Ahhh the family...!!

For my birthday, which very inconveniently fell on a Monday, we had a small, quiet family soire'. That in itself is an accomplishment because there is nothing quiet about my family, except for my dad who is just always calm and relaxed (we think he is an alien...). Well yesterday evening it was just my parents, my brother and my grandparents and somehow we still managed to make more noise then my dad liked to suffer... So at one point in the evening when the volume really rose and everyone was talking at the same time he just said:

You! stop whistling like an on-coming train! (pointing at my mom)

You! stop jangling like 50 bells! (at least I'm a bell and not a train!)

You! stop being a trumpet! (pointing at my brother)

My grandma is also naturally a soft spoken person, but since the only way to participate in a conversation is to scream at the top of your lungs so she learned too.

Grandpa is however the only person "officially" allowed to talk loudly, and that's because he's been through the war and all those granades blowing up all the time at close proximity could really damage those eardrums. What's the rest of ours' excuse I don't know...

Vito dear, get your "loud voice" ready for when you're in New York ;)

(Grandma and Grandpa helping Daniele with his homework)

And on another happy note, my lovely mamochka cooked up an absolute storm! My expressed desire to also cook something was dismissed with "Yeah, whatever" I even got a cake with CANDLES!!! :) Seriously, I think me turning the big 29 left a bigger impression on my mom then me...

You know you're special when mom makes a 4 layer secret recipe cake from a super secret old cookbook that is HAND written... we had to literally rip Daniele's face out of the cake, he loved it so much...