Our Trip to Michigan

Hello Everyone!
We are back from our trip to Michigan. The kids and I had a great time but Julio wasn't able to come out for the last week as we had planned so it was a very long 3 weeks. I really missed him and it is so good to be back! The kids were so cute at the airport. When they saw their dad they all ran around the baggage claim area and jumped in his arms yelling "Daddy, Daddy!"

We had a lot of fun on our trip even though we didn't get to do half of the things that we planned on doing. The weather was perfect for most of the time except for the last weekend. I never got a chance to go to the cidermill because it was pouring rain on the day we were going to go =(


This is probably the longest post ever because I had so many pictures to share and I couldn't narrow it down to just a few, so here you go...

Julio between his Grandpa's on our first night at my parent's house.

Marina, Michaela and Daniells playing ring around the rosy.

Marina and her cousin Daniella

Michaela lying in the bright, soft, green grass. We don't get to do much of that here in Phoenix.



The girls with Nonna Mia.

Julio and his cousin Sammy. They are like two little old men. We were at a church fair when they first saw eachother and they walked around holding hands. It was so cute!

Michaela and her cousin Emilio at the sprinklers.

Me and Michaela

Emilio loved the sprinklers. Michaela not so much.

My mom and me canning tomatoes. These tomatoes are all from her garden

Julio and Marina in front of my mom's house. If you look closely you will see that Julio was riding a pink and purple princess bike... poor kid didn't even care.

The kids helped my mom make a gazillion mini meatballs for a benefit dinner she was cooking for.





This is our cat Kimba. He lives with Nonna because we were afraid to bring him to Phoenix with us. He is an outdoor cat and we here that cat's don't last long around here with all of the coyotes. The kid's had fun bonding with him.

My sister, sister in law and me decided to go out one night at the last minute after we put the kids to bed. We just hung out at PF Changs for a couple of hours talking and laughing.

And then at the end of the night, to our surprise we saw our cousin, Nikki, ( in the middle) with her husband and his cousins on the other side of the restaurant. We were there together the whole time and we didn't even know. We had a good laugh and then we all hung out for another couple of hours.

Emilio and Michaela hanging out in front of the hot pepper plants. They picked quite a few of them too. It's a good thing none of them broke and got into their eyes!





Nadia and Michaela.

Marina and her cousin Olivia.



Lina, Me and Angela

We had a beautiful lunch at Lina's mom's house one day. Here I am with my mom, my mother in law, Grandma, Maria and Lina's grandma.




Lina's sister brought her puppy. His name is Erros. Julio just loved him.




Michaels took a little longer to warm up to him but she finally held him for a bit.

Julio caught a frog. If you look close it is on his leg.

While we were at my in law's house Marina spent most of her time on this swing. She loved when Papa would push her really high.




Just a cute picture.

We celebrated Marina's 5th Bday while we were there.



I can't believe my little girl is 5...

This was hilarious. Julio is wearing Papa's glasses.




Michaela trying on a bonnet that Nonna had hanging on her bedpost.





Saying goodbye to Great Grandma and Grandpa was hard.

On the plane ride home. That's gum on Michaela's upper lip...




Julio played with his new DS the whole plane ride.

We came home on Marina's real bday. Daddy brought home a cake after work and we sang to her at 8:00 last night. We were exhausted, with the time change it was 11: 00 for us but we wanted to wait for Daddy to come home from work. He had to go in after he picked us up from the airport.



Whew! I'm pooped! It took me awhile to write this post. I think I'm ready for a nap. There are a lot cuter pictures in my sister and my father in laws camera's. I'll have to post some more when they send me them. If you made it this far I'm sure you are sick of looking at our pictures and I'm sure you don't want to see anymore!!

Thanks for stopping by and for all of you back in Michigan, I miss you already!!!

Love you,

Marilena

P.S. How do you like my blog's new look. I thought I would change it up a bit.