New Dolce Bambino items and some cute pics

Hi all. Just wanted to let you know that I have some new items in my shop now. Adult beanies, new booties, and coming soon, new purses and diaper clutches! Keep your eyes out later this week, most new items should be posted. Here is just a sample of what you will find:

Check it out, www.dolcebambino.etsy.com.

Grandparents are the best!

Tomorrow we leave to go back home. While it will be good to be home, see Joe, and get ready for Anthony to start kindergarten, we have had a really wonderful time here in MN. The two weeks have flown by and I feel like there is still so much I want to do, even though we have done even more than expected!!

I just wanted to share some sweet grandparent stories. There have been a lot, too many to mention here, so I will only share a few.

Nicolas, as many of you know, is a little wary of strange women. I think it stems from the fact that anytime we leave him either with a babysitter or in the church nursery we leave him with a woman. However, he LOVES men. So right away he was grandpa's (ba pa's) boy. He smiles his huge smile whenever my dad comes in the room, loves to give him big hugs and plays funny face games with him. He also took right to my brother, Grant. It got to the point so that wherever we were, if he saw someone that resembled Uncle Grant (shaved head and a gotee) he would walk up to them and smile his goofy smile. Very cute.

One of my favorite stories actually happened while I was out. Grant, Meghan, and I went out to a movie and left the kids with grandma and grandpa. This was so sweet of them #1 because it was all 4 kids and #2 because my mom wasn't feeling all that well. But, they managed to split up the duties in a way that worked really well. As I mentioned before my kids have had a little bit of a hard time falling asleep and so I have been staying in their room and reading stories and singing to them to settle them down. This particular night that duty fell upon grandpa Bernie. He started out with a story he used to tell me when I was little, the story of Farsworth the Fabulous Spaceman who was no bigger than your thumbnail and flew a spaceship that looked like a blueberry pancake. The boys weren't sure they would like a story that wasn't in a book, but grandpa said that it didn't take long for them to really get into the story. I jokingly asked my dad if he had to sing to them thinking of course he wouldn't, but it turns out, HE DID! It literally warms my heart to think of him singing songs to my boys to calm them down. At one point he ran out of songs but Dom was still awake so he asked Dom if he wanted grandpa to lay next to him in his bed and just talk for a while. Dom of course said yes and so that is what they did until Dom couldn't keep his eyes open. The picture in my mind is so sweet. I am sure the evening will stand out as a favorite in grandpa's mind for sure.

Here are a few more photos from the trip. With only one more day to go it is hard to think of cramming anything else in, but we do have some plans for later today, so I will hopefully post some pics of that later on. Love you all.

More from thje midwest

I apologize now for any and all typos in my latest blogs. I am usually writing while trying to keep Nicolasfrom getting into naughty things so I don't have time for spell check, or even time to ensure that what I am writing makes any type of sense.

Yesterday was a fun day. In the morning we went downtown to the modern art center where there is a museum and an outdoor sculpture garden (which I just learned my mother had never been to in all their 13 years of living here.) Every first Saturday of the summer months everything is free and they have music and food and special activities for the children. The kids got to build a sculpture from reeds and pine cones and leaves, they danced to the fun music, played in and among the huge sculptures, and came home and took long naps!

Last night grandpa, Grant, and I took the older 3 boys fishing. I will post pics after I get home as they are on my phone and I can't get to them without special software and cables. But I will say that I caught the first and biggest fish of the night, a bull catfish! I was a bit taken aback, I will admit, it was hard to reel in and I know they can "sting" when you try to get them off. All three boys caught small sunfish and they had a really good time.

On another note, at supper time we say grace but in is actually quite an undertaking. My brother and his family start it out with the sign of the cross (which Stellan has to get just right before continuing on to the prayer), then they say their family prayer, then we say the prayer I grew up saying, and then Dom usually says his own little prayer thanking Jesus for his family, the food, and something random like his green elephant cup or his corn on the cob. It is really sweet.

That is it for this post. More later. Oh, by the way, Joe is officially on his way to Austin, TX for his trade show. Say a prayer for him and his group that they will have a successful time. They all put so much work into it and want it to go well.

Love to you all.