Christmas 2014

This was the first Christmas that Matteo kind of understood what was going on.  He was, of course, enamored by Santa.  This Santa was the first of several we saw!  Needless to say, I was Santa'ed out by Christmas.

Zoolights at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium with Ronan and his mom was pretty fun, but is it ba-humbug of me to say I usually think Zoolights are over-rated?

Scuba diving Santa was a hit with everyone though!

We drove 1 1/2 hours to Elbe where we took the Polar Express Train, run by the Mt. Rainier Historic Railroad.  It was cute, but Fabio and I came up with about a dozen ways to make it better!  It was pretty much a train ride with cookies and cocoa and Santa.  No biggie.

We spent Christmas at Nana and Grandpa's house.  Aunt Abbie was there too and Ella came the day after.  It was relaxing, and always feel good to be home and pampered with food and no chores!

Nana always has fun tracking Santa on NORAD.

We tried to make Christmas Eve magical with driving around seeing Christmas lights, singing Christmas carols and reading The Night Before Christmas.  We also wrote a note to Santa and left cookies and milk.

Santa came and gifts were opened and a great time was had by all!

Pretty much, all we needed to get for Matteo was the OctoAlert from Octonauts.  It's January 6 and he is still playing with it non-stop.  Oh-three-year-old!

Cousin Time with Will

Aunt Leisa, Uncle Dale and Cousin Will came to Washington to visit, and we were so glad to join them at Nanna and Grandpa's house.  Will and Matteo were (mostly) inseparable.  They play so well together and are both pretty easy going.  

My mom and I didn't hear the boys playing for a few minutes and my mom found them in her room, on her bed, under the pillows, sharing a peanut butter cup they had found on her nightstand.  They weren't ashamed at all!  In fact, Will ran and got the wrapper of another peanut butter cup they had eaten earlier out of the garbage and proudly showed it to her.  We thought that was pretty cute and funny!

Uncle Dane flew a plane into Pasco and we got to see him for a few minutes during change-over.  The boys loved watching planes take off!

They were mostly good at sharing toys.  :)  They didn't ever really fight.  They just cried if the other was playing with a toy they wanted.  They joys of teaching three-year-olds to share!

We visited a pumpkin patch/farm by my parents' house and the boys had fun riding the "train," horsies and going on a hay ride.  The highlight for the boys was climbing the hay bales.  They could have done that for hours!  We had fun watching them.

Nanna made her famous sugar cookies and she made them into big jack-o-laterns for the boys to decorate.

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!