ciao lì (hello there)

well, here we go, the first blog post.  i'm new at this, so be a bit patient with me.  i started this blog after much inspiration from my sister in law and encouragement from my family.  see, my husband's family is in california and mine is in new york, and we live in denver.  we just bought an old house we have been restoring to our liking and wanted a place to share our lives and photos via the internet.  but before i start with our lives now, i'll give you a short background on us.

my name is alaina and i'm a pretty ordinary girl.  i come from a very large italian family who i love more than anything.  when i was in college i decided to take a year and study abroad.  after doing my first google search of studying abroad, i came across a program that had openings for a semester in prague, despite the fact that the deadline for submission had passed.  i called up to see if they would let any others apply, and when i was accepted there was no doubt in my mind that i would go.  so i packed up my apartment and left, moving to the czech republic to study eastern european language, literature and culture for a semester.  and after just one month it was clear that one semester wouldn't be enough and i lengthened my stay to the full year.  it was just about this time that i started spending most of my days with my five best friends i had met while abroad, one of whom was a german-dutch boy named philip from UCLA.  we hit it off pretty immediately and i had a good feeling about him.  we weren't anything more than good friends until the six of us took a 10-day backpacking trip through italy, starting in venice and ending in the cinque terre, and philip and i fell in love.  of course he went back to UCLA at the end of the semester, but after meeting in NY for christmas and a quick trip for me back to the states we were engaged by spring break.

at the end of my year abroad philip and i moved in together, bouncing around from denver to boston to brooklyn and back to denver.  we were married in september of 2008 and bought our first house in april of 2010 in the highlands neighborhood in denver.  it's been a little interesting getting to become a part of each other's families.  they tend to be quite opposites as far as cultures are concerned, but we have loved every minute of it so far.  we now spend most of our time traveling and fixing up our home.

that's about it for the brief history of us!  keep your eyes peeled for more updates, and photos!, coming soon.

ciao!
alaina