I am back!

Good morning friends and happy Friday!

It has been such a long time since I last wrote on my blog, I just checked and my last post is dated August 17^th, how is that even possible? You might be wondering what happened and why I disappeared… there is no real reason, everything went on and life happened! Now looking back I realized that the more I was taking time off from writing for my blog, the harder it was to start back, I was feeling like I did not even have time to squeeze in a couple of hours to dedicate to writing.

So here is a little recap on what has been going on with our lives since last Summer: at the end of Summer I got very busy planning the back to school especially for Aurora, who was going to start first grade. The first day was kind of a shock, especially for me, because I decided to have her take a bus and it was hard because I didn`t get to take her to school for the first day, I had to leave my baby on that bus filled with strangers and not see her walking through the doors of her school… I might have cried a little (It sounds funny now, but believe me, it was hard!!).

Most importantly I decided to spend more time with my family and make the most of it. I always feel like Summer is too short, so I wanted to enjoy it as much as I can. We had a lot of fun moments, we did many amazing trips (nothing big because we spent the Summer here in Boston, but we tried to visit some new, fun places every weekend).

We went fruit picking, as you already know it is one of our favorite activities, so fun for us and the kids who learn so much about nature!

Grandpa (my husband`s dad) came to visit for about a month and the kids were so excited to play with him. With his help Aurora learned how to ride a bike without training wheels: so exciting!

We visited some new beaches close to us and got to spend time there with our Italian friends Silvia and Chicco who just recently moved to the US

We went to some amusement parks with the kids, like Edaville in Carver, MA,  Canoby lake park and Water Wizz, the kids loved them! Aurora`s favorite was Water Wizz, where her favorite attraction was the pool with the giant waves!

We had the boys birthday party at the beginning of September, this year the theme was pirates and sharks (we combined the theme choices of Alessandro and Leonardo!)

Our kitty Emily had to have surgery because she ate a piece of plastic foam (it was the second time in four years she had the same surgery for the same reason), it was scary and I got really stressed because it happened just before our trip to Italy. We found a great solution and our friends Silvia and Chicco took care of her in their house. The recovery was very easy and fast, I feel we were very lucky! Platone in the mean time was still recovering from his back surgery which happened in May. He is doing very well, but I feel like he is a little weak on his back legs.

We had an amazing trip to Italy for my brother`s wedding! I loved that trip because I was going back to Italy after a couple years, we got to meet our friends and families, we attended this beautiful wedding in an amazing location and I got to eat Italian food!! I also got to have an amazing two days trip with my husband (and without kids!) in Barcelona! We were also very lucky because the weather was amazing, it was like Summer!

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In the most recent months we got to spend the holidays with my parents who came to visit from Italy for a month (they are still here!) and with our friends Silvia and Chicco.

We got to go to a breakfast with Santa, to the Enchanted village in Avon with nonni (Aurora loves that place because she likes the `ice` skating rink)! We went to Legoland, to the festival of lights at Edaville, we took a short trip to Boston with nonni after Christmas during a wonderful, not too cold day. We went to the aquarium in Boston and to a trampoline place with the boys, we saw the Nutcracker and Aurora learned how to ski with the help of a special teacher (zia Silvia). But most importand, we had time to rest during the holiday vacation, spend time together, cook and eat a lot!!

It hasn`t been easy to go back to writing on my blog, even if I love it and couldn`t wait, I had some trouble being able to squeeze in some time to do it. I think it was mainly because I stopped for too long and was not used to make the time for it anymore. Hopefully I will be back to writing constantly, but I decided that at the beginning I will be writing just one post a week, which will be published on Friday. It will be like before, a mix of experiences, recipes, organization tips and favorites of the period. I hope you will start following me back and most importantly, that you will enjoy reading my blog!

I hope you have a nice week and I will meet you here next Friday!

Anna