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!!!