Off to America

Christmas in Michigan. I ordered snow but I don't think I would have enjoyed it so much with visions of tropical Sicily still in my head. The idea of snow was what I wanted---not the cold and slush of real snow. We had much too short a visit with the girls. Wonderful Christmas morning. My favorite part of Christmas morning was seeing that Madyline loved her necklace as much as we loved giving it to her. And...watching Jae open her box of many Italian food goodies. My second favorite thing was seeing how hard Tracy and Bill's kids had worked to make wonderful gifts for each other. (for an example link to Tracy's blog at the bottom left on this blog).



All the grandchildren have grown so much it's hard to realize we've only been gone three months. Madyline, especially has seemed to mature a great deal. She's becoming such a beautiful young woman. Harrison is still full of wonderful stories and we love to hear each one.






I wish I could include a video of Grant opening his gifts. He has perfected the "tear and toss" method.




The plane flight to Missouri seemed like child's play after the trip across the seas. Sophia is growing and smiling so much. What a joy to watch her play. Ken and Lynette are blessed.









Joplin was a mixed blessing. Bob and I both came down with something. Bob's started in Michigan and he just couldn't shake it--took what seemed like boxes of medicine. I had the 24 hour (almost to the minute) bug and spent one night at Mike's crawling between the bathroom and my bed. We were both afraid to visit Bob's mom in the nursing home for fear of passing our germs on to her.








Other than that we had a great time in Joplin. When we got into town we stopped by Sam's to see if we could find a party platter for New Year's Eve. As we went through the fruit area, I happened to notice they had blueberries at a reasonable price so I got some for the kids.




We called as we left Sam's to tell Mike we had stopped and would be there in a few minutes. He said, "Did you get blueberries?" "Yeah, how did you know?" He said that Micha had just said Grandma and Grandpa were late so they must have stopped at Sam's to get blueberries. Mike told her not to be disappointed if we didn't bring blueberries but Micha said, "No, Grandma always brings me blueberries." Phew!!! ...I almost picked up the strawberries instead.









Only a couple of days left in the States before heading back to Sicily. Can't say there's anything I have missed in the States except my family and friends. On TV there is a new show called "GREASE--You're the one that I want" and "Armed and Famous." Nothing on to miss there. The news programs here keep telling us how much the United States is hated and all about the bad things happening. I think I prefer our house in Sicily with no television. Just give me a nice cocoon to live in.