Connor's First Day of Preschool

    Connor finally started toddler preschool today. He only goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:30 to 11:30, but I think that's plenty.  He has been ready for quite a while now, so today was an exciting day for us.  We started a yearly tradition of taking his first day of school picture this morning. He was a good sport and smiled for me until I could get the perfect picture! 

Tot School: Letter B & Color Blue

    I am a proud momma because we have had a successful second week of tot school. It was a busier week for us because we did more running around in the mornings, but we still made it work. We even got a call from the learning center on post that a slot had opened up for Connor to start his part time toddler preschool. He is going to start on Monday and go three days a week for three hours. Not too long, but it will give him some socialization and structure. I am going to continue to do tot school at home as well, but just move it later in the day after nap time.  

      This week Connor learned about the Letter B and the color blue. We had a lot of stuff to play with {balls, blocks, balloons, beans, bow tie pasta, band-aids} and snacks to eat {blueberries, bananas, blueberry muffins, bones- pretzels with marshmallows on each side dipped in white chocolate, and bandaids- crackers with cream cheese in the middle and red jelly on top}. It was a fun week, especially for Connor since his favorite color is blue.

Strada Delle 52 Gallerie

     Ever since we moved to Italy, I have heard that 52 tunnels is a must see. Aaron has been 4 times now and loved each and every time. I have been putting it off because let's face it, it isn't easy. It's just over 4 miles long and up a mountain! Then you have to go down it. That didn't sound like a fun time to me, but I had to try it just once and today was the day. We got there at about 9:30am and started our hike at about 10. I was excited, nervous, and tired just thinking about what I had ahead of me!

 About to start our hike!

Tot School: Letter A & Color Red

   Yay for it being Friday! I am really looking forward to this weekend. We are going on a hike to 52 tunnels tomorrow. I'm really excited and nervous, but I'll save that for another post. We have had a fun first week of tot school over here. Connor is on the wait list for part time toddler day care,  but I wanted to do some teaching with him in the mean time. I decided to start spending about 30 minutes every morning doing age appropriate lessons with him {i.e. the pajamas and messy bed head in every picture}. Some last longer depending how interested he is. Nothing hard, just fun and a way to get his little mind active by learning new things. This week we learned all about the Letter A and the color red.

Grape Harvest Party

    On Sunday we went to our first grape harvest since living in Italy. Aaron was gone last year during the harvesting time, so thankfully he was home this year. When I saw that our favorite winery {Le Pignole} was having a harvest party, I knew we had to go! I was nervous because the weather forecast called for rain during the entire party, but we braved the storm and went anyways.

 Playing with daddy.

Universal Exhibition 2015

    A couple weekends ago we went to the Universal Exhibition in Milan. It's a huge event with over 140 countries participating. It is held every 5 years for a six month period. Each country has their own pavilion that they are free to decorate and setup how they wish, as long as they follow the theme for that year. The theme this year was Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. I am not going to go into  much detail, but you can read all about it here. 

    Since there was so much for us to see, we left first thing in the morning. We dropped our dogs off with a friend and were on our way to Milan by 6:30 am. We decided to make an entire day out of it instead of wasting money and staying the night in a hotel.

 We picked up donuts on the way.