COUSINS!

It's so fun to see the kids play with their cousins!

At the beginning of August they were able to see and play with Alexa and Callie (Shanghai, China) for a day before they headed back home to China. And, they've been able to play with Maddy and Emily who live in Minnesota, quite a bit. The only cousins missing from the fun summer get-togethers were Matteo, Ellie and Maya. Ellie and Maya live in Alaska.



Playing has consisted of lots of swimming in the lake, boating, playing soccer, computer games, building forts, watching cartoons, eating lunches/dinners, and pretending Giuliana is like everyone's real, living baby doll. Seriously. All the little girls want to help feed her, entertain her, dress her, and change her. And, Giluliana has been held a LOT by little people in the past 4 weeks! She's such a good baby!

The kids all played so nice together and Alexa (the oldest by approx 6 years) was the best mommy's helper. She helped me with Giuliana and always made sure to include Rocco in activities. Rocco seems to not get too flustered by all the girls bossing him around. And oddly enough, he and Emily get along really well. Emily is so quiet and sweet... she'll calmly direct Rocco as to how the fort should be built and Rocco thinks is the greatest thing in the world that this cute little girl is giving him all of her attention. Rocco seemed to only really be bothered once by the girl madness, and he said "Those girls are MEAN!"

What I wouldn't give to see Matteo here with his brother, giving all those girls a run for their money. I can only imagine the 8:2 ratio wouldn't even impact the powers of those two little dudes.

Zoo fun!

I am sooooo behind with blog posts! Ack! I guess this business of living like a gypsy and vacationing is a lot crazier than I expected. Our new au pair arrives on Friday night and we're all looking forward to it!













Next week... I'm hoping to catch-up on blog posts, laundry, running, and planning for the big move into our new house!

We visited the Minnesota Zoo a few weeks ago and it was AWESOME!! All of the exhibits are so clean, so well thought out, and the animals have TONS of beautifully landscaped living space so you don't feel bad for them. Gabby's favorite animals were the dolphins and the grizzlies. Rocco's favorites were grizzlies, tigers and sharks. Giuliana's favorite? Hmmmm... the monkeys? Matteo would have loved it too... one of his favorite things to say before he died was "WOW wow wow wow wow!" whenever he was in awe of something. I think we would have heard a LOT of WOW's from our little dude that day. Sure do miss our little guy...

We were able to get within 4 inches of the grizzlies and the tigers, thanks to the genius of glass walls. Too bad I just brought my pocket camera instead of the SLR.

I am still amazed at the length of the bear's claws and how HUGE their heads were. I definitely wouldn't want to bump into one of those in the great outdoors! Two of my brothers did on a family trip to Alaska back in the 90's... but that's another story. ;)

Anyway... way to go Minnesota with the fantastic zoo! We hope to visit you at least once more before we're off to our new home. Rumor has it that another fabulous zoo is real close to our new home.