Cracker

Cracker is someone I've been wanting to meet. She makes comments on my blog. When my Uncle Jeff was here, she came to visit us. She was staying in Radda. Radda is twenty minutes away from us.

I think Cracker is a funny name particularly for a grown-up unless you're a parrot. I'm not going to tell you her real name.

This is me and Cracker

She was with her husband and a lady named Jan and her husband. They were all nice.

Cracker gave me some presents. She gave me two push-pops, one box of cereal and two boxes of transformers. She knew what I liked because her grandson told her. He's my age.

We went to Castellana for dinner. It's up the hill in Montefioralle. Montefioralle means flowery mountain. We sat outside because there was a pretty sunset.

Castellana and La Cantinetta di Rignana are connected because they are owned by the same family. Fabrizio's brother works at Castellana. His name is Francesco. They do not look alike --other than their noses.

Cracker lives in Florida. But next April I will see her in Savannah, Georgia. Some of my other friends will be there like Roz and Mike, maybe Colleen and Jim, Kim and Kevin, Jerry and Paul, Chiaro di Luna and a bunch of people I am going to meet in July.


Ciao, Ciao

My Uncle Jeff

My Uncle Jeff came to see us in Italy for two weeks. I had a good time with him. He's funny. He tickles me a lot. He likes to play with me. He likes to do stuff with me like play football and play with Roman army figures. He bought them for me. I liked playing with them and we also used pirate figures. When we played with the pirate figures he was using the cannon like a car. It was very funny and made me laugh.

We went to Rome, Herculaneum (Ercolano) and Pompeii. In Rome I slept in the same room with Uncle Jeff. I had my own bed but I was really squirmy because it wasn't my own bed at home. It was very hard. Uncle Jeff was just like a log he stayed so still.

Uncle Jeff and I went to the Colosseum and the Pantheon. One time we went to a restaurant and Uncle Jeff got 8 big shrimps and he used the heads for little puppets. Here's a picture of me and my silly Uncle Jeff with Mr. Bobby. He really makes me laugh.




We walked a lot and saw a lot of cats. We went and saw the prison where Peter and Paul were in. It was dark and had only one pee-pee pot. It was under the ground.

In Pompei I wasn't so squirmy even though I shared a bed with Uncle Jeff. But I was whining like a puppy dog.

We both like Ben 10. He gave me a DVD of Ben 10 and, also, while I was here in Italy he has given me almost all of the Ben 10 characters. I'm missing one and that is Grey Matter.

He's a good looking guy. How come no girls are chasing after him? If they did, I would probably have an ant (aunt) by now.

I wish he didn't go home. I really miss him. He had to go home because he needed to take care of my dog Scratch. I'll see him in two months. I love him a lot, a lot, a lot.

Which one do you think is Uncle Jeff?

I love you Uncle Jeff!!! Come back.

This is another picture of my silly Uncle.

Off to Rome and Pompeii

I'm not going to be writing for a little while so I'm writing this note saying I'm not going to be here. I'm going to go away with my Uncle Jeff. Here's a picture of us. I'm going to be missing school 4 days but I'm going to be gone 6 days. This is a mini-blog.

Happy Mother's Day, Mamma

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Happy Mother's Day Mamma

I Love You.

Casey

My Good Friends at La Cantinetti di Rignana

Last night I went to La Cantinetti di Rignana once again. This time was the best of all of them. I know everybody. Last night was a very special night. I went into the kitchen because one of the ladies called me in and they had a present all wrapped up for me.

I brought it back to the table and I started to open it. The wrapping said "Al Carissimo Amico, Casey" and everybody signed their name on it. The wrapping was made out of place mats and tied with a piece of string. At first it seemed heavy.




When I saw what the present was I was so excited because it was so special. It was a painting of Mary and Baby Jesus called The Ognissanti Madonna painted by Giotto about 700 years ago. For me a lot of these things are interesting because I've been to a lot of museums with that kind of stuff in them. Here's a picture of the painting.

This is Paolo Abbarchini the chef at La Rignana. And he is also the owner. He is always glad to see me. I like him.


This is Fabrizio. When I come in, he is so excited. And he says "Everybody, Casey's here.: And everybody runs out and gives me hugs. He's the one that whistles his stomach out and made the joke on my gramma with the coffee cup and yesterday did it to Ann. He is fun, too.


This is Fabrizo again and Stefano. He is really nice to me. Here I am signing the book. I said "This is my favorite restaurant. Thank you for the painting. I really like it." But I really wrote it in Italian.


Ann and Paul our friends from Hawaii went with us. This is us at the table when we were all through eating.

My Sister Camilla

I've always wanted a sister. In Italian, sister is sorella and brother is fratello. And now I have a sister--hip, hip hooray.

Ecco una fotografia di CAMILLA e ME.

I think that Camilla is very nice and pretty. I like playing with her. It's fun being with her. Sometimes we are soooo silly and sometimes like brother and sister we argue and we both get mad. But after, we're friends again. But I don't play with her all the time. Sometimes I have my other friends over to play. And like this Wednesday I'm going to my friend Tommy's house after school and I am going to stay there for dinner.

This is Camilla when she still had her braces. We were here in Montefioralle. It's a little castle town above Greve in Chianti. I have a friend that lives in Montefioralle. His name is Niccolo. We were here for the little rice cake sagra.


This is when we were at the swimming pool yesterday. Yesterday was a very pretty hot summer day. Today it is raining hail. This was the second time I was in the pool this year. The water was freezing cold but it warmed up after a few minutes. I felt like a polar bear at first


Here we are at the computer reading my blog. Now you are going to be reading a post on my blog when I'm reading my blog. That's funny, isn't it? Kids don't use much computers in Italy but I do because I write my blog.


Th-th-that's All Folks

KZ KC or Casey--whichever one you prefer.

The Beauty of Spring

The beauty of spring comes in every place but here in Italy it is very pretty. The flowers bloom, little leaves pop up on the trees and bird eggs hatch. There's sunshine and beautiful skies.



Now here's something, all the birds that were hatched are just peep, peep, peeping away outside the door. They always wake me up in the morning. They are very annoying. (that'a a whisper so the birds won't hear.)

If you look right outside the window on our door, you can see a beautiful country side of colors dark green, regular green and light green and yellow, a little. And also you can see a tree that at first had just little buds this morning but now it seems like the leaves are almost done growing. You should have seen it in winter. The grass was covered with the leaves and the tree was empty. It wasn't very pretty then.


There were some beautiful pink flowers on the ledge but now someone! put barbecue stuff on the ledge where the flowers were. It wasn't my gramma. I don't know who it was but papa's barbecuing so I think it was him.

Here's a picture of the beautiful skies. We see these skies in the morning and afternoon. At night, of course not. But the skies are always beautiful here in fall, spring and summer and also in winter sometimes.


Outside my window there is a beautiful view of the skies and the countryside. This is a picture from my window. I took the picture. I took all the pictures.

My Time at Paris

After school last Tuesday we flew to Paris for Easter vacation. We got there about eleven o'clock at night and got to bed about midnight. The hotel was very pretty. We had two rooms, actually. One for me and one for my grandparents. The two rooms were connected. I got to have my own room and bathroom and TV for 5 whole days.

I really liked Paris. Across from the hotel were the Jardin des Tuileries. It was the garden for the kings and queens. I liked the gardens because there was a little playground for kids.



When I went to the Eiffel Tower, guess who was scared of heights (?), so we didn't go up.

And guess what--they don't have any gelato--but they have Ben and Jerry's ice cream.


I was very disappointed about the Mona Lisa. I thought the Mona Lisa would really follow you with her eyes but she didn't. She just stayed with her eyes crooked like this.

by KZdaVinci

One of the things I was really wanting to do, because he's my favorite artist, was go to the Picasso Museum. Picasso is my favorite artist because he makes such pretty and unusual paintings. When I first saw Picasso paintings I was in Barcelona, Spain.

The paintings here were also very unusual. He doesn't just have paintings. He has collages, too and sculptures. He seemed to really like to paint ladies in red arms chairs. Here's a picture of a lady in a red arm chair.


I'm trying to draw Picasso pictures. So far, I'm pretty good.

By KZPicasso

Another artist I saw in one of the museums was VanGogh. He was a very weird guy because he cut his ear off and gave it to his girlfriend. I don't like Van Gogh as much as Picasso. His paintings I saw had little waves of paint that you can look at but you're not allowed to touch it. If you could touch it, you could feel the little waves.

This is Van Gogh.

In Paris I saw where the guillotine was. The guillotine cuts peoples' heads off. The king and queen got their heads cut off because they were rich and all the other people were regular and poor so they killed them.

I took all the pictures in this blog. I hope you liked them.

I'm Going to Paris

Tomorrow after school we are going to Paris for 5 days so I won't be writing anything for a while.

Just wanted to let you know that.

Happy Easter.

Ce Vediamo

Yesterday Was Good and Bad

Right here, right now, I'm going to do the bad part first.

The bad part was that when I was in the shower, I dropped the washrag onto the drain. The rag kept the water from getting in the drain. And after it started rising and rising, I was trying to make it like a bath but the water was going out the door and I did not know it.

Then I heard my grandma say "Casey, what happened?" Then I got out of the shower and asked "what?" Then I saw the river going down stairs. It was just like a real river that was just going down the waterfall. The upstairs and downstairs were flooded. And we drowned. Right now, I'm in heaven. Seriously, my grandparents weren't very happy.

Here's a picture of the shower.



Now--there's two good parts.

First
When I was at school the teachers were saying to me, that they didn't want me to go back home to San Diego. "We're not going to let him go," they said to the custodians. Two kids heard and said, "yea, we want him to stay." And they said, "Non vai via, Non vai via,Non vai via." That means "don't go away, don't go away, don't go away." This made me feel really happy. I want to stay here, too. Grab my dog and come here because I miss him.

The other good part was that yesterday Camilla felt better. She had been sick for 4 days so we couldn't play together. But today she was better and she came to school. For me, she's like a sister.

This is Camilla with me.