End of summer fun

This past Sunday I, along with Mom and Dad, trekked our way up to Los Angeles to see a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Before heading to the venue, we stopped by to visit Arnaud, Jess, and Isabella.

Zia and Isabella

Nonnina and Isabella

Arnaud and Isabella

We all took a brief walk and had a late lunch at Amandine Cafe across the way and spent some family quality time. (of course with food)

Jessica and Isabella

Isabella has this new way of looking at life. It's the new "side swing" which apparently makes life a lot more interesting and fun...

Nonno participating and checking out Isabella's new found view

After lunch, I along with Mom and Dad headed over to Hollywood for the concert. From where we parked we had to traverse the main road through this tunnel....it was very metro-esque.





All I had originally asked for was one or two pictures...this what ensued...




First up, my personal favorites, was Brazilian girls.





Then up second, was Zap Mama, who had put on a marvelous show. Unfortunately she had to get off the stage for the next performer...but she should have stayed on.






And lastly, Macy Gray appeared as the main liner. I am not necessarily a fan, but I have to admit that now that she has become such a known name, she does know how to get a stadium as large as this going.




Hopefully some more concerts will follow soon...

Warm August Days

As the summer season is coming to a close, what better way to spend a weekend outdoors having a barbecue than with friends and family and lots of kids!?

Saturday August 18th the Manzo family came to mom and dad's house around 3 in the afternoon for a bbq. Nick and Michelle appeared first at the house, along with 1 1/2 year old Evan. Such a cutie. Then Nick's parents came, and the party began. Michelle leaked out the information that she is pregnant again, but the catch is....it's twins! So with time I hope she does well with this pregnancy as she did with Evan's. The barbecue lasted about 7 hours, with plenty of food and drink, and with a great news to cheers to. The men played several rounds of bocce on the court atop the slope, as the women just relaxed in the shade provided by the trees and awning, and of course the misters. The kids were great, running around, enjoying the outdoors, and of course playing with tupperware.

Isabella watching Evan figure out the high chair

Nonnina and Isabella

Best Friends now with kids of their own...

Isabella proceeding to devour my camera case

I swear, she's going to be a tennis player, that outfit is just too cute

my fav (not that I'm biased) Zia and Isabella

Then on Sunday, before out large lunch of leftovers, Brad and Erica came to my parents place with their twins, Zach and Katie (5 months). There was much more interaction between these babies and Isabella, granted they are only 2 months apart. It was fun to talk with Brad and Erica to get to know how their lifestyle has had to change, although the two babies were EXTREMELY well behaved and mellow.

Great Friends/Ex-Coworkers with their kids...

Brad, Erica, Katie, Zach, Arnaud and Isabella (and mom's legs)

Isabella and Zach playing together with the 'bounceroo'...

There is nothing like spending a weekend with the family, and seeing how the kids are growing exponentially. Although it was incredibly hot it was a beautiful August weekend.

P.S. My health has remained stagnant. I am still just rolling wit the punches, one good day, one so-so day, one bad day, etc. I have seen a gastro-enterologist and found out that all I can do is blender-ize my food, and slowly reintroduce solid food to my diet. I have tried that, but am constantly shot down by my body and head straight back to frozen yogurt and sorbet. Hopefully with time this will all go away and I will be back to my old self.

Life keeps whirling by

It is as I sit here at work, finishing a package that will complete my first set-up of incorporating a business, that I come to realize how life has whirled me by in the past months. I have now been at this job for a duration of four and a half months, am still happily living in a condo in Laguna Niguel, and am living completely independent as a grown woman. It's amazing how life, in just a few short months, can so drastically change. And of course the change is for the better. There are still so many things that I would love to do, but I am proud of all the accomplishments that I have done thus far in my life. And on top of everything that I am doing in my own life, I see just how fast time goes by as I watch my niece develop into her own person. She has become the sunshine in our family, and she just never ceases to amaze any of us. At six months she has exceeded any of our expectations. She is growing all too quickly really. She is already starting to prop herself up and stand with ease. (And she has barely started to crawl) Mom took my camera last weekend and took some great photos of the munchkin. As the proud and loving Zia that I am, I could not pass up the opportunity to post them here.

Harley Davidson Joke :-)

The inventor of the Harley Davidson motorcycle, Arthur Davidson, died and went to heaven. At the gates, St. Peter told Arthur, "Since your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is; you can hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."

Arthur thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God." St. Peter took Arthur to the Throne Room and introduced him to God. God recognized Arthur and comments, "Okay, so you were the one who invented motorcycles, eh?!"

Arthur said, "Yessir, that's me..."

God commented, "Well, what's the big deal in inventing something that's pretty unstable, makes noise and pollution, and can't run without a road?!"

Arthur was apparently embarrassed, but finally spoke, "Excuse me, but aren't you the inventor of woman???"

God said, "Ah, yes."

"Well," said Arthur, "Professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your inventions:
1)There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion.
2)It chatter constantly at high speeds.
3)Most of the rear ends are too soft and wobble too much.
4)The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust.
5)And the maintenance costs are outrageous!"

"Hmmmm, you have some good point there...." replied God, "It may be true that my invention is flawed, but according to my calculations, more men are riding my inventions than yours."

Summertime....when the living is easy...

Another marvelous weekend has flown by. The entire "gang" got together to celebrate Christine's birthday/graduation up in Big Bear! Happy 22rd Birthday to you Christine! I hope you had a fabulous time. The entire "gang" consisted of the Fortmanns (Dan, Cindy, Mike, Brian and Christine), the Reinzuchs (Luann, Kirk and Kirk's girlfriend), the Colantonios (Franco, Viviane, Arnaud, Sandra, Isabella, and Jessica) and the Bonewalds (Robert, Hayden and Connor). I cannot even remember the last time that we all got together the way we did this weekend. Let's just leave it at quite a few years (too many really).

The weekend went as follows:
My parents came to pick me up at 8am on Saturday morning. We stopped at Starbucks to have a quick little pick me up to start the trip. We then drove to Los Angeles to pick up Arnaud and Isabella. From there, we took the 18 through Apple Valley and made our way up to the lake. The drive was quite nice since we didn't have to sit on the freeway at all, and going up the mountain from this route takes about 20 minutes! Isabella started getting fussy towards the end, a good pair of ear plugs would have been nice. But we arrived around noon in time to enjoy hours of fun in the sun. The boys often went out on the boat, Christine opened birthday presents throughout the day. Time always seems to fly by when we are up there, before we knew it we were preparing appetizers and drinks and cooking dinner. For appetizers we had a hodgepodge of finger foods and toasted to Christine with Asti and Chambord. For dinner we had homemade lasagna and sangria. Then for dessert Christine had made an assortment of cupcakes (chocolate mint upside down cupcakes, lemon poppy-seed butterfly cupcakes, ice cream cones filled with brownies and whip cream, and cheesecake cupcakes.) To try to work off dinner, many of us went to the TV room and played Christine's Wii. I never thought I'd ever see my Dad play the Wii, and the bowling game at that! I wish I had a picture of it.

Christine, I and Aunt LuAnn

enjoying a drink in the spa ;-)

hanging with the babes

enjoying the stay with my niece

Christine and Connor having fun in the outdoors

Dan Mike and Hayden trying to fix the sailboat

*Cindy and Brian*

the boys of the family

getting ready to toast to Christine's success and future

Sunday came around all too quickly. The boys went out early in the AM to get some wake boarding in. While the rest of the group lounged around the house, enjoying the view of the lake, and getting lost in one's own thoughts (OK that was me, never mind). So many activities were going one....wake boarding, kayaking, jacuzzi, etc. My dad had made crepes for breakfast, then we all prepared the leftovers and had that for lunch, and for dinner we had all American food consisting of homemade burgers and salad! (Christine and I took it one step further and made ourselves "protein style" burgers wrapped in lettuce instead of bread ;-) .) By 8pm the house was cleaned up and we all had to leave , unfortunately.

Breakfast time for everyone-

my crazy American family....

The typical look of the backyard in the summer

Who knows when we will all be able to get together again...but I hope it is soon. in the meantime we will always have this weekend to remember just how life should be, in the summer.