Happy 4th Birthday, Chiara!!

Happy 4th Birthday, Chiara! Chiara's 4th birthday was on Friday and we celebrated it yesterday.

Earlier in the week, we received a gift for all our spring birthday kids from our Atlanta family - an edible arrangement, which was a HUGE hit! I've never seen Chiara eat her broccoli so fast so that she could have some of this fruit after supper :)

Yesterday, St. Vincent had their Spring Fest and Family Weekend. It was so much fun. The only thing that could've made it better would've been warmer temperatures!

Seed planting...

Egg dying...

Hotdogs for lunch...

Cookie decorating...

Ice cream...

Face painting...

And many other activities...

For supper, we finally had our celebration at home...

March photos

March began with a short visit from my parents. Unfortunately, the visit coincided with the Flu in our house. So, after spending a long weekend with our feverish, hacking kids, the germs followed my parents home, where they spent the next 2 weeks recovering from the Flu themselves. One Saturday we got to babysit! Our kids love babies and really enjoyed the day. Maria even got to bottle-feed a baby for the first time in her life.

We've had a few days here and there with temps warm enough to play outside without a coat! This was followed by big storms here this past Wednesday, including golf ball-sized hail and a tonado touch-down here in town. Thankfully, we had no damage here in our neighborhood. The weather is back to normal now - COLD! Cati asks me every few days when it will be warm enough to wear short-sleeves :) :) Eventually, I'm sure, but it seems hard to believe. I spent a couple of hours yesterday taking advantage of a good sale at Joanne's buying material to make some summer skirts, so we better get to wear them at some point!

Here are a few Sunday afternoon free-time photos...

Ok, I'm sure these are not afternoon photos because the girls are still in their jammies...

It wasn't Monday...I don't know why she decided to spell "Monday" with the ladybugs that she made.

Recently, Maria has enjoyed spending her evening freetime reading to Elena.

Here are a few school time photos...Chiara is working on learning numbers between 10 and 20.

Elena has discovered the joy of stickers!

Baby #6 is doing well. We're at 25 weeks now, so about 15 weeks to go. He seems to want to challenge Matteo for biggest baby. He's measuring at least 2 weeks above average at my prenatal appointments and whenever anyone asks my due date and I tell them, "July," I always get a look a disbelief, and occasionally a comment or two :)

We're looking forward to a fun April. We have 3 birthdays--Chiara will be 4 in a couple of weeks, then Dany's birthday a few days before Elena's 2nd birthday on Easter Sunday!

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!!

Snow's back!

It is February after all :)

Valentines and a Taste of Spring

Here are the kids having fun making Valentines a few weeks ago.

This past Thursday and Friday we had a little touch of Spring here in western PA! As you can see in the pictures, the snow is all gone! Temps reached the low 60s and we really enjoyed it!! It was so nice going out without coats on. This morning, it was in the teens again :( Oh, well. I guess it is February!

It's a BOY!!!

We were all pleasantly surprised to find out at my mid-pregnancy ultrasound this afternoon that we are expecting a BOY! We haven't decided on a name yet. We've narrowed down the list to about 7 names :) Who knows how long it'll take us to decide :) :)

What do you think? Does he look like his brother, Matteo? :) :)

Pigtails and the Store

Yesterday, the kids' Friday afternoon classes at St. Vincent started again. That means I got to go to the store with only 2 of the kids instead of all 5! Yeah! That usually makes grocery shopping much easier, but I don't know if it's ever been this easy...



Elena fell asleep in the van driving back from St. Vincent. She stayed asleep as I got her out of her car seat, walked through the snowy cold weather into the store, and stayed asleep as I laid her down on top of the baby sling in the grocery cart. She didn't wake up until I was almost done shopping!


In other cute Elena news...Elena always wants to do what her older sisters are doing, so when I called Chiara this morning to come let me fix her hair, Elena came running instead. This is the result...

her first pigtails :)

This has nothing to do with Elena, but I thought this picture of Chiara was too cute to miss :) She has pigtail braids, so it fits with the theme :)