Over Worked

I guess we pushed Grandma (and Cicciobello) too hard, they both passed out on Sophia's bed.

Chinese Migrant Workers

 What? You think that our peeps that come over in C-crates get a rest period??  They've been here less than 12 hours and we've already put my parents to work!

The Christmas tree is ours, but the rest of that hot mess was left for us.  That tree was dead for such a long time that Max just pushed it over.  And then we discovered there was a freaky petrified mushroom growing at the bottom, forgot to get a pic of that though.

Ugh I hope I don't get some creepy mold disease, from the first time we saw the garage until now, quite a bit of water damage has occurred.

Bottega and the Grans

Cheese glorious cheese! Another awesome thing about our new house is that there is a little bottega kitty corner to us that sells a bazillion cheeses and cold cuts, but best of all they have some of the tastiest sausages-if you get there at the right time you can see the owner/butcher making them and he slices some awesome pork ribs right in before your eyes too!

The guy speaks Milanese (or Brugherese-not really sure of the difference) so I can hardly understand him, but man he cuts some mean slices of meat!

Grandma and Grandpa arrived tonight.  My dad holds Viv for the first time, hmmmm I think we've found his doppelganger!

Sorry mom this pictures makes your arm look bigger than Viv's head, but it's the only first pic I got.
 This is the sleep situation by the way...the kids are all good and sleeping in their own room, but living out of suit cases.  Were sleeping on the couch downstairs, but have now hastily painted our room, just in the nick of time and now my parents get the couch until we can paint the upstairs guest room/studio.

Crappy Birthday to Sophia

Bad karma for Sophia.  No big birthday bash for her either.  We went to the ice cream store behind us and got Sophia an ice cream cake.  With bad allergies, topsy turvy house and grandparents arriving tomorrow- the big 5 is just a little bash.  Hopefully we can have something later on.

Eyes Wide Shut

Please let it be allergies and not pink eye!  The little miss returned home from school early with her eyes swollen shut.

(side note: allergies, whew!)

Crappy Birthday to Me

Here's me airing our dirty laundry:  I wanted to throw an awesome 40th bday bash in our new house, back when I thought we would have been living in it for a few months, but since we are still living out of boxes obviously we have to forgo that :o( Since, I've been wanting to go to Trattoria dei Cacciatori (literally next door to the new house) for dinner for a while, I thought that would we fun to do instead.   They have a fantastic spread.   For 30 euro per person and reservations in advance, the table is set with a loads of aperitivi and various breads when you get there.  There were cold cuts of various prociutti, salami, plus cheeses olives, pickled onions and peppers and stuff.  They came around with plates of fried zucchini flowers and different bruschettas.  And then came the first courses...Plates of ravioli and strawberry risotto (a fairly common milanese food-not my favorite.  But don't let my opinion influence you, come try for yourself.) came around.   I was holding back and saving myself for the second course, because with a name like the Trattoria of the Hunters, you know that the meats must rock!  I never made it that far.  Sophia was tired and in a terrible mood and throwing one tantrum after another, Vivienne was fussy and Max was tired since he worked the morning shift so we could go out tonight.  When Max decided he'd had enough, he just picked up the girls and went to pay and I was still starving. 

 

Since I have had to forgo a big birthday celebration and my consolatory rockin dinner at least let me have my own damn pity party...Cheers and crappy birthday to me!!!

Oh Italian Work Ethics....curse you!!!!!

A couple of days ago, the fridge and washer came.  They got the washer up the stairs, but then decided that the fridge was too big to do the same thing (without even trying)  and so we had the choice of them taking it back to the store or they would just leave it and we would have to figure out how to get it delivered ourselves.  Stuck between a big ass fridge and hard place, we chose the latter.  Did I mention that we already paid a delivery fee?  Now we were going to have to hire someone else on top of that!  Our apartment isn't even in a super high building with no elevator.  How do they deliver fridges to the rest of the people (actually usually there are furniture elevators-like cherry pickers, but apparently these idiots didn't have one).

We went to the store and Max bitched and they got a new set of delivery men to come.  This time these guys used the other entrance, but said since they would have to take the fridge door off in order to do it and it would cost us an extra 25 euros (cuz they are supposed to do that, but they 'happened' to have the tools to lift the door off and would do it as a 'favor'). Once again, stuck between a rock and hard place, I shelled out.  Damn these nickel and dimers!