goggly

Visiting Corinna

We went to visit an old school friend and her kids,
they had such a good time playing hide and seek
(except they kept hiding in the EXACT same space every time)!

Like TinkerBell

auntie chelle and uncle matt gave sophia a little costume and she danced around in it all day long.

Father's Day in the USA

yum yum, dim sum. we went for the traditional dim sum breakfast in newark today. sophia was a bit more interested in the fish they have in the tanks, but she chowed down on the charsiu bao and rice tamales afterwards.

Oakland Bazaar

Traditionally for Father's day we go to the bazaar in Oakland, this year we had a sched change and we went saturday. By coinky my Auntie Lucy, Uncle Ed and our cousins and their wives (and second cousin ryan) were also there. We got to catch up and chat and Ryan took Sophia to play games and even won her 3 fish (which we went to buy a bowl and food immediately and then immediately after they died. i made my dad buy some new ones before sophia woke up and of course they died too, so far she hasnt noticed).

Chillin at Shelly's with Benjamin and Shady

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SF in da UC

This is cool, you know skanky ol kennedy park - well it just got a make over! Long gone are those splinter giving-pee smelling fort things. There are new slides:

Bridges to run across:
In fact, it's a California themed park!

it's pretty cool, the benches are shaped like surf boards. there is a slide to climb up with sea animals for foot holds, there are horses and mine carts to rock on and fake logs to run on. Too cool! (but let's see how long that lasts before somebody defaces it, so far its lasted a month).

Leavin' on a jet plane...

once again it's that time of year again. we are goin back to Cali...

annual 'sophia and daddy at the airport' picture
here's a new one, max and me - i'm so glad sophia can take pictures now!

Last day of school for sophia!

Valentina, Carmella and Sophia.

Casetta di Terra

One of the dads is an architect. During his travels he went to india and learned how to construct a typical mud hut. This year, they organized all the kids, parents and teachers and in a week brought in all the materials and constructed this hut in the playground at the school:Miss Milena and Bianca get down and dirty!

Soph's dirty little feet
(or as she likes to say all too often PIEDI PUZZOLENTI!)

group washdown!

The hut was actually built in may but I didnt get a chance to snap a picture of it the finished product. I guess I'll have to do that today! I didnt get to help build the hut, because i was busy making all the hats, so Bianca's mom was so sweet and gave me all the pictures. She also gave me a bunch from the school recital and Sophia's bday! Bianca 'graduates' this year and I am really going to miss her and her family. We were very fortunate to find this school, it is not typical that parents are so involved and organize so many things both curricular and extra curricular.

The Recital

Today was the big day! The school put on an unbelieveable production! There are three classes with at least 25 kids in each-all the kids were costumed, there wasnt a lot of scenery, but there were a heck of a lot of props! The story was about the sun and the night that marked the time for man.

Water fairies were always ready to sing and dance and the lake where they lived gave joy and life to everything.
During the summer, the children swam in its crystal waters.
and the animals came to drink at the lakes edge
and the tranquilty of life continued like this, until...

An eclipse darkened the sun, then the earth started to shake and out of it emerged the Crastacuscut (i dont even know how to pronounce it, let alone know what it means). And it put a spell on the fairies and their lake and
lava began to flow out of the crack where the Crastuscut had come out.
(the kids are a volcano and they threw up some red fabric as lava, but i was too far and didnt capture it well)
From the darkeness of the eclipse and now arid earth-fear and sadness over came life on the earth-especially for the children.

but one night, the courageous children, go to the forest to where the earth fairies live and ask for help and the children find the crastacuscut and defeat it.

the flame fairies seal the terrible monster back into a grotto under the volcano and life begins again

The inhabitants of the lake have a gigantic party in honor of the courageous children

and the children and the animals bring gifts.
The end!

Quite a production, huh?! During the year, the kids planted seeds and watered them til they grew into plants-which were used in the play and then sold after the show. One of the Dad's is a musician, he wrote and sang many of the songs-he recorded the kids narrating the story and edited everything to be coordinated with the play. After the play there was a mini graduation for the older kids that leave this year. Then a group picture and then we were all invited to eat the picnic lunches we packed. There were games and music and dancing balloon animals. The teachers are very good about incorporating the parents and using their talents! The musician dad sang and others played music and the kids played and had fun.

no italian party is complete, without the tarantella!

And then we got home and I took a big nap!

so here is a side note: did you notice that Sophia has a hat on in that last picture...now was that so difficult?? I know making those damn hats was! Plus if you notice-I made 20 hats, only about 10 were used (which is fine, because they can be used again for playing and i'm sure that when they asked they didnt know exactly who was doing which role. that wasnt what i was irked at). I did get a special thanks after the play, and they didnt make me pay for the plants...altho I would have. In the end, what was wrong was righted and I left happy and content.

the Fashion Show

this time Karol went to pick up the girls from school . I was going over to teach Karol how to make pizza, when I got there-the kids were are made up and had a fashion show ready to show me! They LOOOOVED doing this...props to Karol for her creativity! The posed and we snapped pictures.This was Sophia's favorite pose-I wonder what fashion mags she has been looking at!

Side note: yesterday today I directly asked why Sophia was not wearing an animal hat. I said I acutally didnt really care, but I put a lot of work into those hats, I used my own materials for many of them and I was lead to believe that I was doing it for the group that Sophia was in. If it was different, somebody should have told me about it. The response was: Sophia is one of the 'more awake' kids and so they put her in the group of kids that had a bigger role and more things to do. So I said, that was fine, but somebody should have said something to me. I didnt even care if she wore a hat or not, it was just the principal of the whole thing. So to pacify (not their words, mine) she said that they could put a hat on her at the end of the play when all the kids party. Uhm-shouldnt they have thought about that before???

Hand prints

We're gettin in all the playdates we can! Today we went on bikes to pick up the girls from school. We finished the handprints we made the other day. After that the kids went to Valentinas house for an hour and Max and I and our friend Silvia(an architect), went to take a second look at a house we saw a week or 2 ago. Karol and Christian (Vale's parents) were really nice to take her for an hour on shuch short notice. I didnt want Sophia to come with us for 2 reasons: 1) i wanted to hear what Silvia's input was and it's hard to do and take care of Sophia at the same time and 2) the house has tenants in it-a lady with 4 kids and it is DISGUSTING- last time- we could tell the small garden was once nice, but had over grown plants, a dead tree and broken toys. This time it was cleaned up a bit, i think the landlord told off the tentant. Also there was crap, just about everywhere! the kitchen table was filled with open food and unwashed dishes, there was a piano buried in unopened mail, there were dirty cushins on the floor to watch the tv the bathrooms were disgusting-i dont think the shower or bathtub had ever been cleaned! This time the dishes were put away, so the kitchen smelled a little less, the piano was dug out and but the rest was still the same. I dont think that the sheets on anything had ever been changed-when we went upstairs to where the kids slept (and they all sleep in one room) the musty smell was so disgusting -i gagged! The thing that always bugs me about going there is that-the family lives like dirty paupers-one youngest kid sleeps in one of those foldable camping beds/cradles-but they have a Wii, with a couple of different joysticks and at least 20 games. Priorities are a bit out of wack there. But the tenants are a superficial thing-nothing that cant be cleaned or replaced-what we were more interested in this time were problems with the house-foundation, stucco, floors, stairs etc. Now we are mulling things over. The same day we saw this house, we saw another one down the street- in much better condition which didnt require a second look-but of course that one cost more. We'll see how it goes.

side story: remember those hats that I made for the school play-I noticed that Sophia isnt on the list to be one of the animals. I asked her about it and she said she wasnt wearing a hat. Today I asked the teacher about it, but not in a direct way-the teacher said that Sophia has the role of one of the courageous children. I was kind of too pissed to say anything, so I left it like that for now.

Play Date with Vale

Sophia's BFF is Valentina. Vale is quite a shy girl. Just after the xmas holidays, she invited Sophia over to play and they had a blast, but when we first asked her over to our house to play, she said no. She is slowly breaking out of her shell-and has started to say yes. She's come over a few times for a short period of time and they had fun. Today she came over for the whole day (its a holiday so we picked her up late in the morning) and the girls had a blast! I know Vale likes to cook, so we made:

BFF heart pizzas!

The girls are good at playing together and making up their own activities, but we dont have as many toys as Vale, so I had some back up boredome activities.