Another 4-year-old moment

Chiara has been having trouble with the names of all the people here. It's understandable. I remember practicing the names of all of Dany's family for a while before coming here for the first time nearly 12 years ago, and now several of them have significant-others, which makes even more names to remember.

Chiara has solved the problem by simply referring to everyone as "that boy" or "that girl." Tonight when I was putting her in bed she said to me, "Mommy, I didn't know that that girl who lives here and speaks Italian is the mother of this house!". (She was referring to Dany's mom, her grandmother :))

Il Lago di Como

On Saturday we took a long walk down by the lake. I had forgotten how pretty the mountains and lake are!

First pictures with family

Here are some of our first pictures of the kids with their Italian grandparents (nonni) and aunts and uncles (zii).

More airplane pictures

I have more pictures from our trip to Italy that Dany took. You can see Cati beginning the journal that she's keeping for this stay in Italy, Elena looking a little uncertain about flying, Giuseppe having his inflight meal, and Matteo enjoying it all!

Abbiamo arrivato in Italia!

After a long day and night of traveling from Pittsburgh and through NY, we arrived in Italy Monday morning. The plane trip went pretty well. The younger kids slept 2-3 hours. Cati and Maria stayed awake the whole trip. We took up a whole row across the plane. There was a couple sitting behind Dany, Elena, and Chiara who had an empty seat beside them. The flight attendant made them move so that Matteo, Giuseppe, and I would have an extra seat.

We've been enjoying time with Dany's family, eating good food, and getting over jetlag.


Here are a few pictures that I took on our day of travel, and one that I took looking out the window of Dany's parents' home.

Speaking of Italy

As you can imagine, there is constant talk around here about our upcoming trip to Italy. Here's a conversation I had with chiara tonight as I was putting her in bed:

Chiara: We're going to stay in Italy for a whole week and then come back so that we can go to church.

Me: oh, no. We will go to church there. They have lots of churches, the biggest churches you've ever seen!

Chiara: I hope their big churches don't have needles on top to pop the clouds because I like the clouds :)

4-months-old!

Giuseppe is 4-months-old today!

And he's already a budding musician!

Fall Fun!

This time of year the kids frequently express their disappointment in the lack of trees in our yard. Well, our church has a number of trees that put down a think layer of leaves, and the kids can't resist playing in them after Mass in the morning...