3rd Annual Family Compound Thanksgiving

We have had such a wonderful Thanksgiving break. There are so many things to be thankful for but mostly for being able to have so many family and friends around to help celebrate. On Thanksgiving we held our Annual Family Compound Thanksgiving and some how managed to increase the number of people from last year's 20 to 30 this year. And amazingly enough we were missing to very special people this year, my cousin Tyler who is away at college for the first year and good old Uncle Jon, who also is away at college. We missed you both!!

It was a beautiful day here and we had awesome food prepared by all who came. Because we were all having such a great time we didn't get many pictures. But here are a few to give you a feel of our Thanksgiving feast.

Enjoying a break from cooking


Rainbow Jello

Jamie's Norman Rockwell Turkey

The Boys Cooking


The Fest!

Then on Friday we decide to start a new tradition in our family. Remember our 12 dollar, 125lb pumpkin we bought for Halloween. Well with the Christmas decorations making their way out we need to say good bye to the pumpkin. We knew our goats would enjoy munching on it but how to get it down the hill to their pen?! For those who have been to our house they know the "hill" we are taking about, vertical straight drop. And thus we began:

The Annual Pumpkin RollThe kids helping Matt push it across the flat part of the driveway

Serafina's turn to push by herself.

Sam's turn to push by himself. This was the push that sent it down the hill.


And the pumpkin takes flight.

The pumpkin decides to go off roading.
(note my dad's car in the trees, yeah next year we will make sure no cars are parked at the bottom of the hill. At this point we realize Matt's and my car were down there too!! Luckily the cars were spared!)


The pumpkin in its final resting place. It hit a rock when it went off road which split it open. It also ran into our shed busting one side of the door. The thunk sound it made was wonderful, and luckily Matt managed to fix the door!

Matt moving it into the goat pen. It was still heavy even with part of it missing!

We are looking forward to next years pumpkin roll and learned a few lessons with this first one!! I am also hoping that Trevor and Jen decide to bring their big pumpkin over for use to roll down the goats. That way we can get a pumpkin roll on video!! YouTube baby!

CHOO - CHOO Matteo is TWO!!

My little guy is turning 2!! Tomorrow is the official day but spent last week celebrating train style. For those who don't know Matteo is obsessed with trains. He will spend hours playing trains, reading about trains and watching train movies. But don't let it be a Thomas the Train movie, oh no he likes the movies with REAL trains in them. He is a crazy dude. We celebrated on saturday by taking La Condessa, a private rail car operated by the Santa Maria Valley Railroad on a little trip through the Santa Maria, Gaudalpe area. Matteo was in heaven and spent pretty much the entire time out on the deck wathing the rails and how everything worked. One of the best things about it was we had the opertunity to pick up frieght along the way so Matteo and all the kids got to watch the train couple up witht he frieght. What a day. For more picture of the day click here. My dad did a great job and finding the best pictures! I jsut uploaded a couple family shots.





So in order to truly ring in his birthday we start the week off with an Amtrak train ride to Santa Barbara. We went last Monday to avoid crowds and had the time of our lives. Matteo adored the train with his favorite part being the doors that went between the two cars. We spend most of our time walking between cars and he would belly laugh every time. Once in Santa Barbara we head off to the Zoo and of course rode the train there, the highlight of the zoo trip!! The following are pictures from that day:

Papa let Serafina have desert after breakfast on the train!


Waiting for the train.

Matteo made sure he read up on the Train and the Saftey info.

On a walk.

This bird was really cool, we got so close and it never flew away! The kids were not to sure.

Another train!

Serafina doing a happy dance at the end of the day (past her bed time!!)

Well I can't belive it my baby is two. And soon there will be a new baby in the family. They all grow up so fast. Happy Birthday Little Man, we love you so much!!

SMVRR Birthday

On July 12 the Santa Maria Valley Railroad celebrated its 98th birthday and as active shareholders we (Matt, Jamie, Sam and Serafina-Matteo was running a fever so mommy and Nana stayed home with him) head down for a little birthday celebration. They all enjoyed a little picnic lunch and some train rides, along with getting a chance to climb around on the engine! They all had a great time.

The great father son walk and talk!




All Aboard!



Serafina tries her hand at bar tending.


Oh yes, Lynn and I had to do cookies for the occasion!

A girls love for trains only goes so far.


All tuckered out on the final ride into the station.

Bleated Birthday Report

As always we have been busy so I haven't had a chance to post about my wonderful daughter turning four! She seems so big now, it was like over night, a bunch of her fears went away, and she is helping out more around the house. She tells me that it is because she is four. When she was three she was scared but now that she is four she is no longer scared. What a crack up. Her favorite thing to do is read, and play doctor. Her and papa read stories together almost ever night. She reads him a few BOB books and then he reads multiple story books. It is to cute. The other night she told him that she is still planning on being a doctor but that she is also going to write books on the body and being a doctor because there are no good kids book about it. She keeps us rolling.

For her birthday she wanted a doctor party, so we through a doctor party with band-aids, skeletons and x-rays! It was a great time and I think everyone had a wonderful time, especially the birthday girl.

As always my dad put the best of the best picture of his website click here.

Happy Bleated Birthday post my sweet angel.

Mardi Gras Gradutation

On June 11, 2009 my brother and sister-in-law (Mario and Karlee Scalzo (twins)) graduated from high school. To celebrate the occasion we opened up our house to a Mardi Gras celebration. It ended up being one of the best parties ever and I truly believe everyone had a great time. Friends donate a bunch of the decorations, we had beads and masks. Our friend Jon loaned us his touch screen Jukebox, which played all night long. Many of the friends and family brought wonderful food and our boys did awesome BBQ for everyone. The party started at 4:00pm and lasted well into the night. There was close to 100 people who came through the house that day. We had people paying pool, jumping on the trampoline, hot tubing, and running trains, oh yes and of course dancing throwing beads and a pinata! What a great time and a great reason to celebrate.

We are so proud of Mario and Karlee and hope them only the best as they both head off to college at the end of the summer. Mario is staying local which we are so happy about! Karlee is headed down south which we are so sad about, but she will have a great time down there, so we are happy for her!!

We love you both and please enjoy the scrapbook!
As always you can view all the pictures taken that day by: clicking here

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

A little taste of Nashville

Well Matt and I have been in Nashville for 3 days now and WOW, I love it here!! It has been a blast minus the part where I was sick with the stomach flu for the first day!! When we get back I will write a whole post on the trip but for now we are enjoying a little air conditioning before the evening concerts start so I thought I would upload a couple pictures. (As always I leave must of the picture taking up to the others so these are my own random snapshots and I have to wait and steal theirs!)

Dancing to Jason Aldean at the Wildhorse at an after hours party!



Debbie and I sporting our Jason Aldean Shirts in support of Breast Cancer


YEEHAW the ZAC BROWN BAND!

Rockin' Party

My parents decide to not help me in my 12 step program in over coming my guitar hero addiction, but instead made it worst by purchasing me Rock Band for my birthday, gotta love it. Now I have officially sucked my husband and best friend Jon into my addiction because you have to have the full band to make it fun right?!?

Which meant Matt and my Mom had to throw me a Rock Band party. We invited a over a bunch of my friends who we knew would rock the house. They requested that everyone come dressed in there best rock get up and you would never guess... KISS made an appearance!!

By the end of the evening just about everyone had tried their hand at some type of instrument, drums, guitar or vocal. Also by the end, everyone was improving on there skills, that or we had thrown back enough to drink we were no longer noticing the bad pitch and missed notes! Who knows! Either way it was a great time.

As always my dad, know as Papa-razia all night, was in charge as pictures so: click here to view the fun filled evening!

Here is one photo Papa-razi missed: