Christmas 2013/New Years 2014 in Review

We have just finished a month of holiday activities!  For a whole month, our routine has been uprooted...and we have had so. much. fun.  We spent Christmas with Nanna and Tippos.

 

Teo met Santa for the first time, and was completely enamored.

And then.  La Nonna came.  Words cannot accurately portray the nonstop love, attention, singing, dancing, fun and games that were had the two weeks La Nonna and Nonno Bis were here.

I came home from an errand one evening to find Matteo helping La Nonna make panzarotti.  Notice the dishtowel tied around his waist and clipped with a chip bag clip.  I have rarely seen anything so cute!

We met up with my parents in Ellensburg for brunch one Saturday.  Two sets of grandparents with all the attention on Matteo.  I'm sure you can imagine the glee.

We took a day trip to Tacoma and stopped at Point Defiance Park.  Who knew it was such a huge, amazing place?  Beaches, hiking trails, zoo, aquarium...and Fort Nisqually is there!  This is a reconstruction of one of the earliest settlements by Europeans in the PNW.  La Nonna and Nonno Bis had never seen anything like it.  We were all impressed.

 

Kerry Park is one of our favorite photo-op places.

 

And Matteo is always a fan of the zoo and the penguins especially.  (Still lovingly calls them, "genaws.")

We had a second Christmas morning with La Nonna and Nonno Bis.  Matteo received a Chuggington train set, and almost one month later, it still keeps him entertained for hours each day.

He received clothes from La Nonna that makes him look like the true Italian stud he is.

There were plenty of stops at coffee shops, and of course Matteo was always the center of attention with La Nonna around.

 

 No trip to Seattle is complete without a visit to Pike Place Market.

 

 

My siblings all flew home for my mom's 60th birthday and we had a short but sweet time celebrating together.

 

 

Matteo spent some time back at my parents' house in Prosser while I did an overnight trip with my students.  While there, he bonded with Abbie, and unfortunately we have no pictures of said bonding. 

 

Later in the week, Abbie and her family came up to Seattle and we got to spend the morning together.  Matteo was a fan of Abbie, but he was an Ella groupie. 

 

 



 

 

 What an amazing month of family, friends and good times!  It was back to our routine today, and although we are happy to be back to our normal, peaceful life, we are so grateful for the past month we had to remember what matters most!