"Fiesta De La Donna"

Yes, you read that correctly......in Italy they celebrate this holiday once a year on a Sunday in March....Fiesta De La Donna (Fiesta of the Lady) celebrates and honors all the women in Italy....not sure where it came from but doesn't that tell you something.....I am meant to visit Italy.....let me tell you a story of how I have come full circle....

As some of you may or may not know...my mom named me LaDonna.....never did we know this was an Italian name....but you may not know that my mom stole my name from her sister Mae...Mae was always going to name her daughter LaDonna (not sure why or where she got the name) but when Mae thought she was not going to be able to have kids...and my mom just happened to have me before Mae had a daugher (Apri)l...mom stole her name (not sure with or without permission)...and she named me LaDonna...of course later on Mae did have a daughter...but didn't take her name back...so you can see right from the start I didn't have a chance...I was stolen.....anyway...you know ...well you probably don't...but my mom's family is from Austria/Hungary region...actually Budapest I think but they say Austria...even though Budapest is in Hungary right? and my great grandmother spoke German.....so we have a long history...and Austria is a neighbor to Italy.....my name is Italian...and I come back (for whatever reason.....not sure what drew us here.....) to Italy all these years later....and lo and behold...they have a national holiday honoring me....did you know that mom? ....so I have been walking around all day saying "Fiesta de 'Me' ".....I'm so funny of course....

But Leyla and her family...invited us over today to celebrate Fiesta De La Donna....and boy did we have a fiest....

I'm going to share some pictures of our celebration.....

Oh, I almost forgot to finish telling you about the Fiesta tradition....so on this day every year it is tradition to get the women in your life a mimosa tree or the yellow flower from the tree....Paolo gave all of us the mimosa flower (it is yellow)...and mom, you love yellow flowers...see how it is all making sense now and connecting?

So anyway....it is also a tradition to have a yellow mimosa cake on this day.....so Piddle bought the cake last night at the mercato that you see us holding in the picture....in the picture are Leyla, her mother Grace, and myself......

The other picture is from the little topper of the cake that reads "Vive Le Donne" which I think loosely translates to "celebrate the women"....loosely I think.....

What a great day..we have been celebrating all day.....and don't think that we won't be celebrating this day every year now when we return to the states.....Thanks Italy!!!!