Italy - October's International Family Night

Calebs's family portrait - Caleb asked us to choose our favorite colors of

the four crayons they were given. He then colored our clothes based on our favorites. Note that my hair is white versus Grandpa's hair ...

Charlotte's family portrait. We got to choose colors foro ur clothing. Megan, Baby,

and Grandpa are green as they are Hulks. She also made the top cat into a dog so that 

both Sylvie and Pan were represented.

We were all excited to celebrate Italy at Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano in Maple Grove. Biaggi's happens to be a family favorite. We started with two appetizer's, fried ravioli (spinach and ricottta) with a scallion cream sauce and stuffed mushrooms (Italian sausage, spinach, garlic and white wine butter sauce).

                         fried ravioli                                  stuffed mushrooms

While the adults were eating appetizers, Charlotte made mustaches with her pieces of bread:

We shared minestrone soup and a salad of honey roasted beet and arugula with avocado, sun-dried cranberries, spicy walnuts, and goat cheese with a honey balsamic dressing. The entrees for the evening included spaghettti and meatballs (Charlotte); pepperoni pizza (Caleb); baked ziti al forno (Jeremy); ravioli quattro formaggi (Megan); eggplant parmesan with three-cheese alfredo rigatini (Joe); and salmon and shrimp risotto (Beth). 

ziti al forno

 eggplant parmesan

 Pepperoni pizza

 Ravioli

 spaghetti

 salmon and shrimp risotto

Desserts were ice cream sundaes for the grandkids (Caleb - Chocolate; Charlotte - Cherry); and the adults shared lemon marscapone cake and sorbets (cherry, cappucino, and blood orange).

 

When we got back to the house, Jeremy helped Joe to move our new sectional (new to us, 6 months old and seller couldn't fit it into their new home) into the family room and get the old couch into the garage. They also managed to move Joe's new air compressor from the driveway into the garage.

Next up was taste testing snacks from Italy and trivia. Charlotte was the trivia winner. Her best response was to the question: The richest person in Italy owns which of the following brands? (a) Ferrari (b) Gucci (c) Nutella and (d) Versace. Charlotte was the only one to guess Nutella. When she delivered her answer she said, "I don't like Nutella, other people do, so it will be Nutella." 

Charlotte wearing her trivia winner sticker on her face.

Caleb did our snack taste testing scoreboard. Joe won the picky eater sticker as he liked the least number of snacks this month. 

The grandkids decided they would like to try another year of international snacks and dinners. With the latest grandbaby coming in late January or early February, we will have the dinners in our home for most of the new year. Charlotte let us know she likes going to the restaurants so Jeremy and Megan told her that maybe later in the year when baby is a little older we can return to dining out.

Today, Caleb and Charlotte spent part of the day hanging out with me. We went to the movies to watch Nightmare Before Christmas on the big screen. Fun day!