Happy Birthday!!

Venerdì era il compleanno di Angela. Tanti Auguri!!

Happy Birthday to me :)

A birthday bouquet from Maria :)

Yesterday, we celebrated my birthday! It was nice to have my parents here from Georgia to celebrate with us. Dany was home all day, too, since it was SVC's Fall break!

Here is the birthday cake I wanted...The apple-cream cheese cake from Southern Living's September issue. Very good! (BTW, there's also a really good homemade pudding recipe in that issue!)

Here's the regular birthday cake that Maria baked and decorated for me. This cake was really for the kids :)

Presents...

Cati made me a doll :) What a treasure!

And Maria drew this picture of Mary for me!

The beautiful priceless gifts that I received and do not have pictures of are the many hugs and "Happy Birthdays" from my sweet kids! What a wonderful day!!

Happy 11th Birthday, Maria!!

Maria celebrated her 11th birthday a few weeks ago! (Yes, I'm behind on blogging AGAIN.)

One of her gifts was a new dress made by her aunt.

Maria decided to wear it while she continued opening presents.

More presents...these were from her American grandparents who got to watch via FaceTime on the iPod.

Happy 6th Birthday, Matteo!

Matteo is 6-years-old today!

Matteo had to open his presents very quickly before his almost 2-year-old beat him to it :)

Elena has the next present in hand...

Happy Birthday, sweet boy!!

Happy birthday to me!

On Monday I celebrated my 33rd birthday! It was a wonderful day! My parents arrived on Saturday to stay with us for a week and to celebrate with us!


First of all, Elena is missing from all of these pictures because she was napping at the time :(


Here I am with my best candle-blowing helpers! I got a cheesecake - my absolute favorite!!!

Presents...an Ipod Touch - WOW! A big surprise! I've been finding lots of great free apps for it!

Tea - YUMMY! I love tea...just ask my dental hygienist who has to remove the stains from my teeth :) My mom picked out some really great loose tea leaves.

And, from Dany...Let me say first of all that Dany's not much of one for surprises, or keeping secrets. Road trips and museums are never at the top of his 'Favorite-things-to-do' list. Keeping this in mind, Dany got me...

In case you couldn't read that...a 4 day trip for all of us to go to DC where we will get to attend the Baptism of our very good friends' baby and to do the usual DC things!! I was shocked and I am so excited for next weekend!!!

What a great birthday! And, I'll be sure to post pictures from our trip to DC!!!

Happy 10th Birthday, Maria!!

Can you believe she's 10 ?!?! In case you would like to start with a look back at her 9th birthday and those before that, please go ahead and click on the links :)

We actually began Maria's birthday celebration on Wednesday, Sept. 8th. Dany knew that he had a meeting late on Thursday afternoon, so Maria started opening presents and eating cake a day early. Who can complain? :) She chose Pasta ala Carbonara for supper. Yummy!

We schooled on Monday (Labor Day) so that we could take Maria's birthday off! A lady from church invited us over for a nice breakfast and then playtime!

She had a sandtable, which the little ones especially loved...

Maria spent a good bit of time hoola-hooping...

Matteo played some ring toss...

And, Maria got another cake!

Here is Elena ready to claim a piece for herself :)

Another gift...

Here's "Happy Birthday" #1...

Happy Birthday, #2









Here's Chiara enjoying a birthday card from Grandma and Pipa...

Just so you know, it's her big brother fussing at her at times in the video, not me!