99% DONE

After only 2 weeks our new deck is about 99% done and it is flippin' huge! We could seriously have a dance party on it and I'm sure in time we will. Check it out...

Now all we have left is to landscape around the front of the addition and the back of the deck by the bathroom window and it will be complete! Then we can have a deck warming party!

Thoughts & Prayers

Our thoughts and prayers go out to our friends The Irwin's today. We wish your family all the best of luck. We will be thinking about you all! If you need us we are only a phone call away!

Love for Approval

Seth is at the stage where he loves to seek approval from his teachers. He considers Miss Ginger (above) from story time, Miss Erin from Kidnastics and Miss Whitney from swim class all his teachers. He loves to please them and show them what he can do. Well, today there was a guest reader at story time so Seth was able to basically sit on top of Miss Ginger and he was thrilled. He started sitting across the room from her but slowly made his way right next to her. He had the biggest smile on his face! Oh course I am the crazy mom who takes a picture of just about every memory I can capture for him.

Deck Update

Lee came over to help out last night and they got 24 out of 50 boards cut and most screwed down. The extra set of hands was extremely appreciated! It is getting there every day! Thanks a ton for your help Lee and thanks to Kristen for keeping us company at the playground.

I took this picture before it got dark, but there are actually more boards than this down.

~ Today Leah and I are headed to school to meet and greet all of mommy's co-workers.

Summer?

Today totally feels like summer and we are taking full advantage of every moment of it. We went to the Castana's this morning for a play date/lunch and Kristen fed us like kings. We are really getting awfully spoiled. This was the third time she has had us for lunch and it was delicious as usual. The boys played really well and are all taking super naps. Leah slept through most of it, but then woke up just in time to hang out and eat. Break out the jumpy, summer is in the air today!

Hot, tired and STARVING!

Tonight we will spend more time outside. We are headed on a walk with Grandma and then Lee is coming over to help Ro with the deck and the moms and kiddos are headed to the playground. I love this weather so much!

Birthday Bash

Saturday night we celebrated my mom's 56th (she's going to kill me for sharing the age!) birthday! The weather was beautiful, the company was great and the food was delicious! Here are some of the many pictures we took!

The birthday girl with her favorite kids! Seth's present for Grandma.Great Grandma was dying to get her hands on Leah.Tommy playing hop scotch.Seth eating his brownie sundae.

I look utterly ridiculous, but I was hoping I'd still fit.

The weekend was great and we are looking forward to another beautiful week. We are off to our Monday play date too!

Growing Up

Seth is officially sleeping on the top bunk now and LOVING every minute of it!

Saturday Deck Update

Roland worked as much as he could today. He is out of wood and needs to make yet another Lowe's trip in the morning! Here is what it looks like now...

Happy Birthday Grandma Puccia!

Seth & Grandma
Leah & Grandma

Thank you for all that you do for us Grandma, we love you!

Swim Pics

Here are some pictures from Seth's first solo swim class. As you can see, he loved it!

Getting comfortable with the water
So relieved that he was all smiles

Being a good listener

Kicking along with his buddy Jacob

Friday Fav's List ~ Week 7

It has been yet another amazing week at home and NOT WORKING! Have I mentioned that I love that I don't have to go to work and if we were rich I would totally stay home. For many of your who really know me, your jaw has just dropped. YES, I would love to stay home and I never thought I would ever say that. So here are a few of my favorite moments from this week, my 7th week off work!

~ Play dates at The Castana's. The kids played awesome, we looked for hotels for our Sesame Place trip this summer and she fed us. Thanks for taking care of us Kristen!

~ Gifties for the kids from Grandma and Papa Charlton's trip to Florida. Thanks a ton!

~ Lunch with Jen while we gabbed and gabbed instead of texting like any other day. What did we truly do before texting when we had to actually call someone?

~ Story time at the library. It was a dinosaur themed week and Seth was so well behaved and rocked out at his dino craft. I love to watch him be creative!

~ Walking with my mom and the kids as much as the weather would allow.

~ Tom & Mom buying Seth "The Original Big Wheel" for their house. If you could have videoed Tom and I putting it together you would have died laughing. Thank heavens we did it together because it would have taken me hours to put it together by myself. Plus, I had a Strawberry Shortcake Big Wheel as a kid at my Gram's so it is so sentimental to me that Seth now has one now.

~ Seth's 1st swim class solo. He smiled, laughed and was truly successful. Here is to many more great swim classes as the little man learns to swim on his own. Thanks for watching Leah Mom and Tom. Dad and Sue get to watch her next week!

~ Progress on the deck. YIPPEE, it is coming along.

~ Spring in the air and wearing crocs.

~ Smiley LEAH!

~ My jeans are fitting much better.

~ The Taste of the Town tomorrow, yum!

~ My Mom's birthday tomorrow, pour me a glass of wine!

~ Upcoming visits to my work to show Leah off.

As you can see life simply can't get much better! Well, the weather could be 60 of higher, that would be better! Have a great weekend everyone!

Deck Update

Here is the latest look at the new patio/deck. It has been a pretty crappy week weather wise so Roland hasn't had much time to work on it, but he was able to get quite a bit done in very little time.

Wish us Luck

Tonight is Seth's very first swim class, ON HIS OWN! I have been trying to explain that I will not be getting in the water with him tonight. I'm not sure if he understands, but we will just have to wait and see. I'm thinking positively...

Watch Out

This week at story time Miss Ginger read books all about dinosaurs which was right up Seth's alley. She even played Laurie Berkners song, "We are the Dinosaurs" which made Seth's whole day. He loves Laurie Berkner, thank goodness she is coming to Watertown this summer to perform! We already have tickets waiting for us and Seth talks about it daily. At the end of story time the craft had to do with dinosaurs so check out what Seth made...

Watch out for SETH the DINOSAUR!

This is what Leah looks like when she is done with the carseat and tired for the day! Of course I had to capture it to show her later on in life!

How I Make Dinner

I have a tiny littler helper when I make dinner at night, check it out...
For some reason the dinner hour is the "I want to be held" hour also. So we do what we have to, to get things done around here. It will be better when she can face out in the front carrier too!

Fruit + Chocolate = FUN!

Saturday night we had friends over and for dessert we kicked it up a notch and had fruit and chocolate fondue. It was truly delicious and the kids had such a blast eating and dipping.

Anxiously waiting for the chocolate to warm up.
Don't' be shy!
Make sure to have FUN with your dessert!

Deck Progress

Roland worked his butt off today and look at the progress.
He is at a stand still until his back recovers and he goes for another lumber run!

How 'bout them tots!

What movie is this quote from?

PS...

...party at our house when the deck is done!

Here We Go Again

It is spring so of course there is a project going on at our house. Have you ever known us to sit around twiddling our thumbs? No way, Roland is building our new deck. If you have visited the house or read the blog you know that we have a brand new family room and in the process we tore off half of our deck so we now have no where to sit and eat outside, but not for long. Roland is building a massive deck on the long side of the new addition, in the space that was formerly only used to play ladder golf outdoors. Soon, it will be a big deck to hang out on! Last week he dug the holes and put the posts and concrete in them. They are currently drying.

5 Weeks

In 5 short weeks my little brother will graduate from...We have loved visiting you each and every time. Ithaca is a great city and Cornell ROCKS! We especially enjoyed celebrating your 21st birthday with you. (side pony and CTB at 1am!) We love and miss you J!

Friday Fav's List

Check out what our week was full of...

~ Play dates at Velocity where the kids ran around like wild animals and burned off some serious energy.

~ Shopping with four generations of Mihalyi women. My Gram, Mom, myself and Miss Leah!

~ Our first trip to the zoo of the season! We were saddened by the number of exhibits that had been ruined by our long hard north country winter, but excited about the new otter exhibit that they are building.

~ We tried PoP at Kidnastics and the kids LOVED it!

~ Playing in the ball pit was Seth's favorite part by far.
~ The idea was the make a candy necklace. He made it, but ate it before we got home!
~ I think I need to purchase a pedometer because our stroller is getting so much use that I would love to see how many miles we walk weekly!
~ Singing to Seth before bed time with a quite the crowd last night. He had 5 people singing to him AFTER he was taken out for ice cream by Poppy and Grandma.
~ Fish fries at my Dad's with cole slaw and strawberry shortcake!
~ Setting a baptism date.
~ Becoming addicted to Facebook.
~ Roland working on the new HUGE deck and loving every minute of it.
~ My friend Beth who is pushing right about now. (AKA having her baby!)
~ Purse parties this weekend with the girls!
~ Watching the whole 6th season of OTH again this past week while getting ready for the final 5 episodes of the season.
~ Talking to a friend who I haven't seen since graduation from OSU!
~ Having friends for dinner this weekend.
~ Not having to go back to work on Monday when my 6 weeks are actually up, yet taking an extra 6 weeks off. YAH!
~ Spring cleaning and organizing. I love love love to organize and clean out the house.
~ Prepping for my garage sale next month.
~ Enjoying every minute of this weather and being outside as much as possible.

Six short weeks ago I went to work just like every other week day in my life. My day was going as planned when the contractions started like they had every other day that week. I thought nothing of it because they usually stopped by lunchtime. The contractions were in full force and luckily I had my weekly appointment that afternoon with Dr. Dodard. I went in for my appointment and he told me that I was actually having many more contractions than I was really feeling and that I was 4cm dilated. He said that he would recommend that I head up to the hospital. Holy crap, this was the day I had been waiting for. The day I would meet my little girl. The day that my stomach would stop getting in the way of everything I did. It was an amazing day and Leah is an amazing little girl.

I can not complain about lack of sleep and of a fussy baby. She has her moments, but we have narrowed her fussiness down to being hungry or tired. She very rarely cries just to cry.

She goes along on each and every play date and sleeps like a champ through them. She has been everywhere. We are not house bound and we are not afraid of the dreaded GERM! I want to expose her to life and not just our four walls. She is thriving and so are we!

I feel like a brand new mom and I am grateful for every day I spend with her!

I was afraid of EVERYTHING when Seth was a baby, I never left the house, but not anymore!

6 Weeks Old!

I'm 6 weeks old now and I am loving life! I am starting to love being on the floor on my play mat, I look all around and I am starting to hold my head up much much better now. I can't wait to see what's ahead of me in the weeks to come. Look out world!

Whatever Works

This is how Leah fell asleep this morning while I was drying my hair in the bathroom!

1st Bath

Finally, finally, finally Leah's cord fell off, we thought it was stuck on for the long haul! So tonight we were able to give her a proper bath for the very first time. She was startled at first, but ended up loving it! We can't believe that she will be 6 weeks old in a day! WOW, how time is flying by.

The Giant and The Peanut

It is hard to believe that we have a little boy who isn't so little anymore. He wants to do everything on his own and exert his independence. Then we have a tiny little peanut baby girl who just wants to snuggle and fall asleep on you all the time. Life couldn't get any better! We are truly blessed!

As you can see, Seth has super duper large feet just like his Daddy. Even Leah has big feet for 5 weeks. I bought her size 1 baby shoes and they aren't huge on her. The comparison cracks me up though!

SNIRT Run 2009

On Saturday Roland and some friends went on the annual SNIRT Run. It is a 4 wheeler poker run on Tug Hill. SNIRT stands for snow/ice/dirt! I'm told that they definitely encountered snow, ice and dirt, but also dust and mud too!

There were over 1300 4 wheelers registered and the run started in Barnes Corners.

Since we were blessed with some fresh snow earlier in the week (IN APRIL!!) the trails had a combination of snow and mud depending on where you were. As you can tell, it was hard to keep on your side of the trail and our friend Rod had to lift his 4 wheeler out of the way of oncoming traffic.

The snow was deep in areas too!
Then came the dust. Check out the windmills in the background. When I went on a similar run with Roland last year we got so close to the windmills I was amazed at how gigantic they are.
Don't forget about the mud because there was plenty of that too! This is Roland's favorite part. He even has a sticker on the back of his wheeler that says "I LOVE MUD!" I'm happy to say that I wasn't on the back of the 4 wheeler with him for this part.

The next big ride is on May 2nd! He is counting down the days.