Reunions, Blue Ice Cream & Final Days in DC...

Last weekend we headed up to my boarding school reunion in Groton, MA.  (I attended Groton School from ages 14 to 18.) It was my first ever reunion and now I wish I had been brave enough to attend all of the earlier ones.  I loved seeing so many of my former classmates and teachers, and I think Paolo was pleasantly surprised by his visit.  He arrived thinking the idea of boarding school was cruel (remember Italians usually stay at home until they are in their 20s!) and came away after the weekend thinking it would be a great place to send Gio (I did "neglect" to tell him what the tuition is these days!).

Once back in DC we said goodbye to Paolo who returned to Kyiv to reunite with Enzo and with the stack of work awaiting him in his office.  Gio and I have enjoyed a relaxed week visiting friends, playing baseball, frequenting our favorite restaurants (Surfside & 5 Guys) and spending as much time as we can with my beloved great aunt and uncle, Joan & Ev Shorey.  Uncle Ev has not been feeling well lately so we are trying our best to cheer him up.

We head back to Kyiv late Sunday night (the oh-so-fun 10PM flight out of DC to Munich and then a Monday flight to Kyiv).  Not sure Gio will make it back to school on Tuesday so his attendance record will surely earn us another stern letter from his principal.  We will be in Kyiv for less than 4 weeks before we begin the drive to Italy for the summer!

First thing to do on our drive from Logan Airport to Groton?  Stop at Friendly's, of course, for cotton candy ice cream topped with Reese's Pieces.  Even my rock-solid sweet tooth was rather disgusted with this choice.  

Arrival at Groton.  Gio was immediately on the look-out for other kids.  

When we drove onto the campus Paolo asked first thing if I would show him where to find the chapel.  I told him it would be hard to miss. 

A rare photo of me- it may be the only one you ever see of me pregnant! 

I somehow managed to take NO other pictures of the reunion (the weather was also quite horrible the next two days).  I will not bore you with all of the details but I will say I loved being there and it was a lot of fun to see all of my grown-up classmates acting like teenagers again.  As the sole pregnant lady I offered a useful role as a designated driver!

Post reunion.  Even Gio had a "hangover" to sleep off.  A certain 4-year-old got to spend two nights swimming in the hotel pool after 10PM with his papa! 

We spent Paolo's final evening in town with the Shorey clan.  My wonderful cousin Rachel knitted this sweater for our August arrival.  She recycled the yarn from an old sweater and hand-dyed the wool.  Wow.  

Gio in Uncle Ev's hat.  Yep. His head circumference has always been off the charts!

CUPCAKES!  Gio has done a full survey of all of the cupcakes in Georgetown: Sprinkles, Baked & Wired  and Georgetown Cupcake.  He agrees with me that B&W's are the best!

We have done a tour of all of his favorite parks around town: Rose, Montrose,  Guy Mason and Turtle.  Hard to pick the best but our morning spent here at Turtle with his buddy Caden was certainly a good one! 

Today the weather finally warmed up enough to hop into the Shorey's pool.
5 hours later Gio emerged looking a bit like a raisin.   

We will be back again tomorrow.

May Holidays, Belli-style

May is filled with endless holidays in Ukraine.  What is already a glorious month is vastly improved by all of the vacation time.  We, of course, decided to take advantage and hopped on a flight to Italy even before the month began. As many of you already know, we are expecting Gio's baby sister to arrive in early August, so this is my last chance to fly before our family expands.

Hard to believe that this was our life only a month ago. 

On Gio's last day of school before a 3-week break (oops...more absences racking up on his transcript.  Bad parents. Bad parents), Gio is showing of his plumber look. 

Our 4-year-old has completely outgrown his size 5 clothing but the 6-7s are still a bit large.  He fits in now with all of the high school boys, at least. 

Before going to the US we took a chance to spend a few days in Italy first.  On the way there, through Munich, we found this fabulous airport playground.  It had slides and even a boarding gate that led to a control tower.  Have I mentioned how much we love this airline??

And, as always, Gio spent all of his time on the airplanes awake.  Only cars are for sleeping.  

We had gotten up at 3:30 AM to catch our 6AM flight out of Kyiv, so this nap in the car lasted long after we arrived at our house.  We left him out in the driveway for 2 more hours (and even did a few errands with him happily snoring away).  

The next day our wonderful friends the Mcdougals arrived from Kyiv to spend some time with us in Italy.  We visited the local cheese factory (and its resident pouch)...

....ate A LOT (look closely to see how Gio managed to destroy an entire basket full of bread)

Shared bedtime stories with Xavier (McDougal crew includes three children, ages 10, 7 and almost 6 so Gio was in heaven with so many big kids around!)...

...and did A LOT of jumping....

....in PJs, of course.  For more on the McDougal's visit, see Merilee's blog: http://mcdougalfamilyoverseas.blogspot.com/

We celebrated Paolo's birthday and then had to say goodbye to the Mcdougals as we headed back to Bologna for our trip to the USA.... 

....which did not happen as planned.  The plane that was supposed to take us to Munich never arrived in Bologna as it had to make an emergency landing in Verona.  While we waited to fly instead to Frankfurt (where we would have to spend the night), Gio befriended this adorable boy named Lorenzo.  The two of them terrorized the airport for quite a while.  Lorenzo was on his way to San Francisco as his father is the skipper for the Italian boat in the America's Cup race.  Paolo and I were a bit start struck.  Gio was just happy to have a fun companion for the boring wait at the gate.  

Our flight to DC the next day was an easy one.  How did anyone fly with children before in-flight entertainment and iPads existed??  I know card games, stickers and books are great, but who can do that for 8-9 hours??? Better parents than I, I suppose.  

For anyone who feels ho-hum about living in such a fabulous place as Washington, go live in Kyiv for a while and then get back to me.  For us, the glorious chance to play on clean playgrounds, visit farmer's markets (and not worry about how close Chernobyl is to your food supply), eat cupcakes, maneuver around on streets with polite drivers (YES, to us DC drivers are exceedingly courteous!) and be understood wherever we go are glorious treats.  When asked on the trip here what he was most looking forward to in DC, Gio replied, "Everyone speaks English there!"  

We finally came clean about my expanding Belli belly.  Hard to hide it anymore.....

Our first full day in Washington involved a LOT of swinging...

and a visit to the Dupont Farmer's Market.  

No need to slice it up....

And then back to Rose Park for a few hours in the giant sand pit.   Not a piece of trash, beer bottle or angry babushka in sight.  

Happy to be here.  Hope to see a few of you while we are around.  And for my Kyiv friends, we will also be happy to return in a few weeks.  We miss you.  Hugs to all.  

Spring Cleaning...of the Camera Roll

 I am sorry for being so out of touch.  All is well and we are all reveling in the sudden spring here.  As  we prepare for our big 3 week trip (Italy and USA!), I decided to clear out my camera roll.  Here is what I found.... (For those of you on Facebook, sorry for the many repetitions of photos!)

Hard to believe but we were thoroughly covered in snow and ice mere weeks ago.  Here is a typical scene during my afternoon walks with Enzo.  He is beloved by the local children.  This is by far his favorite gang.  The boy on the right, Boden, lives in our building and Enzo is forever trying to break into his apartment for some extra love. 

As the snow melted it revealed 5 months worth of dog poo and cigarettes.  Bleck.  In typical Ukrainian fashion a law was passed last week implementing a new fine of 500 UAH (about $63) for throwing cigarette butts out of a car window.  All other trash is apparently just fine to toss.  It's a step in the right direction, at least!

A massive demonstration protesting the current (and, in my opinion  entirely corrupt) government.  This was the first gathering I have witnessed where the protesters actually outnumbered the heavily armed militia always dispatched to these things.   

Last weekend our school PTA (including yours truly) organized a very fun Venetian Carnival -themed fund raiser.  We raised oodles of cash and had a blast doing it!  These are my friends Suzie, Merilee & Naz.

 A certain sign of the end of winter??  Gio's beloved bouncy castle has returned to the park.  Time to shell out our daily 20 UAH for 10 minutes of wild fun. 

After a long battle with the flu and endless travel Paolo finally returned to the soccer pitch after months away.  Fashion choice is questionable (Italian on top, but whale swimming trunks on the bottom?? hmmmmm.)

This past Friday Gio and I returned to school in the early evening to help set up for the school's first ever prom.  I thought it would be fun for Gio as his two beloved babysitters would be attending.  It was an impressive event as the students did all of the organization themselves.  I think they had a lot of fun bossing us mothers around and we loved every minute.  

The prom mom team.  As we were working Gio bossed around all of the high school boys waiting for the event to begin. I went behind the curtain to find him playing a rousing floor hockey game with 8 teenagers (dressed in tuxedos and suits).  Needless to say it was very difficult to get Gio to leave his first prom.

Another fun thing that returns to the park in the spring are these electric cars.  Small dogs, toddlers, pigeons and ladies in open-toed stilettos beware!

Gio's favorite toy makes its way to the park nearly every day. He launches his Stomp Rocket (look it up and order one- you will NOT be sorry!) and usually has a crowd of children gathered around to take turns within minutes.    

These friendly signs have begun to appear all around our lovely Botanic Gardens.  We, of course, ignore them.  Diplomatic immunity, right??

Curious what Gio eats for dinner?  Well, here is what he had tonight.  Yes, those are Reese's Pieces.  So sue me, nutrition police....

Going Out Like a....

LION!!! Yes, it is snowing heavily yet again here in Kyiv.  I am a broken record, no?  I have run out of things to do in this apartment with Gio. So far this morning we have baked and decorated two dozen cupcakes for an Easter party tomorrow, cleaned and replaced the slipcovers on one of our couches, read "Owl at Home" all the way through 4 times and is currently upstairs, naked, cleaning one of our icky trash cans in his tub.  Now we are going to hop on the metro and then sled the rest of the way to school to do an egg hunt with Grace on the playground.  I suppose some of the eggs will not be discovered until May (or when the snow melts, which ever comes first!).

Here are some shots from our last week together....

School was called off on Monday due to snow (no one can ever remember this happening at Gio's school before!), so we headed out to do some bowling.  Not only is Gio' form superb, but that combo of pirate pjs and bowling shoes is really stunning.

Sometimes Gio's ball took a loooong time to go down the lane (bouncing back and forth between the bumpers). 

A terrific snow fort was created near our apartment- Gio helped make the walls even taller!

Gio's school reopened on Tuesday- here is the entrance to the gym!

And his playground- sort of hard to get to the swings!

School morning wake ups continue to be a challenge.  This is how I often find him, with every soft item in his room keeping him company.

While Gio snores Enzo rests on his snow pillow on our balcony.

Besides cleaning out icky garbage cans, Gio is also really good at some other chores.
 Here he is resting in between salad spins.

Our rose coloring project.  Thanks to my friend Charlotte's amazing blog:
http://ciburbanity.com/2013/03/26/old-school-science/
which gave me the inspiration!

The next morning..... The green ones on the end here are our best performers and Gio is thrilled as he created the green himself mixing blue and yellow drops.  He is really excited about this color math as green is his "most favorite"!

Easter shopping here is a challenge because (1) Ukrainian Orthodox Easter does not arrive until early May and (2) the shelves are still filled with Christmas stuff.  This is the opposite strategy of the US where shelves have holiday candy months in advance but then get stripped the day after.  

I did finally find this assortment of semi-Easter stuff- all ceremoniously dumped in a corner- very Ukrainian style. 

Out of desperation I decided to get Gio's summer cut done yesterday just hoping that maybe it would make the snow melt. No luck- we woke to heavy snow this morning.

For your listening "pleasure"....

Gio's class performed a rocking rendition of "Gangnam Style" yesterday in gym class.  Gio is the one in yellow crocs and a red-blue shirt.....

Our dog walker Lucy spotted this car last night while outside with Enzo.
Who knew there was another Gio in Kyiv?!