Buon Natale!

Which means Merry Christmas in Italian!  This year, on my side, the country we celebrated was Italy, so once again the food, gifts, and traditions were Italian.  It was a lot of fun and great seeing everyone again.

Here's two sweet cousins Neve and Cora.

And then Alaina joined them..

And then Courtney, Cassidy, and Liam joined them (:

My two sisters Danielle and Sharyn.  We also had Italian wine, but I can't remember what it was called.

Me with my sweet girls.

Before we ate, mom lit the advent candles and said a nice prayer...

Then we ate...salad with Italian dressing, Penne with sun-dried tomato pesto, Italian chicken and noodle bake, Italian sausage noodle dish, and Italian bread.  It was delicious!

Next, we opened gifts... Some of the gifts I remember were necklaces with Italian words on them,  Ghiradella chocolates and hot chocolate, fondue set, Ferari model car, Italian charm bracelet, Italian cookbooks, and I am sure a lot more that I can't seem to remember right now.

My dad has been making us all our own model ships.  He has been making ships for as long as I can remember and now he is making us each our own.  They are beautiful and here is Sharyn posing in front of her ship my dad just finished.  Looks great, dad!

My sweet boy

This year my sister decided to bring a project for us to work on and have something to take home to remember the day by. Here she is explaining how to do it...

Half way done and they are drying now until the next step.

Finished projects!  They turned out awesome!

Alaina's is the owl one and Sawyer and I did the one with the muscle car.  I love them both and plan to hang Sawyer's in his room.

On to dessert!  Sharyn brought cupcakes and cookies, and Danielle brought gellato (an italian ice cream like dessert).  It was delicious and that was the first time I had tried it.

The day after Christmas we all went out to visit Jon's Grandma's since we didn't get the chance to visit her on Christmas day.  We brought over a vanilla pound cake and we had tea and other goodies she had out.  My kids love going out to great grandma's and love to explore inside and out (:  We had a nice visit and hope to get over there more often!

So once again we had a great Christmas and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday as well!