We ended up having a white Christmas!!!!!

Yesterday we didn't expect to have a white Christmas. It started out a really nice and sun shiny day and by the end of the night it was cold and raining, so snow never crossed our mind. Last night after playing Guitar Hero and calling our families we went outside to let our dogs out and guess what we found?!?!?!? Our lawn was white, our cars were white, our trees were covered in snow. It was so cool!! Needless to say Jerry was excited to have a white Christmas (this is one of those things he misses from home being from Michigan and all) and I was totallly thrilled because it was my first white Christmas!!! I couldn't believe it actually snowed down here and on Christmas day of all days!! So of course I took pics!!



Our cars covered in Italian snow!!



Snow covered cherry trees!





We were trying to get a pic of the two of us with the snow behind us....you can't really see the snow but you can see us!







My crazy dogs playing in the snow! As you can see there are only two of them running around!



That's because Peanut is running around on the side walk!! She hates the snow!!


So of course when I woke up this morning I had to go outside and see if the snow was still there or if it had melted away and guess what it was all still there!!!



The mountains and church across the road.



Snow covered ground and trees....if you look closely you can see all the doggie prints!



Just pretty....I get obessed with snow and taking pics of it!

The History of the Church

We have this beautiful round church right across the street from our home and there is a statue of Padre Marco D'Aviano next to it, so I was curious to who this man was. (As you can tell I have entirely too much time on my hands at the moment)



The Church



The statue

The History:

He was alive during the period of 1631-1699 and born to the name of Carlo Domenico Cristofori. He was attracted to a life of martyrdom and religious conquest from a young age. At the age of 16 he tried to reach the island of Crete where the Venetians were at war with the Ottoman Turks. Arriving at a Capuchin convent, he was welcomed by the superior who, after providing him with food and rest, advised him to return home.Deeply inspired by his encounter with the Capuchins, he felt that God was calling him to enter the order. In 1648, he entered the novitiate of the Capuchins. A year later, he professed his vows and was given the name "Friar Mark of Aviano".

Marco d'Aviano's life changed unexpectedly on 1676 when he gave his blessing to a nun who had been bedridden for some 13 years. Upon receiving Friar Mark's blessing, she was healed. The news of the "miraculous blessing" spread, and it was not long before the sick came to him in search of his blessing.

He is also credited with having united Christian forces against invading Ottoman Turks outside Vienna in 1683. After the Turkish forces fled they left behind sacks of coffee beans which the Europeans found too bitter to drink, so they sweetened it with honey and milk. The resulting drink acquired the name capuccino after the d'Avaino's Capuchin order of monks. I thought this was a cool trivia fact that can't be totally proved but still interesting none the less.

There is more about him just google him and you'll get pages of different people that he helped lead and many stories about how capuccino came to be.