Cena con Delitto

Francesca joined the Top 40 list and tonight we celebrated with one of the most original parties I've been to...it was a Murder Mystery Dinner and lots of fun.  We were separated into groups and the story of tonight's homicide was told by the Police Inspector and each group was handed a package of papers including the police report and the love letter found at the scene.

Each group discussed who they thought the guilty party might be

After we were through discussing, the suspects went into various rooms and told us their side of the story:

The uppity owner of the hotel.

The caretaker and gardener and drunk of the hotel.

The cook and jealous husband of the maid.

The floozy maid and suspected lover of the victim.

...but was it the butler who did it???

Happy Birthday Franci!

Franci e Fede cut the cake.

Paolo pops the cork!

The night the dinner was fun and the murder was exciting.  And ups to Greta who came and played Barbies with Sophia and Vivienne!

Burnt Crepes

 

This is why when I multi-task, Facebook can't be one of things I am doing.  Burnt crepes this morning...can't even find the image of some religious icon- the best case scenario is i might see an ape on the bottom right side -or a crape if you will. and even that's stretching it. 

First Day of Snow

When it snows, it's so much easier to wake up Sophia.  She pops out of bed and runs to the window.  Maybe I should shake my dandruff outside her window on warmer days.

Max says these Hipstamatic fotos, look freak and says it looks like there should be ghosts hidden somewhere.We still haven't unpacked all the boxes in garage, we've now gone downstairs twice to look for Sophia's winter jacket, can't find it anywhere.  Looks like she will be layering up with her rain coat on top until we do.  That's not the worse part, it will be hearing all the mamas and nonnas offer their free advice on why we don't put a proper winter coat/hat/gloves on our kid.  It drives me nuts.  I know it's a cultural difference, that's just how they do it here, but MYOB!

note: went to dig for the jacket one more time...finally found it buried beneath the boxes that Max had brought out.  And you know it had to be the bottom one, opened up the box and noticed that the label says for age 4....CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!  I'm sure it was my procrastinating attitude/passive lazy personality that made me think that the jacket was a size 6, good for at least another year or two! 

Hipstamatic Prints

Pumpkin Head.

After lickies stubble.

Spinach teeth.

I downloaded the Hipstamatic Camera app, it's pretty cool and fun.  I was thinking that I should blog using just hipstamatic prints, that way I could justify downloading ALL the lens and film options.

Patio Furniture

 Early Saturday morning the delivery guys rang to say that they were out front with our furniture.

A couple of weeks ago, there was some patio furniture on sale at Carrefour. Of course we jumped on it, the only way we would be able to afford anything is off season sales or piecing together odds and ends of discontinued sets.  It's that stuff that looks like wicker, but is actually made out of plastic.  Max has been wanting to put together this stuff since he got here, but it's been raining off and on ever since the box got delivered.  Sophia has been home from school for the last couple of days, Sunday she went to bed with a fever.  Last night she had a fever too, but today she seems to be better and is already driving me crazy!  Since today was a beautiful sunny day and Viv is down for what seems like a long nap, I decided I would try and start putting this stuff together.

 

 The box was small, but there were a lot of pieces inside.  It's pretty cool -there are pieces to make 4 sections and a table.  The pieces you can combine in various ways to make 4 chairs, a love seat and 2 chairs, a 3 seater couch and 1 chair, you get the idea.  I got 2 done before lunch.  After lunch we went back outside and finished up the rest, the girls were good and played while I put the things together.

 

Da Da Da Daaaaaah as Sophia says when we finish something.

I don't care what condition she is in, Sophia is going back to school tomorrow.  Besides the various tantrums of boredom she has 1) cut her hair. She says it was an accident, but I'm not so sure.  I was in the office, without my glasses shuffling stuff around and I realized I couldn't see anything so I went traipsing all around the house trying to find them.  I find them, go into the office again and eventually notice that there are bits of hair on the floor.  I bend down to take a better look and see that there is a good chunk shoved/hidden underneath the cabinets.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr!  So she knew what she did was wrong, didn't want to get in trouble and tried to hide it and I added to the damage spreading all the hair around the house when I didn't have my glasses on!  Great!  Fantastic!  Try not to explode.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt on this one, but explained that hiding something that was supposed to be the result of an accident only made her look guilty and she should tell one of us from the get go.  Hadn't she watched enough Law and Order or CSI while in my womb to have learned something????  I guess that stuff isn't actually learned by osmosis, I guess I probably could have saved my money on all that classical music too. And 2) through a big glass of freshly squeezed oj down the sink because she didn't want to drink it.  Again it wouldn't have been so bad, except she blew bubbles in it, sucked on the ice and spit it back into the glass, scraped the teaspoon of undissolved sugar and ate it, etc all of which makes me a) not want to drink it, so as not to waste it or b) save it for later, because with all the saliva inside, it would be half digested and on its way to becoming mead by the time we get to it later. And once again, she claimed it was an accident- this time I was pissed and tried to explain that difference between premeditated and accidental -it was very hard not to use murder as one of the examples.  She lost TV privileges because of it, but with that big tantrum out of her system she was a pretty good girl after that!  These three days at home have been long and I have been having to explain to myself many a time the difference between premeditated and accidental- and unfortunately, at this point anything I do would be the former, instead of the latter. Hmmmm I should have thought about that before blogging.

Happy Thanksgiving

This was supposed to be the year of of big Turkey Bash, being in the new house and all. Unfortunately the reality of the payments on remodeling and the fact that Xmas is around the corner, plus the lack of time to organize a big ordeal, has set in.  And on top of everything else, I still have the spooky curtains from Halloween up (yeah, we don't have real curtains yet either).  (So KA, we are one less household you have to worry about that has xmas decorations up BEFORE Thanksgiving, we haven't even bothered to take down the Halloween ones yet).   I was going to just make pizza tonight, but I was at the store today and saw a big turkey breast on sale (you have to go to the butcher's to get a whole turkey), I was saddened by the thought of not eating turkey on Thanksgiving and bought one. Apparently, if you brine an Italian turkey breast before throwing it in the oven, it tastes exactly like elementary school cafeteria lunches. ASince there it was just breast and there were no drippings, the gravy was made with Knorr's chicken bouillon and added to the authenticity of my 1970s nostalgia.  If only I had some cranberry sauce in the shape of a can!  So instead of warm memories of large family dinners back in the States, I gave myself childhood cafeteria flashbacks.  Well, at least if the kids ever go to school in the US, they might have flashbacks of this tossed together Thanksgiving dinner when they eat turkey in the cafeteria.

Soon after this was snapped, Sophia decided she didn't like turkey and was still ill and so by 8:30 she was already upstairs and ready for bed. So much for a family dinner together.

BTW even little Viv had her Thanksgiving dinner.

She was not convinced either about the flavor either.

Felt Crayon and Coloring Book Bags

This year's project is crayon bags. 

For boys: Green and Blue.

or Red and Orange.

And for girls: Fuchsia and Orange.

or Purple and Fuchsia.

 This picture won't upload the right direction, so hence why it's on its side. 

My mom had made one for Sophia a few years ago and people always ask me where I got it.  So I decided to rework the pattern and see if I could sell some for Christmas.  Too bad every weekend has been rainy here, it makes me a bit unwilling to attempt an outdoor Christmas market.  Anyhow,  so far I've sold a few thanks to friends-want one??

Another Trip to ER

I really needed to take a shower,  it's nearly impossible with Vivienne because she often sleeps for just 15 min intervals, so by the time I get my stuff ready to go into the shower, she is up and crying or if I shower with her in the bathroom she always manages to find something dangerous to shove in her mouth or cry the whole time with her face pressed up against the glass.  She had just finished eating and was strapped in chair all nice and calm, so I thought if I hurried, she'd stay there and I could shower before a major cry session or if I was extra lucky she might just fall asleep. How wrong was I??  The minute I turned on the shower, the tears started and then while I was shampooing my hair (the time when all bad things happen) she somehow managed to wiggle out of the straps and fall down.  The sound is distinct, you know, I'm sure your kid has fallen for some height at least one time or another.  So out of the shower I run, slipping and sliding in my own suds.  Vivienne is howling on the ground and I don't even know how bad the fall was since I didn't see anything.  I pick her up and press her to me and she is howling even louder, I don't know if I was hurting her more, if it's because besides a bump on the head, she is now soaking wet and I'm probably getting soap in her eyes and mouth (ah well the tears should have rinsed that away right?).  I assess the situation,   I know that crying is a good sign, she is not all cross eyed or passed out or anything.  It's hard to see anything, so - soapy wet, butt naked and cold I call Max (because I don't even know the number of emergency here). He jumps on his scooter and heads home. I hastily dry off and get dressed (wonder if I should dry the shower doors to stave off soap scum/lime, but decide against it) and cuddle Vivienne, who promptly falls asleep.   Now I'm wondering should I wake her-I once read on the internet (when Sophia had fallen) that the thing about going to sleep after falling was just an old wives tale, that' you need to look to see if the kid is acting strangely or has a fever or has his/her eyes rolling in the back of his/her head or something like that.  But I know what happened to Natasha Richardson and that girl that got punched in the face at the train station, they both died after serious head trauma!  In those few minutes it took for Max to get to the house, all possible paranoia  was going through my head.  We went to San Raffaele ER just in case.  The waiting room was full, luckily they took us in quickly.  Of course, Viv dropped one of her socks and as turned around to pick it up, she and Max disappeared into one of the rooms and I spent the next 5 minutes wandering around looking for them.  Luckily somebody asked me if I was looking for a baby and pointed to what room they went into, but by then the doctor was just about done with his exam. Anyhoo, the doctor was a neurosurgeon and he basically explained the same stuff that the internet said and we were to keep an eye on her for the next 6 hours or so.  Procedure was to do it at the hospital, but since she looked good and she would probably pick up some sort of cold/flu in the ER and end up not having anything serious at all, we had to wait for them to print what seemed like hundred pages of release forms and sign them and go home.  So we ran out of there, went to pick up Sophia for her first speech therapy session, Max dumped Viv and I off at home on the way.