the family). With her sisters, she had been able to see his store of genealogical documents.… Read more

Welcome to the Famiglia

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Lately we’ve been talking about the new Rome L.D.S. Temple and why it is important to my family. If you missed the first two posts in this series, here they are:

Rome Temple Groundbreaking
The Story Begins . . .

When Tony and I got married, one of his aunts gave me a set of pasta dishes, along with Tony’s grandmother’s recipe for Chicken Parmagiana. “Welcome to the Famiglia,” began the recipe. I didn’t really understand back then everything it meant to become part of this family.

After our wedding, Tony and I went back to Utah and B.Y.U., where he busied himself finishing a business degree and I went to work at an immigration law office.… Read more