Family fun and sun in Florida for Chrstmas

Lila catching her first wave, with Uncle Nick as surfing coach.

Yet another year of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" - The girls all left notes and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. He of course left stockings full of goodies for all of us!

Ava, Claire and Rose preparing to spend yet another day mostly in the pool - they may turn into mermaids soon.

"Grandma Bootsie" came to visit us.

Julia and sister-in-law Abi

The local church had a skit on the birth of Jesus - and we helped supply the angels and shepherd (too bad their not like this all the time....)

Another beautiful day at Papa and Dooz's house...the view out the back to the Atlantic Ocean

Headed to the pool again...

Claire (in yellow top) with her cousins Mac, Ava and Rose on the beach in Jupiter Island



Lila got a guitar for Christmas and is keen to learn to play. James Taylor, here we come!

Day trip to Sestriere

Here is Claudio - who is an amazing skier, I just tried to keep up with him and the boys!

Claudio, Ottavio, Orlando and I went up to Sestriere on Sat to ski for the day - it's only about 1.25 hour drive to the slopes of the via latte, where you can connect to many resorts. You can see the deep snow from the poma lift below, new tracks down the sides. Not as much snow here as there was in Cervinia, but still wonderful.

Powder in Cervinia

Mount Cervinia, as it's known on the Italian side (the Matterhorn, as it's known to others), has a fantastic ski area all around it. We spent our first ski weekend up there and it might just be down hill from here because it was hard to beat. Two feet of new snow on Friday and Saturday, cloudless skies on Sunday and Monday, and a deeper base than they've had in 25 years. Plus the fact that the Italians just ski the groomers for only a few hours starting around 11:30, with lunch and multiple cappuccino breaks included in that time frame, so the lift lines are non-existent. All the more powder for us! 

Jules off piste - we managed to find plenty of fresh stuff and make new tracks most of Sunday...

Lila and Claire also enjoyed lots of powder runs - although we lost one of  Claire's skis which took hours to find deep in the snow, far from where we thought it would be.

Out on the town the first night...

The girlies went sledding one night apres-ski with the friends we were up there with.

And Lila got a special private lesson with an instructor who was on the Italian ski team.

Both girls loved trying some off-piste powder skiing. It was hard to be discouraged when you had the spectacular Matterhorn in full view all the time.

Lots of avalanches in Cervinia, but not this weekend.

Kuhns & Mahoneys invade Torino for Turkey day!

We might have been the only crazy peeps doing a bike trip in the Langhe region in November, but boy did we look good in those ski socks and hats.

And thankfully we had Lorenzo telling us where to go.

Sean soaking in some sun during lunch break

Yeh - we tasted some wines at lunch, and rode again...
The ski neck warmers came in handy on our bike trip in the Langhe wine country - a high of 46 for the day...fortunately it was sunny, but very chilly toes and fingers were felt by all.
Celine & Chris, can we change our hot coco to another cappuccino?

Celine and Jen discussing Portland politics

After the Torino soccer match against Milano, the boys were in full-on soccer mode.
Gabriel, whatever you do, DON'T kick the soccer ball into the fountain...
Sean fishing the soccer ball from the fountain...

Sunset at the Superga

The blue lights over Mont de Cappucini - there's a great artistic light show in Torino now through the holidays - this exhibition is but one of the wonderful sights to be found at night currently around the city.

Thomas the tiger

Lucy (and Lilly below, went to school with Claire and Lila one day, to fully experience the "life" our girls are leading here)

Lilly

The boys, in route to the Extreme Caffe, their favorite, unique, coffee shop.

The Beer bar at Eataly - a huge selection of brews, followed by a wonderful dinner there, GREAT food...and enough to feed an army.

Real photos of monuments outside our window

Mont Cappucini (flickr shot) - just out our window, in Blue for the holidays

A real image (not by me) of the Gran Madre

Torino, Rapallo - Mahaney & Flinn

Kevin (Godfather to Lila) and Lila at a local restaurant - "24"

Walking around Torino, there are plenty of interesting art objects in the streets. This week the TFF - Torino Film Festival starts and the City is full of lots of Internationals - been hearing a lot more English out on the streets...

As day in Parco Valentino - the girls entertained themselves for hours on these little push carts.

Ante and Julia - my iphone does not take good photos on dim light, sorry for the poor photo quality.

Stuart Flinn, Julia in the middle of the sandwich, and Ante - in Rapallo (just South of Genova). Ante, Stu and their other crew Mike easily won the Etchells Europeans there last weekend. We drove down to go out with them - and have a few Pops.

Kevin Mahaney came to visit for the weekend, he was only here for three nights, but we managed to check out Torino and also Rapallo down on the Ligurian coast. This shot show Mt Cappucini, lit with blue lights for Christmas in the background.

The 4th in 4 weeks!

I must confess I've lost track of our blog postings on Claire's disappearing dental work, but suffice it to say, she has lost 4 teeth in 4 weeks in 4 cities around Europe and now looks exactly like a jack-o-lantern. This most recent one came out in Paris in yes, you guessed it...a crepe au chocolat.

More of Paris

This is why people buy Smart cars here in Europe.

The girls made it through the entire audio tour at Notre Dame and were fascinated by the fact that the organ has more than 7800 pipes.

And then we spent over 3 hours in the Louvre, which flew by thanks to our guide and treasure hunt host, Kristen from New Hampshire who was getting her PhD in art history in Paris. She truly made the most fearsome museum come alive for all of us.

The girls took their clue gathering seriously...

And then we walked all the way up the Champs Elysees to strike a pose at the Arc de Triomphe. Are these girls headed for Solid Gold or what!