Week 7 and 8

I'm late again, so I here are both the weeks 7 and 8 for  the 52 week project. On week 7 me and Sofia both partecipated in a show jumping competition. For Sofia it was an important day because it was the first time in the 90 cm class. The pony she rode, Flicka, refused once, but other wise they did really well and our riding instructor was very happy with her. As I couldn't choose between the photo of Sofia jumping with Flicka and a carnival photo of Carlotta chasing her big brother and sister in the park, I included both photos for this week.

For week 8 I chose a photo of Carlotta watching the glittering sea and wishing summer would come quickly. My husband run a half marathon for the first time and we went to see him arrive to Ostia, which is by the sea.

 

P52 - Cabin fever

For the first time I will try to participate in the Project 52 photo challenge I found on the Life with my 3 Boy Barbarians blog. I have followed it but I find it very difficult to take a photo following a theme and even more difficult to do it on time to post the link on the blog. This week's theme was Cabin Fever. First I didn't even understand this expression, but in the blog I found the explanation "Cabin Fever is English slang for that pent up feeling you get when long months of bad weather have you stuck indoors".
This week we haven't had any cabin fever here in Rome as spring is really in the air now after the unusually cold weeks. My photo is from the end of last week when I had a fever and couldn't go out and didn't have the energy to do anything with the children. Carlotta resolved her cabin fever sitting on the couch in her princess dress eating sweets and watching films.

More snow photos

More snow photos. It was fun to have some snow here in Rome, but now I'm waiting for spring! It's not supposed to be so cold here and for such a long time! We live in Rome!

Week 6 - Dreaming

This is the photo of Week 6 in the 52 week's challenge. It started snowing a lot on Saturday and the girls went out to play. Sofia and her friend were running and jumping and throwing snowballs and Carlotta just stood still watching the sky. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was dreaming and then she told me not to enter other people's dreams.
I made a lay-out of it too. I'm really bad at remembering where I have taken or bought the scrapbooking kits and templates I use, but I will try to remember to leave a thank you note when I download free scrap booking material. From now on!

Entering the smart phone world

Goodbye Nokia and hello LG! I have entered the smartphone world and for the first time my cell phone isn't a Nokia phone. Their smart phone was far too expensive, so now I had to change brand. I had a simple and very reliable phone that really was just for calling and nothing else and now I have a mini computer! Learning to use it and it's fun!
Sofia played with it and made this for me for Valentine:

After a huge fight after school because of her extremely bad teenagery moods where both me and her father loosed our patience (her father even more than me), I managed to take her to her riding lesson (I didn't ride today, because I had a fever the night before and wasn't feeling energietc enough), bought some Valentine's chocolate to the whole family and helped the girls with their home work and when Daniele and Armando came home from Daniele's football we went to have a pizza to celebrate Valentine's day. I got these messages from the girls, so despite their bad moods, they can be really sweet <3.

Ten on the tenth

As I said I have been surfing around searching for blogs with photo challenges to get inspiration from. I'm behind with the photo challenges I was supposed to follow. Anyway I saw another one where you have to take ten photos on the tenth of every month. I don't know if I'll be doing it every month, but here's my Ten on the tenth for the month of Frebruary. Lots of them taken with my point and shoot camera, which is good when I don't want to carry around with the big one.
It was Friday and the schools in Rome were closed again because the weather forcast had predicted snowfall. We didn't get any snow during the day, though, only rain. In the morning the weather was good and we had our riding lesson. When we were ready and on the horse back it started raining. We continued for half an hour, until it rained too much and we had to stop. One of Sofia's riding friends slept over at our house on Thursday and also Daniele had his best friend sleeping over. I tried to work while they played games and did other things and Carlotta watched TV or coloured. In the evening we went out for our Friday evening pizza. We often go out with a friend of mine and her girls. When we came out from the restaurant it had started snowing and, of course, the children hoped that it would continue all night and everything would be white the next morning. Unfortunately it had started raining instead. Sofia's friend slept at our house one more night and Daniele went to his friend's house.

Week 5 and snow

Last week it started to get really cold here in Rome and after the rest of Rome already got some snow on Friday, here where we live, close to the sea, it arrived a bit later, during the night between Friday and Saturday. So we woke up seeing a white layer of snow everywhere! The schools in Rome were closed on Friday because the weather forecast had forseen snow and they stayed closed also on Monday and Tuesday. Where we live it really wasn't necessary, as most of the snow had disappeared already on Sunday and the streets weren't more slippery than on other winter days, but I guess the situation was worse in other parts of Rome.

I partecipated in the 52 weeks project with this photo. Throwing snow balls at the beach is something you can't do very often here.

Carlotta and Daniele both slept over at their friends´ houses, but I went out in the garden with Carlotta so she could play with the snow before it melted.

Then we went to see the snow at the beach of Ostia with all thre children and our friends.

So strange to see snow on the streets here!

Week-end trip to Barcelona

We found cheap flights to Barcelona and went there for a week-end with our friends. We only stayed one night because the flight tickets were cheap only on those days, but it was so easy to get from the airport to the centre of Barcelona and our hotel was on walking distance from the end stop, so we had time to see quite a lot anyway. And it's a good thing to go on a city holiday together with a family with other children so they can have fun together and complain much less about having to walk a lot.
Our apartment was next to the Ramblas and we found our favourite restaurang just under our apartment. They had good simple spanish food for a good price. On the first morning the football fans, Armando and Daniele went to see the football stadium and the rest of us went shopping. We strolled around in the Barrio Gotico and then met up there and had lunch. Then we went to the Picasso museum.
Next day we walked along the Passeig de Gracias where you can see Gaudìs houses Casa Battllò and Casa Milà and from there we went to the Sagrada Familia. There was a long queue, so we didn't go inside. Our friends wanted to take the taxi to the Park Guell, but we had metro tickets, so we met up there. Then the others wanted to eat paella and we had got an adress to a place nearby. But as we were looking for it every one had got really hungry and when we asked people, it didn't appear to bee so close. Se we decided to follow a taxi driver's tip about another restaurang near the Ramblas. Our friends managed to get a taxi, but no one would take our family as we were 5 persons, so we had to take the metro again and meet up at the restaurant, which proved to be too expensive for us. We went to another one, but the paella was nothing special and we had to wait a really long time for our food. Anyway, after that we were tired and ready to get to the bus that took us to the airport.

A lay-out with a few of the pictures I took in Barcelona.