Isabel is getting bigger...

My little Isabel is turning into a LOT OF FUN!  She loves to wave enthusiastically at everyone, smiles, claps her hands, plays peek-a-boo with any willing participant.  She now says: hi, mamma, daddy, Aaron (aaaa-oooon) and Jordan (do-dan).  She's finally got the rolling thing down and can make it around our toy room fine by herself.

Birthday Party

 We had a double birthday party for the boys on Saturday.  The original one was cancelled due to most everyone else cancelling.  The boys had fun helping me make cakes and cupcakes.

Al Mare

 We live about an hour drive from the beach.  We went to the beach by Ravenna, and the boys had to bribed to get out of the water after 2.5 hours of jumping in.  We had a lot of fun!

Fun day!  Isabel just turned 10 months old.  She's blossomed over night.  Rolling over, including during diaper changes, waves hello to everyone, plays peek-a-boo, and says "mamma" and "aaaa- oooon" for Aaron.  Yesterday I heard something like "oh-dan" for Jordan but I have yet to hear it again.  Will hopefully get a good video of her doing all of her favorite tricks/games.

Friends visiting from the states

 Left: Heidi, Right: Jenny.  My friend Heidi and I first met in high school and then were roomates in college before I went on my mission.  She came to visit for a few days and now is on a cruise ship in Greece (lucky her!).  She brought a whole suit case of goodies/fabric/costumes for the boys/sippy cups/you name it.  Thank you to all who helped get that bag ready for her.  I wish I could have filmed the opening of it, but Aaron was way too fast for me to find a camera and I felt like a giddy little kid myself opening it up.

Sunday we had a girls day out on the town, aka we saw down town without the boys.  They stayed home and played with dad.  Poor Jordan had an accident on his bike while I was gone.  The scabs looked terrible, but it's getting better.

 We went to Venice and the day after there was a cyclone.  Glad we missed that one!

 Aaron took this picture of us in St. Mark's Square.

Not the best self-portrait, but this is us on the fairy boat on the grand canal of Venice.  It was a great visit, and I was glad to have friends.

Aaron is 5!

 Aaron requested a snake cake (nearly identical to Jordan's dragon cake).  They both helped to decorate it.

 And in the afternoon when we sang and blew out candles, Jordan blew it out 3 times before Aaron actually got to do it.  Suprisingly Aaron didn't have a melt down over this.

 Then we went on a long out door treasure hunt for his birthday presents, with map and all!

 This is one of my new favorite pictures of the boys!  I can't beleve that my first born is 5!  I love Aaron to death!  He is my sweet, good, spirited child.  I'm so grateful that God gave him to me and that I can be his mamma.  I can't imagine life without him.  Being a mother is by one of the hardest things on the face of the planet.  I used to think it was tough to train for a marathon, or awed at those who trained for triathalons.  This nothing in comparison.  Glad to be doing it, and glad that I'm not supposed to do it alone.  Grateful that Heavenly Father gives me courage, strength, wisdom, insight, and inspiration as I try to be a mother.  I hope Aaron (and Jordan and Isabel) know that I do this because I love them.

Right now I feel like I'm at a phase where I've literally given up everything in order to be here, in order to stay home and be a mother.  I feel like I'm constantly looked down upon and criticized by those of this culture for doing so.  But I'm grateful to hold my head high and say I'm HAPPY to be a mother!  When you see those smiles, who can blame me?!  I will be honest in saying that I'm not happy 100% of the time, and maybe even less than 50% of the time.  But for that percentage of feeling pure joy in this adventure that I'm embarked upon, it is totally worth it!

 I love that you can see all of Isabels fangs teeth in this picture.

Luck O' the Irish

 This ladies and gents is a FOUR LEAF CLOVER!  I found it the other day at the park while I was talking on the phone to a friend.  She told me it would be my lucky day.

I have to mention for anyone who doesn't know my family, my grandma is dye-hard IRISH and has worked her whole life to imprint on delicate minds that we are 100% Irish.  I was named after her grandmother who was an Irish immigrant.  After my first child was born in Italy to an Italian Papa` she proudly pronounced that she had another Irish grandchild!  She also has regularly dressed up like a Leprachaun and gone to her grandchildren's school and colored green freckles on their faces in front of all of their classmates!  I told you, she's dye-hard.

So to my grandma, I dedicate this four-leaf clover to you.  While I didn't have a particularly lucky day that day, I had a funny episode to make me think, "I'm so lucky!"

 This luck of mine has to do with what nurse's sometimes call BM's or code brown's.  What good mothers call #2, or my kids call cacca.  If you don't want to hear a story about that, stop reading and just look at pictures.

I took Jordan into the bathroom before nap time and he really needed to go.  After much grunting, and much waiting he announced that he was ready for a cleaning up.  So I grabbed some TP and started to wipe when he got a panicked look on his face.  I moved my hand just in time to not get it dirty. Phew!

The second time around of being ready to be cleaned I did the same thing.  He once again had a very airy and very wet fart (flatulence, toot, scoreggia in Italian, whatever you like to call it).  He looked up with a very innocently suprised and a little too happy face and with a very excited voice, like discovering a vat of chocolate told me "ti ho spruzzato!"  "I sprayed you!".  In case you're wondering, I did get my hand out of harms way a second time.

You did indeed, crazy boy (or any other word you'd like to use in that situation).

3rd time was the charm and I didn't even get sprayed.  Thank heavens for soap, water, and vigorous hand scrubbing!  It was an "I'm so lucky to be a mom moment!"

 These PJ's and toys are from my mom for the boys' birthdays.  We opened them the other day.  My mom SPOI- ELLED my children!  They loved it, and I was grateful for a generous mom.

She had fun watching the present opening.

Rolling Over

Isabel has been a happy sitter for a very long time. Both of my boys were crawling by 7-8 months.  Isabel is 9.5 months and just started rolling over.  She's not super fast at it (phew! I still have 2 busy boys to chase after too).  It's strange for me to have a child be slow at her milestones.  And yes, she is now trying to roll over during diaper changing.  Sigh, I could have waited a lot longer for that!

We've been finishing up our English  lessons I've been doing with two girls that live next to us.  This was on a treasure hunt we did as part of a "birthday party" for our last lesson.  They were supposed to be jumping on one foot to the garage and back.  Aaron had my running shoes on (don't ask why) which are 2 sizes too big for me. :)  And Jordan is still learning to jump on one foot.

 And finally, we've been enjoying summer weather.  Our next door neighbors had this table and chairs that they no longer used and passed on to us.  We've had several picnics in front of our house, and I have a feeling, many more to come.

 At our birthday party for English class.

 Yesterday Jordan just HAD to try on the gardening boots.

Notice the white flowers on her dress.  Today they are blue thanks to the new blue skirt that I washed with the rest of my clothes (along with anything else that was white before it went into the wash).  I hate it when I learn the hard way!