St. Joseph's Day 2007

The last time I visited my family's house was last August, so you can only imagine how wonderful it was to fly up and see them. We were fortunate enough to visit them while the kids had spring break so we were able to spend some really good time with them. It was a lot of fun, but also crazy because with us staying there, there was a total of 13 people under one roof! To complicate things further, they are smack-dab in the middle of remodeling their house. Luckily, we all rolled with the punches and had a wonderful time and made some great memories.




One of the major focuses of the trip was the third Annual Festa di San Giuseppe. For those of you who don't know Italian, we celebrated St. Joseph's Day (the Italian's version of St. Patrick's Day). Back in 2001 when Michael was born, we called my dad from Paris and told him that we had given Michael the middle name of Joseph in my dad's honor (my dad's middle name is also Joseph). This immediately bonded my Dad to Michael and from that day on, St. Joseph's Day held special meaning. He started celebrating with Michael every March 19th by giving him a special present, but St. Joseph's day became something more when my Dad came up with a way for Michael's incredible journey to change lives on the other side of the world.

My parents church has a sister parish in Malawi, Africa called St. Joseph's of Malawi. Malawi is a very impoverished community in Africa that is in dire need of financial assistance and my Dad came up with a way to help them while bringing family and friends together to have a good time. The first St. Joseph's festa was held in 2005 at my parent's house. 35 people attended the party and each brought a flat donation per couple (to be given to the people of Malawi) and brought an Italian dish of food to share with the group. The only other requirement was that you wear red!

The 2nd festa grew even bigger and this year- the 3rd annual St. Joseph's Day grew to 105 people and raised nearly $3000 for the people of Malawi. We all had a lot of fun and the festa was a huge success. The food was amazing, the ambiance was perfect, and the sense of pride I got seeing Michael honored while standing on a chair next to my Dad was indescribable. Our whole family worked hard to make sure the event ran smoothly and we all felt such satisfaction afterwards. I feel so wonderful that Michael's difficult journey has been turned into something so incredibly positive and life changing for the people of Malawi. You can see the happiness written all over the faces of the villagers below. And to think this all started with the birth of Michael . . . simply amazing.