Yum Yum Dim Sum

Went to get my first fix of Dim Sum. My good little Asian baby - she likes plain white sticky rice more than risottos and hot tea in a small cup without sugar! In fact she is even more Asian than me, she is soooo into chicken feet! ack, even I cant handle that!

Auntie Laura's

Got up tooo early to finish packing, clean the house and leave to Poggibonsi in Tuscany. We stayed at Aunt Laura's...where I unfortunately forgot to take pictures. We arrived, Max's parents were there waiting for us, everyone pressured me into letting them take Sophia a day early to the beach and not going to the wedding with us (which i later regretted) and it was such a whirlwind and chaos I forgot to send everything with the grandparents and didnt get any pics of sophia and max's auntie laura, oh well, next time.
We did hang out a bit with max's cousin fabio and his really sweet girlfriend virginia. we went to visit San Lucchese and Cassero (a historic church and an ancient castle, recently restored, built by lorenzo de medici)

workin at the car washhh yeah

Sophia helps with the good ol' American tradition of coming home and washing Grandma's car!

OMG they missed the train!!!

Willie, Matt, Casey and Patrick went down to Naples for their last stop of the trip. Casey and Patrick have a flight out of Malpensa today at 8.30....they decided to cut it close and train it straight from Naples to Malpensa. Unfortunately they cut it too close and there were no more trains going to the airport by the time they got in (the last ones leave at 11) and they caught the last metro coming towards Cologno Monzese - or so they thought...unfortunately it was a train going to Gessate (the other part of where the trains fork) - luckily Willie thought fast, and they got off at Cascina Gobba (the stop right before the tracks fork)...unluckily it was after 1 am and there were no more taxis to be bound....luckily it was close to the house and I know the road so I went to go get them! (but first i had to take out sophias car seat - leave it in the stair well and then go and get them because with 4 other people and 4 other large backpacks and 4 other small backpacks we werent all going to fit). Called taxis for C and P for the next morning/2 hours later, since it was now 3 am-ish, called it a night and went to bed. They now owe us a big fat dinner when we get to San Diego!!!!!

Pietro's Birthday

Today was Sophia's friend Pietro's birthday party, he is turns 2 too. We went early to Fra and Paolo's house to help set up the party. Unfortunately Sophia decided not to sleep, so by the time all the kids started coming over she was tired and grumpy and tantrum-y. But she had a good time anyways and ate LOTS of focaccia!!!!! Then we went to Nanni and Francesca's house to have hamburgers and hot dogs...they live just a couple of hundred meters away, on the 7th floor. Of course the elevator was BROKEN!! but we had fun and ate lots of junk food and the boys play WII...who wants to be that Max will complain about his elbow hurting tomorrow on the drive down to Tuscany.

Making Pietro's presents

This is Sophia's first week of 'summer vacation'. We pulled her out of the preschool because friday we are leaving to a wedding in Siena, after that she will remain in Tuscany with her grans and stay at the sea. We made bday presents for her friend Pietro. Which was good because we didnt want to start the vacation time off with just Dora and the Backyardigans. Sophia was such a good girl. She drew and painted the whole time. I can see she gets her creative genes from the her mommy's side of the family. But her attention span is much better than mine!!! I had to take breaks and do other things, she just kept going and going. Eventually we made a special little present...I hope Pietro likes it. He has a lot of clothes and toys already and so I wanted to do something different. The picture came out much better in my head, but since I havent painted in such a long time I was struggling with using the paints (in fact I had started off in oils and just abandoned the project because the whole thing looked like a war with paints instead of the night sky...oh well). It was a long day because then after we went to Vulcano to shop for a dress for Lilliana's wedding (and shoes and makeup and everything else) and then we came home. Sent Sophia to bed and watched the beginning of Project Runway (3rd season) while I made some jewelery to go with the dress and a necklace and bracelet for Simona's bday. Crazy! Tomorrow will be another full day because we need to get stuff done for my permesso di soggiorno (the green card here...yes we are still working on it!!!) and last minute stuff for the wedding.

San Giacomo B-days

This weekend we went to the San Giacomo house to celebrate the 3 birthdays (Irene (Max's mom), Sophia and mine). And we were supposed to celebrate Irene's 80th birthday with her friends on Sunday with a big lunch. There was prosciutto and melon, lots of salamis, hams and cheese from Tuscany. And then Irene made polenta and cinghiale (boar). Molto buono! But....Irene didnt tell anyone it was her birthday and the party ended being for Sophia. (I was kind of mad about that because she didnt even tell us that the party was not for her...Max thinks she doesnt want people to know her age, she should just lie like we do in the Ng family).

...But we know the truth. We gave her a matching purse and shawl. Every one did a little something for the present. I crocheted, Sophia decorated the wrapping paper and card and Max wrote the card. (Sophia is wearing a hooded beach towel the her Auntie Paola and Uncle Ale gave her)




After lunch Max and I went for a walk. San Giacomo is beautiful at every season. In spring there are beautiful flowers that carpet the hills...which i always pillage and plunder from the wild and bring home to shove in tiny Ikea vase in our tiny sad apt. Here they will stay until the wilt and eventually start to rot and the smell is so awful that I will have no other choice than to finally get rid of them. Just so I can pretend to bring some of that wild beauty back into our crampy little Milanese home. But they arent wilted and smelly yet, so I am still enjoying them (well except for the pollen and petals that keep falling off).

(the pictures are quite annoying to upload and then trying to place them where you want them to go is all together another frustration....sorry)