Allison's Wonderland

Easter was a little different this year. Normally I start it off in my Sunday best for the morning Easter service. We open Easter baskets and then head off to the service. I know I'm 24 but we still do Easter baskets. I also did not do an Easter Egg hunt or color eggs. This has been a tradition for like the past 4 years. I looked for colored plastic eggs here in Italy, but alas I couldn't find any. I've done an Easter egg hunt in the office for co-workers last year and the year before Kelsey and I hid about 100 Easter eggs in the woods at home. My friends and I only found about 50 of them. I think we hid them a little too well. Whoopsy!! SOYEE!! :)

Mariella and Ronaldo were good little Catholics and went to the Easter service at the church in Prato. I wanted to go, but at the same time didn't because it's all in Italian and I can't really understand anything the priest is saying. Plus, I really didn't want to get up early, and lastly I'm not Catholic. So that was my reasoning for not going.

We had Easter lunch after they arrived back from church. Mattia started off the lunch by opening #6 of his massive chocolate Easter eggs he had received from various people. Here in Italy, they don't really do Easter baskets but all the kids receive these huge chocolate eggs wrapped in pretty plastic paper. His total count was 8 eggs. Needless to say we have a Tupper ware box filled with chocolate pieces that we will all be snacking on till August. Mariella made a lovely spread of shrimp, and kind of sort of deviled eggs, but instead of mayonnaise and mustard they were filled with tuna, mayonnaise and some other kind of sauce. They were really good, but really rich.

For the main course we had pasta. Now this wasn't any kind of normal pasta to me. It was a tad bit different. I started eating it, and seriously it was so good. But then I started to take a closer look. That's when I saw a tiny octopus tentacle with suckers on it. The pasta we were eating was seafood pasta. I like seafood to a certain extent, but I'm allergic to shellfish (they make my tongue swell and feel icky) and I'm not particularly fond of the fishy taste. Like I said, the pasta was delicious, so not to harp on Mariella's cooking, but I have a hard time eating things that look the way they use to when they were alive. Aka Octopus tentacles. I look at Simona and ask while holding it up, "Is this Octopus?" She smiled and said, "Don't ask. Just eat." So that's what I did. I put the tentacle back in the pasta and mixed it around so I wouldn't know where it was. I ate without looking. But then after I was almost done, I took a bite and I knew it was that tentacle because I could feel the suckers on my tongue. I almost ALMOST spit it out, but I had Simona, Mattia, Gianluca, Mariella, Anita, and Ronaldo all sitting there and I did NOT want to be rude and make a spectacle. So I just swallowed it down without a word. It was a very interesting Easter meal. At home Easter dinner normally consists of ham, scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs, and some kind of salad. I liked the real Italian meal though. It was different than what I was use to.

At the end of the meal I had to get a family picture. At home, it's just tradition for us to get a picture as a family all dressed up in our Sunday best. I took a picture of the whole family and I absolutely love it because I think it shows everyone's personalities pretty well. Take a Look for yourself. :)