A tiger becomes 3!

Few days ago was Oscar's birthday. Of course, although completely unconsciously (and differently from Isabella, who at three had already very clear ideas about her birthday party and what she wanted) we organized a "little" birthday party.
About 12 kids, in a mixture between kids his age and all the older brothers/sisters that are at Isabella's age, came with their parents and celebrated Oscar, who for the occasion turned into a tiger!

Oscar is turning 3!

As for her birthday, Isabella had clear ideas of how Oscar's should be and since he didn't care...

There is place for princesses and pirates

We tendentially didn't do anything complex, but it was decided that the there were a mixture of pirates and princesses.
The plan was to welcome all the kids. Eat some snack. Play a little (the games were Italian classics "The witch commands color", "1, 2, 3, star" and the more international "Dance and stop"). Eat the cake and the Swedish classic "Pond of fishes" (Fiskdamm) that allows the kids to indulge themselves in a little package of candies.

Few pirates came to visit

As the day was sunny (for once!) it was a bit of a pity to not be out, but the thought of having everyone dressed in overalls, freeze outside and then come inside and undressed with such small kids was something that made me a bit skeptical to the idea.

It was tulip's day!

We did a lot of simplifications about food, so we were pretty lazy and there was no baking involved from our side. Cakes were purchased, fruit was easily put in a bowl and we just did have some small snacks (salatini) and small sandwiches. A trick that I have recently learned is to cut everything in small pieces, so the chance that the kids will eat the food is higher and that the food gets thrown in a garbage smaller.
It seemed the theory worked fine...

Some simple sandwich with ham and cheese

The food was mainly carrots, fruit and the sandwiches. Are we getting lazy?

It seems the kids enjoyed (although of course the 3 years old have not a full grasp of the party concept) and "1,2,3 star" was as always the favorite game.
Oscar enjoyed the presents he got (and Isabella too) and we managed to reinstated the house to its original shape, despite the little tornados ;-)
Oscar thanks everyone of his friends and parents who could be here with us with a big "ROARRRRR"!
(I still don't understand why there was a tiger with the pirates around but maybe he will enjoy Sandokan soon?)

Volandia

After one week closed inside, sick and bored, we decided during our Christmas holidays to visit a cool place nearby my parents' house. A flight museum called Volandia. The museum is placed in the old sheds that were used for the Caproni, one of the pioneer Italian planes industries built around the second last turn of the century.
Nice buildings are around the area and the museum is spread over an enormous space, just next to the Malpensa airport.

Beautiful old buildings

The old buildings connected to Caproni

Lately, the Ogliari Transportation Museum has been added to the whole museum. For me that was very interested, but sadly, the kids were not (strangely) very up to it. They were more attracted from the playground with nice flight theme.

The Ogliari Transportation Museum is outdoor, so probably it is best to be visited during spring. There are all sort of old vehicles and peculiar things. Like old trains wagons, including the Pope one used by Pio IX, but even trolley, tram and motorbikes.

Some very old steam locomotive

The Pope wagon

Since the transportation museum joined the collection, also an humongous plastic model of a city has reached Volandia and, the "Ideal city" (that is how it is called) welcomes the visitors in the first room that can be reached after the entrance.

The ideal city

One can spend just one hour looking at every detail... 

Details of the ideal city

The problem with Volandia is that it is huge. There is a section devoted to Caproni's history with the first planes built there (among which the first plane that flew at Malpensa the 27th of May 1910), then there are sheds reserved to helicopters, with several helicopters including the huge ones used by the Italian army and one reserved to planes. There are the uniforms to be observed, a balloon, and different planes from small ones to bigger ones like the DC3.
We strolled fast through these two big areas which with time and patience reserve a lot of interesting details about different planes and their history.

The first plane that flew at Malpensa 

Old Caproni's planes

There are also two bigger modern planes outside. One is the Pertini (one of the Italian presidents) Republic plane which will be accessible/available for a more complete visit in March 2017, while now one can just look a bit at it from distance.
There is a shed devoted to thousands of plane models (which we didn't see), an indoor play area (which we just went by very quickly), a restaurant (where we bought candies as snack) and a cafe' (which was closed when we wanted to eat something).
There is then a pavilion with space as subject,  one for flight simulators and one for future planes. We didn't manage to see any of these since the kids were cold and tired, being the first time out after several  days. And we were there for several hours...
All together, the place is huge and worth a visit. Probably more than one, since there is so much to see and appreciate. For small kids it can be a bit of a killer since the interaction can be limited. Of course, going into the helicopter was a big plus, but walking through rooms full of items, planes and text is not that funny.
It is good that by walking a little bit one can also check flights landing or departing from Malpensa airport. A nice good spot for planes spotting ;-)
Considering that Oscar usually like planes and all sort of vehicles, Isabella is moderated interested, I am surely quite nerdy and Mattias likes planes from WWII and modern jet planes, I suspect that we will visit the place again and maybe check out the other parts we didn't visit at all at this occasion.