What's been goin on...

We did the Wilkes-Barre triathlon. It's an Olympic length one and Dave and Ryan did the whole thing themselves and Richard swam, Jill ran and I biked for a relay team.











Our biggest fan catching rain drops on his tongue



My cousin Brandon got married and we got to have a night out. It was a fun night hanging with my family. Aunt Juli and Uncle Ryan watched the boys for us - thank guys!







Mama and her girls



Mom and Uncle Ace showing their moves



Ahhh...playing in the summer rain!



And the newest Olympic sport invented here - street swimming. Tyler and Catherine both won the gold :)



First time on the swing!





And some relaxing in the yard...







Tyler loves bread and butter and our neighbor brings us bread from South Philly all the time. It's so good!





We were cleaning up from dinner yesterday and this is what our silly boys were doing. I love it!

Pops and Grams

Tyler and Zac get to spend lots of time with their Pops and Grams around. Here's the rundown...

Grammy (my Mom) and Pop Pop (my StepDad), Gram (Dave's Mom) and Pop (Dave's Dad) and GG (Dave's Gram) and then there's Pop in heaven (my Dad) who I talk to Tyler about a lot. GG used to be "Old Gram" until she renamed herself at the age of 95 to "GG".

GG just recently went to a nursing home to help her recover from a sickness. She's lived alone until a few weeks ago and next week will be going to assisted living. We went to visit her the other day and on the way there Tyler told us he was going to take care of her. And take care of her he did. He pushed her around all by himself, sang to her and when we left he tucked her in to bed for a nap. We had a nice visit with her.











And some tractor rides with Pop Pop...









And Pop allows Zac to have a little treat...after all what are grandparents for :)

Zac is 5 months

Zac has been a quite the foodie this past month and we’re having fun introducing new foods to him. He’s had rice cereal, oatmeal, apples, bananas, pears, peaches, watermelon, squash, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots and prunes. He loves sucking on watermelon and real bananas and he even eats banana puffs (I break them up and he loves them). He gets the occasional taste of vanilla ice cream too when we’re at the ice cream shop and he really enjoyed a soft pretzel that Dad brought home the other day, sans salt for the little dude. Oh yeah, and tonight he added Cheetos to his list of foods, compliments of Dad :) Another new treat he enjoys are his toes, he eats them all the time.

I know I say it often, but he’s such a happy, good baby. He flashes his smile all the time and has the best giggle ever. Over the past month he started consistently sleeping through the night from about 9pm-7am. It's feels like we’ve been given back a small slice of life by having nights with uninterrupted sleep. We do have to wake up and give him his binky some times and then we have the occasional run in to Tyler’s room to address whatever issue he’s having at the moment (cover me up!, bad dream, have to go potty!), but for the most part we sleep. The only thing really making us tired these days is that we're up until midnight every night watching the Olympics, so it's our own fault that we're tired.

He rolls from his belly to his back all the time and has rolled from back to belly once. He’s becoming super aware of his surroundings and checks out all the action that goes on around him. He likes us to hold him in standing position and he’s pretty good at putting weight on his legs and can stand next to something and hold one by himself. He hasn’t started getting his legs stuck in the crib yet, but is moving around a lot in there and I’m sure it’s in our not too distant future. He’s definitely growing fast and some of his 6 month clothes are getting a little snug length-wise on him. He’s at the stage where you can’t eat with him on your lap because he grabs your plate and food all the time. And then everything he does get his hands on goes immediately into his mouth. He practices drinking from a real cup and also from a sippy cup. Tyler is really good at being nice to his brother and I can walk out of the room for a minute and know that Tyler will be fine with him. We can totally see that Zac loves Tyler and sits in his car seat and leans forward staring at his big brother. He watches him like a hawk. Since Zac was born Tyler has called him Zack-ee. So, we find ourselves calling him Zack-ee a lot.

In the past month I also feel like we’ve settled a bit more in to life. Things are just flowing a little easier these days and we’re slowly getting in to a groove of how to handle two kids. It’s still overwhelming though trying to keep up with everything while working full time, but I guess being overwhelmed is the new normal. If I had a maid and chef life would be grand. Until then, we will enjoy our kids every second we can and clean when they go off to college.

Races and some randoms

Dave and I have always been active. Prior to becoming parents, we were always hiking, skiing or doing something. We went to the gym a lot, rock climbed, spin classes, you name it we did it. Fast forward a few years and our time to do those types of things has been wiped out. No biggie, it comes with the territory of being a parent. We're active in different ways now. We run around and play with Tyler (and pretty soon Zac) a lot, take lots of walks, go for bike rides and still keep busy and active with the kids. We still try to find time to do races because they're fun and keep us healthy and sane :) Without the help of our parent this wouldn't be possible, when we can't juggle it they watch the kids and let us have some time to do these things. They are the BEST! This year we've fit in a bunch so far. 5k's, 10k's, mud runs and sprint triathlons and some bike races up ahead for Dave. Dave has ran a marathon and the most I've done is a 10 miler so the only next logical step for me is a half marathon (I really have no desire or training time to do a full one). So, come Sept. Jill and I will be doing our first half marathon.

We recently did a race called the Spartan Sprint...5 miles of mud and obstacles and climbing a ski slope 2 times and it goes down in the books as the hardest race I've done...fun, but it was a butt kicker! Mine and Jill's legs literally hurt for a week and healed just in time for us to do a triathlon together last Saturday. Jill also signed Alex and Sydney up for the kids spartan sprint and it was the BEST watching them do it. I think I had a few tears because 1. my nieces are old enough to be doing something with us like this and I think yesterday they were just babies and 2. I can't wait until my boys can join in the fun. All the kids had a blast running through the mud being like their parents. Enjoy some pics...



























Our budding photographer at work again...









Very proud of his work with a little funny Mommy in the background :)



Summer amazes me. One minute it's hot, humid and sunny. 10 minutes later something like this rolls in, passes, cools off and feels like a totally different day. I.love.it. Last night we put on our storm chaser hats and watched the awesomeness of it.







Yesterday morning at 7am I had to fish Thomas the train out of the very bottom of the toilet with my hands after Tyler had already peed. He suggested using his hammer to fish it out, but then I'd have to disinfect the hammer instead of just scrubbing my hands really well, so I just went for it. This morning, I was upstairs getting things together and I heard Tyler saying "Oh baby dinosaur, you're hungry, I'll get you a bottle." Then came some banging, clanking and lots of commotion. I came downstairs to this. He got a pot out and filled it with rice cereal so his little dino could eat. He's such a good parent :)





Zac is 5 months old today...gasp. And Tyler officially turned 2 1/2. Hopefully, I can get some posts together soon with some updates because this stuff just keeps getting better and better. I can't get enough of my two little beans :)