Food Journal

So my midwife asked me to keep a food journal for 3 days. Nothing special, she has everyone do it to see if you need to make any changes. I started yesterday and thought I was doing pretty good. I was severely lacking in the vegetable department. So today we had salads for dinner. Actually we had big chef salad with ham, chicken, tomatoes, mushrooms, and cheese on them. MMM!! Then to balance it all out I made homemade Crab Rangoon. Fried, yes, but fried in olive oil. Hey the cream cheese and crab count as protein. LOL!!!

Green Eggs and Ham

So my 4.5 year old is reading. She has been really reading for a couple months now. I am so excited about it. Of course, most people think it is only a parental pride thing but really it is a LOT more than that. I love to read. I read all the time. If its not a book, I am reading on my computer. I read to the kids. Gioia loves to read as well. From an infant she would bring me books and just want me to read all day. Dominic is just getting into books. It took him longer but he really enjoys them now. SO I have been waiting for the day when Gioia can start reading and really get to experience stories and exploring worlds in her books.

We started with Bob Books and some Dick and Jane stuff. She has really done well with them. So the other night we were going to read stories for bedtime. I picked Green Eggs and Ham. The kids love it, DH likes to read it. We asked Gioia to read the first page. It says "I am Sam." Then she precedes to read the entire 60 page book to us! I am serious. I was stunned and SO HAPPY! Of course we had to help her with some of the really hard words, but basically after we told them to her one time she would remember them the next time. It was so cool. I had to go get my sister and have her come watch. Then the next morning she was reading it again. I videotaped her for a minute or so reading. I asked her to read a little louder, so she is practically shouting.

Anyway. That is my mama brag of the week. :)

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter everyone! Well it is 8:20am. We have Hunted Easter eggs, went to Church, had breakfast at church and are back home. Sunrise Mass was at 6:30am. So we decided why not? We rolled out early. The kids hunted their easter eggs really quick and then we rushed off to church. We don't do the Bunny thing. I just told them mom and Dad hid easter eggs for you and they are totally fine with that. They don't care who does it, so long as they get presents. HA HA!! I did take some pictures but haven't got them loaded on here yet. I know we are all taking a nice Easter nap this afternoon. MMM!!! Knights of Columbus puts on a breakfast (free, they just ask for donations). It was really good. They had pancakes, eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, milk and juice. Dominic ate really well and I stuffed myself.

We aren't going to see family this year as traveling to Italy took all our travel vibes for the month. Massimos family was busy with the in-laws so that didn't matter anyway.

Nasosympatico

So next time you have a sinus infection you don't need antibiotics. I yes, I did say that. :) YOu need Nasosympatico and a few homeopathics. Here is an image of a lady doing Nasosympatico. Notice she only has one Q-tip in her nose. I had 3 in each side. That makes 6 folks. I was brave and it seriously only hurt a tiny bit when he put it in the sore side of my face. But I feel 80% well today only 24 hours later. I am sure by tomorrow or the next day I will be AWESOME!! :)

Today it is almost 70 degrees. So we went to a coffee shop at a church, they have an indoor play area for the kids. We had a picnic lunch there. Then we walked around the pond and feed the geese. The kids played on the playground and now they are sound asleep in the car. I just left them there. I am sitting outside soaking up the sun waiting for them to wake up. Yes, the car windows are down. :)

K&Company

A friend of my moms is a high up in K&Company. I believe she is Creative Director? Anyway, at a recent get together at my moms house she saw some of the scrapbooking things I did for Christmas gifts and she said "She needs some K&Company stuff." GUESS WHAT?? She sent me some stuff. It is really nice stuff too! I haven't scrapped anything since Christmas. After making 4 calendars all scrapped I was exhausted. Now I have the motivation to do a few more pages. That and all the great Italy pictures. I can really do some fun layouts. Here is all my loot! THANKS PAM!!!

Food blog

I love to cook new and interesting things. I was searching for Food Blogs once and found a good one. The lady moved and stopped posting. So I moved on too. The other night I found this blog: http://smittenkitchen.com/
So far I have gotten 4 recipes from this blog I am going to try. I made this, Pasta Puttanesca.
It was wonderful. Today I am going to try the Chicken and Mushroom Marsala, and also the puff pastry with custard and fresh berries on it. I can't wait!!!

Last night we went to a birthday party for a boy we know. It was pretty fun. They had it at the Childrens Museum, the kids had a blast, and they had cupcakes. What is better than that?

Finally closing!

Well its the day we been waiting months for. We will finally be closing on our land today. Yippee! We have decided to wait until next year to sell our house and build the new one. I think it is a good choice. I hope it works out ok. This housing market being so unpredictable, one never knows whether it will be better or worse next year. For us it is harder than most people cause we have 2 (almost 3) kids and the 2 large dogs. So we can't rent an apartment. We will have to rent a house or something where we can have the pets with us. We are hoping to be able to rent something close to our property then we can go out and work on the house every day or whenever we need to. All of this also means we have a year to figure out all the perfect things we want our house to have. We got a lot of good ideas about things we like when we were in Italy. Looking at the homes there was nice.

So this afternoon we are closing on the land. Then we are going out to eat to celebrate! This year we will be out there a lot just letting the kids run around. Possibly planting some trees. Camping out there with friends. I can't wait.

Italy Pictures.

Well I took quite a few pictures. Actually looking at them. It doesn't seem like much, but we were sick and my mind wasn't into it some days. This will give you the short version of some of the cool things we saw. The town in the pictures of the group Family was Trieste. It is near the border. They actually went into Slovenia and had lunch. It was about 30 minutes away. There is sea on one side of this town and mountains starting on the other. Massimo didn't take a picture of it, but our Gioia was really excited that the sea had all these Jellyfish in it. I guess it is quite common to see them all bunched up by the shore. Dominic and I didn't get to make it on this outing because we were sick that day. It is where my husbands father and his half sisters Mia and Gioia live. His dad sells products from Sardegna. It is one of the Italy islands and is where Massimo was born. There is a picture of him working at his booth at the market.

Link to Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24599218@N06/sets/

We are back!

Wow. Where do I start. It is too much to tell in one post so I will do the good and bad version.

Good:
1. We got to see Rome. It was pretty neat. Loved the old structures.
2. We got to see all our family.
3. We got to eat wonderful Italian food all week.
4. The kids were wonderful on the planes and traveling.
5. We did excellent with our Italian. We mostly held our own with the help of pocket dictionaries.
6. Massimo's dad and sisters visited with us two days. It was good. For the first time he might actually try to form a relationship with us.


Bad:
1. Rome is really expensive.
2. The dollar's value sucks and the conversion rate is awful.
3. Traveling all those hours by plane sucks.
4. We got sick. Turns out it is Influenza. The kids and I are still sick.
5. One of our flights was cancelled and we had to buy new tickets out of pocket.
6. One of our flights was delayed and hour as well.
7. Rome airport, big bad, lots of stairs.

I promise pictures in the next few days.