Aha!!! got it. and thank you
since i traced backwards with the answer it made the rest of the exercise 'easy'.
so here are a few more
1. Después de que Olga abrió todos sus regalos, 2. Mateo miró a Olga y 3. le dijo: 4. «Olga, te quiero mucho, y 5. tú lo sabes.
so is the approach that you break up the sentence into its parts (that i numbered) and look at each part?
so on 3 - __ dijo = subject Mateo, DO (not present in the sentence or would you say 4, 5 belongs to the sentence so what he says becomes the DO) and the IO is implied but stated in part 2. so then one needs an IO and it would be le? why not lo? because the statement is considered as DO?
A nosotros Mateo * dijo que iba a ser algo increíble, y realmente fue increíble. the answer is 'nos'
so since its decir does that mean his statement everything after que is the DO because it answers what he said and he said it to us so we need a IOP which would be nos? so usually anytime people preceeded by 'a' or 'para' usually means the IO?
sorry if i am being too anal retentive. language fascinates me.