K's Birthday

K turned 1 on the 30th of June! We can't believe a year has passed already! Here is a video of him right after he opened the present sent by his Grandma and Grandpa Hatcher. It was a simple party with just us, a gelato cake, and a few presents. K was very confused by us suddenly telling him to rip paper where we normally tell him not to.

K

From 6 months to 10 months, K did the "caterpillar crawl." It was really funny. I thought he was going to go from the crawl to walking, but he suddenly decided he wanted to check out this normal crawl thing, and that's what he's been doing lately. I guess he figured he didn't like being on his belly quite so much.

Asilo End of School Concert

At the end of the school year, the Asilo held an end of year concert and ceremony for those kids moving on to elementary school. A had missed a few days of school the previous week, so he seemed a little dazed and confused, but was totally cute nonetheless. He is sitting in the front row with green pom-poms if you have a hard time finding him. While we have a hard time getting him to speak Italian, and I know he doesn't speak much to his teacher either, when we do get him to say a few words, he says them in a perfect Italian accent. We are all working on speaking more Italian in the home.

Pisa

June 31st found us in Pisa and Tuscany for the weekend. Dan had a 3-day weekend and we decided to make the most out of it. We headed down to Pisa and checked out their tower.
The Baptistery followed by the Cathedral and the leaning tower in the back.


We started our tour in the Cathedral.

The boys inside the Cathedral. It was quite the experience with a real human skull on display and various graves inside. I and A wanted to put up some candles like they saw other people doing, so we had to try to teach them a little theology.

We went into the Baptistery next. We would have started here, but it was actually being used . It was neat that they still use these buildings for their original purpose. The picture is looking down into the center of the Baptistery from the second level. While we were up here a man came and stood right in the center and started singing a chant. The acoustics and echo in that building are amazing!!! On the way back down the stairs a man was chanting softly so A took up the chorus. The echo in the stairwell made quite a neat effect and he was quite a hit with the other visitors.


I sitting on one of the Saint markers inside the Baptistery.


Also, while on the stairs to the second level of the Baptistery, we found the really neat bell. K especially was enthralled.

What the boys really enjoyed doing--feeding pigeons out of their hands.

Finally we visited the tower!

You have to be 8 yrs or older to climb to the top of the tower, so I headed up there by myself. As you go up, the stairs keep getting smaller and smaller.

Here I am at the top trying to take a picture of myself. You go up and think you are a high as they'll let you go, and then you climb up some more. On my tour, there were several people who suddenly realized they were afraid of heights because they started crawling on their hands and knees. It was pretty silly.




















Me and then D in front of the tower. This is actually from the less photographed side, so I don't think you can see the lean so much. It's hard to get the whole family in a photo without making a fool of yourself. We tried a little before deciding to take seperate shots.

K after a long day of sightseeing.