sacrament meeting entertainment

Yesterday during sacrament meeting (the hour of our worship services where you try to listen to talks and have 3 children sit quietly- in theory) Isabel was going crazy.  I don't think she got enough movement in during primary and she usually uses me for a punching bag.  In this case as her personal kleenex.  She discovered that picking her nose and trying to wipe it on me got quite a good reaction and she would fall apart in giggles.  I think we had at least 20 minutes of trying to fend off the boogers.  Once in a while when she was failing in her attempt to wipe a boogie on me, she'd eat it.  Totally gross.  Only grosser was when she thought it was great fun to try and get her boogers into MY mouth!  My little girl lives life intensely, and the booger game was no different!

Happy Father's Day

Today is Italy's Father's Day.  On Sunday the kids sang a song about dad and how he is their best friend.  He teaches them to be honest and be better.  I couldn't have been more grateful that those words are true for their dad!  I'm grateful for a good husband!

Pot of Gold!

I have the world's greatest grandma!  Really.  I'm one lucky girl.  One of the things that I love about my grandma is her love for her roots.  Her grandmother was an Irish immigrant (and I was also named after that same Irish grandmother).  She would always tell us how we are I-R-I-S-H!  She would dress up like a leprachaun and go her grandkids school classes and permanent mark green freckles on their face in front of the whole class!  Never forget who you are!  Irish through and through.  In fact she and consequently all of us her posterity are so Irish that when I had my first child in Italy with and Italian father, when I called to tell her the good news, she exclaimed, "we have another Irish grandchild!"  (No offense to my husband was meant.)

Another thing that I love about my grandma is that she sends me a birthday card every year.  It seriously feels like I win the supernatural lottery and get a POT OF GOLD in my mail box once a year.  Somehow what she writes always touches me so deeply I get teary.  This year in the card was written "...A girl like you just has to be a blessing from above, A gift from God in heaven to enjoy and be proud of.."  with "pround of" underlined.  I felt overwhelming love and knew that for some reason I had a grandma PROUD of me.  And boy do I not want to let her down!

 Then today I got this letter reminding me to celebrate my Irishness and St. Patrick's day!

Aaron's prayer tonight

A fare la sua preghiera sta sera Aaron ha detto "grazie che hai sempre bisogno di un bambino in gamba come me! Grazie perché hai bisogno di bimbi gentili... "

Saying his prayers tonight Aaron said "...thank you for needing a boy on the ball, like me. Thank you because you need nice children..."

Direi che non abbiamo problemi di autostima! I'd say we don't have problems with self-esteem!

True stories

Aaron loves telling "jokes" or barzellette as their called in Italian.  They usually have the same theme- a mother of his class mate that wanted to steal money or jewels from important people like the mayor, and end up stealing something that they didn't want, like garbage cans.  He laugh meniacally and tells a lot of them!

Unfortunately I have a joke to tell, but even more unfortunately it's TRUE!


 Chocolate up my nose. I've been sharing a car with Paolo while his is in the shop. The other day as I was driving up the hill to my house I was reaching into the pocket on the door to my left where I keep my gate opener to our drive way. I found an open half-eaten bar of chocolate. As I was fumbling to move it out of the way so that I could quickly get the remote a small piece of chocolate flew up. And it went straight up my nostril!!! Not pleasant. I guess I found out one way I don't like chocolate!