My Big Fat Italian Baptism!

This last weekend Nick, Karis, my Mom and I all ventured to my home town of Chicago Illinois. Home of the world's best beef sandwich, unbelievable traffic and my family, crazy and all! Nick, Karis and I all spent the weekend with my cousin in one of Chicago's suburbs. It was really nice to spend some time with my family and finally get to meet my newest cousin Frank! The two kiddies below are my cousins Abigail and Angelo (my godbaby) with my baby. It truly was the strangest thing to spend all weekend watching Karis interact with her cousins. She is really good with other kids.

On Saturday we decided to be touristy so we took a hike, more or less, to museum campus. On museum campus you have the Field Museum, the Shedd aquarium, the planetarium and right by that is Soldier Field. It was really cool to see all the sites, its seems like its been a million years since I have gone downtown Chicago and it was Nick and Karis' first time to see the museum. We met my other wonderful cousins Matthew and C.J. for the trip!

Although we didn't really get to see any exhibits other than the children's portion it was nice to spend time with my older cousins (Nicole, Andrea, Jim and Chuck) whose children are pictured above. There was a room in the Children's portion of the exhibit that was filled with all sorts of cool instruments. Karis really loved the drums and the chimes!

Karis had a ton of fun. At first she was a little shy but once she saw her cousins playing she was all in. No stopping this one. Angelo and Karis spent a fair share of time trying to climb through this log.

Karis and her cousins (- one C.J., he was too busy banging the drums to break for a photo shoot).

This weekend wasn't completely about us though. It had a purpose and the purpose was to baptise little Frankie. It is pretty traditional in the Italian family to have big weddings and baptisms. No stops for this one!

Here is my sister with her two God Babies, C.J. and of course little Karis!

Here is just a small fraction of our family that was pictured!

My mom and as she calls us: "Her girls"!

Here is some of my other cousins, still a small fraction of the amount of people that attended the dinner!

Being in Chicago with all my family just goes to show how much I really really miss them. There is nothing like being surrounded by family. I miss all of you so much!!!

Mommy's new camera

Since everyone I know purchased a new toy I thought that it was only fitting that I become one of the "In" crowd and fall into peer pressure. I just went out and bought an Olympus camera and I love it. As you may have noticed below my "model" was the perfect person to try out some of the features.
This camera is the type of camera that you NEED to read the manual in order to take full advantage all the features. I am pretty excited. My old camera was okay but it took forever to try and take a picture and for the mother of a 16 month old MONKEY by the time the camera was focused on her doing one thing she was 4 things ahead of me......sooo I splurged, but I am totally glad I did. For those of who who didn't notice most of her previous photos were of the back of her head and side of her face. This camera is so wonderful that you can actually see her face, dimples and ever growing collection of teeth. Hopefully blogging will be more fun now that I will have some quality pictures!

Cute pictures!!

Karis has this new found love to climb on anything, regardless of wether it is living or not. So today I found her sitting on the couch by herself. The sun was in just the right spot which made for some really cool pictures. I swear she might be the cutest thing I have ever seen.

Bucking Bronco

So I am feeling like a bit of a slacker since I haven't posted anything in like forever. I bet all of you thought that it was going to be next year before you saw anything new. Surprised you huh?! Okay, I will say though that the comments section is a little dry. Except for my friend Brittany who is loyal and always posts a comment the rest of you guys need a little encouragement. To post anonymous (meaning you don't have to sign up for an account) just click on the comments section and it allows for an anonymous post. Just sign your name. And you guys were thinking I was the slacker! HAHA!

So Karis for Christmas got this Zebra with a saddle that bounces and plays music. It is actually a really adorable toy and the music isn't bad at all. Anyways Karis has a permanent smile on her face when she plays with it. It amazes me at how much she learns. She figures stuff out so fast!