Venzone Pumpkin Festival

One of our new favorite things to do in Italy is go to festivals. Our latest, the Venzone Pumpkin Festival, was our favorite thus far. Venzone is about an hour east of Pordenone. The drive is beautiful and goes through the mountains and several little towns. Like most festivals, this one featured local artists, musicians, and foods. The pumpkin theme was evident throughout the food (think pumpkin soup, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin breads/strudal, pumpkin gelatto, and several other little pumpkin sweets) and drink (pumpkin grappa - no one tried it). The festival also had a medieval theme so we got to see lots of cool performances like flame throwers:) Fun, fun!

Flame throwers


Street performers


The crowd!


The beautiful view of the mountains from the town square. The entire town was destroyed by an earthquake in 1976. The people of the town decided to rebuild the entire thing exactly how it was before the quake!


Almost 1000 pounds of pumpkin


Pumpkin carving


Long ago, an artist was commissioned to design a gold ball for the top of the bell tower. However, the town decided when he finished the project to only pay him 1/3 of what they owed. He decided to switch the gold ball for a pumpkin that was spray painted gold and then skip town in the middle of the night! The citizens thought the "gold ball" was wonderful until it started rotting. . .


Venzone is a walled city. Thankfully, they let us in!


On our way to the gates

Venice with Mom

My Mom and I took Sadie on her first trip to Venice last week. While there were some crazy things that happened (none that I want to recount on here because they make me mad), we had a great trip and enjoyed beautiful weather. Plus, Venice was not as crowded as it is in the summer which was very nice. Sadie was great the entire day and even slept that night (as an added bonus. *not sure why part of this is underlined. hmmm*

Three generations of Jayne gals.


Us in 2002. San Giorgio is behind us. We are very close to where the next picture was taken.


Mom and the gondolas.

The view of San Marco Square from the vaporetto.

Where you have to feed your baby if you are too cheap to pay to sit in a cafe! Note the Halloween socks peeking out from the blanket.

October

October flew by and we enjoyed a wonderful month with beautiful weather here. While it does rain a lot here, we have plenty of days with sunshine and mild weather too. Here are some thing that happened in October.

Kwame and I took advantage of my Mom being here and had a night out while she babysat. She left on October 30:(


Sadie started showing us her beautiful smile. Now she likes to cheese it up for the camera or anyone else who will watch.


Baby's First Halloween! Nonna got to help Sadie try on her costume.


Beautiful ballerina


Another way to wear the tutu . . .

Sadie's awesome hat. Kwame agrees. Just ask him!

Like father, like daughter

Sadie's BFF, Tristan, in their costumes after Trunk or Treat on the base. They are both making their scariest faces. Eek!

Enjoying Trunk or Treat at the base. Since we (and Sadie) didn't care about the candy, we didn't have to wait in the 3 hour line to see all of the decorated cars.

Lazy Sunday afternoon.

More relaxing

Stay tuned for November!