Barry aka Papa arrived in Vicenza last night to spend a week here with us and Lee. Chiara and Papa meet for the first time.

Success;-)

"Mom take my picture here!" said Max on his 4th day of school. So far so good. Max stayed for lunch on Friday and ate 2 helpings of noodles, yes they eat delicious Italian food for lunch.

While Max has been getting adjusted to his new school Chiara has been hanging out with Nana (Jay's mom). They have been having a great time together and we are so lucky Nana was able to come to Italy to help out during this time;-)

Chiara with a super cute bow made by her crafty Aunt Katie!

A few weeks ago there was a carnival in one of the parks in downtown, and my friend Abbey and I decided to take the boys.

Of course Max chose the tallest ride he could find and wanted to go on it as many times as our buns would allow. I think we made it through 8 times down!

Here is Abbey and her son Carson.

Max goes to School!!! Today was Max's second day at his Asilo (Italian Pre-School) and he did not even cry when I left him;-) Yea! The Italian pre-school system has a long settling in process where the parent waits at the school to make sure their child is doing OK. So this was day #2 of me sitting in the hallway while Max spends a longer time each day in class. Today he stayed for 1.5 hours tomorrow he stays for 2 and on Thursday if everything is going well he gets to stay for lunch.

These are the stairs that lead up to his class which is called Picolissimi. Here he is asking me, "Mom what do those numbers say?" He really likes this tree mural that leads up to his class;-)

I know, I know how many cute smiley pictures is Colleen going to put on the blog...really! I just can't get enough of how cute she is, lucky for me I get to spend a lot of time with her.

Today we went swimming at a public pool in a town called Creazzo. In Italy it is required that you wear a swim cap in the pool...So far nobody has been able to give me a very good answer why this is. I have heard that it is so that they don't have to clean the filters very often, but it seems like there must be more to it than that. Although you can't actually tell it from this photo, Max LOVED his swim cap. Who would have guessed? He did not even want to take it off when we put his regular clothes back on him and left the pool. I only got it off his head because he feel asleep in the car on the way home so I took it off him before I put him in his crib for a nap. He may wake up looking for it because that is how Max is.