Anna Grows

Anna got to make a trip to New York to visit the Fagella family and celebrate her Cousin Joey's wedding. That's right....there is another Mrs. Joe Fagella (or Angela as we like to call her). There will also be a new baby Fagella this summer. We suggest "Isabella" if it is a girl since we did not use that one. Anna had a great time playing with her cousins, who raced her, taught her to play bocci, and took her to the playground among other things. Anna was particularly attached to her cousin Andrew, and followed him around for a large part of the event. All involved we re exhausted by the end of the evening (especially Andrew who ran roughly 50 sprints up a hilly driveway for Anna). In addition, everyone enjoyed delicious food along with wedding party music (courtesy of Aunt Mary) and good company. A big thanks to Aunt Yvonne and Uncle John for a great party! Congratulations Angela and Joey!

It was a spectacular Easter Sunday, complete with sunny skies and 80 degree temperatures. We enjoyed the holiday weekend with some family traditions, which mostly involved food. Saturday morning we decided to make Easter Bread. This is a Fagella family tradition and one that we had not embarked on before. This became an all day affair that began at 9:30 AM and involved lots of flour and several phone calls to Aunt Mary. Suddenly at the end of the process (around 9 PM), Joe seemed to recall several important tips for how to make the bread, which would have been useful around 10 AM. We m ade it through and thought we did pretty good until we saw pictures of Aunt Lucy's easter bread which looked professionally done (hmmm....). Our bread was edible, albeit a bit weak on the presentation piece. The Kohler family tradition is the lamb cake (that would be a cake in the shape of a lamb). Theresa's grandmother use to make this for Easter and her birthday. Since Theresa now has her grand...

Once again, Grandma made a special guest appearance to babysitt for Anna. Unfortunately, Ms. Be had to make an unplanned trip to Vietnam with the death of her father. Grandma happily made the trip for a few days of fun with her Granddaughter (as well as leaving behind the dust from the on-going kitchen renovation). As usual, Grandma came with a suitcase full of gifts and ideas for entertaining Anna. Anna had her own ideas for entertainment and quickly put together an agenda for Grandma. Much to everyone's suprise, the majority of the agenda revolved around playing with Mom's Fisher Price dollhouse (circa 1978). Apparently Grandma is quite good at doing the voices for all of the people, which meant Anna wanted to play with the dollhouse practically non-stop during Grandma's stay. ( Note to the reader: Grandma did not play with Theresa and the dollhouse in 1978. Theresa does have memories of her brothers showing up at the dollhouse with Dukes of Hazard action figures to kidna...