- We are busy working parents who barely have time for dinner some nights let alone post milestones of Vincenzo's development.
- It was the Holiday Season and the Blake Family headed to London, United Kingdom for a very long (3 week) vacation with the rest of the Blakes.
- After a very long vacation our respective employers wanted a bit of extra time from each of us to catch up from a our time away.
Before leaving for London we had the opportunity to have early Christmas celebrations with our family here in Seattle. Enzo was thoroughly spoiled and has already developed some favorites. He especially loves his xylophone from Grandpa and the revived "Love Me Tender" Dog Toy from Nonna and Nonno which used to be Petra's as a child. Vincenzo was also especially happy to spend time with Cousin Sonja.
We thought we would start with a brief recap of our trip to London and share the wonderful pictures Alen captured one our trip.
We left for London on December 24th. Now some of you may say that flying on Christmas Eve is terrible, but with a nearly half empty coach section we were able to have our bulkhead row to ourselves. Vincenzo slept probably 7 or 7 1/2 hours of the 9 1/2 hour flight and maybe even longer. We arrived Christmas morning in London and started a fun Christmas day with the Blake family. Shirleen and Ann cooked up an amazing Christmas feast and it was followed by a huge pile of gifts most of which were for Vincenzo and Lorenzo. Needless to say each were perfectly spoiled with wonderful gifts from everyone.
Our trip included a lovely gathering for Alen's Granny's Birthday on Dec 26th where we got to visit and catch-up with many more Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and extended family. Enzo was pleased to meet some of his younger cousins and even tired to work on perfecting his stair climbing skills among the crowd of family.
We purposely didn't plan too many activities for our trip and enjoyed greatly time with Enzo's Nana, Auntie Shirleen, Cousin Lorenzo and Uncle Duwayne. This low key "plan" also allowed Alen and I to relax and enjoy our time away from work. We did have time to visit with Alen's friends: Uncle Melvin, Auntie Gillian and their daughter Jada as well as Auntie Marie and the rest of her family. Vincenzo got very excited at the prospect of meeting more people and especially loved meeting more children near his age. He also found Auntie Inez and Harry very interesting and was disappointed to have to go to bed.
On January 1st at around 11:30 p.m. while Alen and I sat up with a still jet-lagged Vincenzo we had the momentous occasion of his first steps. It was only a few little shuffles to get from where he was standing playing with a toy to me, but we were both gleeful and encouraging. He repeated the action a few more times that evening and again the next day. For the rest of the trip he continued to improve every day.
We threw an early birthday party for Vincenzo on January 6th. He was frightened of the balloons, fascinated with the streamers, loved the huge feast of food, and devoured Nana's birthday cake she baked for him. It was wonderful to have family and friends join us in celebrating Vincenzo's first birthday in London (even if it was a week early).
Here some selected images from Christmas and our trip to London:
Our Nanny, Mirit, had to say goodbye to us on our trip.
Vincenzo did very well on the flight to London. This is his sleepy face on the airplane after landing.
