Good Weekend

Great weather and lots of outside time.  Jackson took control of the cozy coupe and he thought that was pretty cool.

We played outside a lot this weekend.  I am so ready for Spring to really be here. 

Aly made sure she was riding in style...and Brianna may have borrowed Jackson's new love for a brief moment.

Jackson was not really impressed and soon regained total control.

This afternoon I met up with some others to learn a new bike route.  Last year I did not ride at all because I was pregnant with Jackson.  So I am really unfamiliar with good places to ride.  30 minutes into the ride, I get a flat.  Uggggh...I replace the tube and fill it - thinking I can be on my way and within 2 minutes the tire was flat again.  I swear this bike is possessed and it does not LIKE me at all.  2 broken tire levers, 3 CO2 cartridges and 2 tubes later, I threw in the towel and called Ryan to come get me.

We headed to the bike shop to see if they could fix it.  Turns out that there was small thorn between the tube and the tire and it was popping all the new tubes I put in.  At least there was really a problem and I just was not totally incompetent.

Hopefully this week will be better!

The Bike

Remember this picture...and how excited I was that I had a new bike.  Well - I think I want a divorce - from the bike of course.

I rode it outside for the first time today.  It is very different, the brakes are not with the gears, your weight is distributed different, and the way you ride is NOT like my comfy road bike.

I might have wanted to drive over the bike with the van when I returned home from my 2 hour jaunt.....only to realize that Ryan might take issue with that since he was REALLY on board with this new bike.  In fact, it is probably safe to say that he is just barely tolerating the triathlon world these days. 

This week has been long...a sinus infection, emergency root canal, babysitters not on time, kids being unruly at the indoor play park.....the list goes on.  Ryan made it better tonight as we went out to dinner, the kids behaved, and I did not have to cook and got to sit for the WHOLE meal.

Heres is to a long weekend of outdoor riding.

Small Steps

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step - Lao Tzu

Atta boy Jackson.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Our weekend in reverse order!

We celebrated Aly's 5th birthday on Sat...she was beyond excited.  She has wanted to wear this princess hat for days.  We jumped for 1.5 hours then had cake.....the kids were beat.  I jumped quite a bit with them and it is really tiring.  Here are a a couple of pics from the party

She is in love with butterflies... so we make vanilla cake and chocolate cupcakes!

Funny how the boys sat on one side and the girls on the other and then Brianna could not really decide!

On Wed I ended up taking our neighbor to the ER - she stood on a skateboard and hurt her elbow...check out  this fruit basket she sent us for our party weekend

the bunnies were chocolate covered pineapple.

On Friday, I ended up at the Dr with a pretty bad sinus infection....which made for a long weekend.  I also got to bring home my new bike...

I set it up on the trainer briefly on Sat and tried it out...it is certainly going to take some getting used to.  I think Ryan is still not over the fact that he actually agreed to let me buy a new bike!



DC

Our trip to DC was COLD!!  but the kids did great.  At one point we had all 4 in the double jogger - that was fun to push!

We walked the mall, rode the merry go round, saw the Lincoln Memorial, and went to the museum of Natural History.

The kids loved the dinosaur bones and the big whale.  Overall, I think their favorite part was the Metro - they loved riding the subway.

A few pics of our trip.....

The reflecting pool is under construction so we watched the diggers for a while.

The weather was great today so we played outside for a while..

These two are four months apart....and they are totally into each other.  Connor is here all week with us and it has been a blast.

We have the BEST friends!

I has been a long week....and it is only Thursday.  Getting home from vacation, Jackson being so sick, trying to get back in a routine, kids activities, trying to get workouts in, not feeling great....I think I have seen Ryan is passing a few times this week...he comes home and I am out the door or visa versa....

So this was an AWESOME surprise when I went to pick the girls up from preschool this afternoon.  What is it???  A cooler filled with meals from our friends in North Carolina....Thanks Peck and Susan what an awesome surprise.  I had no idea what we were having for dinner and now I do!

The best part about having great friends is you don't have to talk often...we catch up when we can but our lives are so busy.  Add in kids with broken bones or breathing issues and poof your catch up time just seems to disappear.  But they know when you need them...and they deliver- and that is simply the best part of having great friendships..

Wordless Wednesday

Someone is CLEARLY feeling better!

Lesson Learned

Today is Alys 5th brithday.....I should know by now not to ask my high maintenance, princess loving, tulle wearing 5 year old what kind of cupcakes she wants to bring to school. 

She will simply reply - fairy cupcakes with glitter wings and they need to look like me.......

Right on sister...especially when your brother is super sick and we just got back from vacation.....but who can say no?  Certainly not me.

Happy 5th Birthday Aly - you truly are the princess I never thought I would have!

All good things must come to an end

I always knew with as much traveling as we do our luck would run out.  We usually travel pretty prepared for health issues with the kids.  We had antibiotics, steriods, nebulizers....you get the picture.

Jack started wheezing on Wednesday...it was bad by Friday.  Aruba hospital here we come.  Luckly, the ER pediatrician had done his residency in Texas.  We got xrays and he seemed to think there might be some pnuemonia...he did not want us to fly home on Sat.  Finally, we put a plan in place.  We could nebluize on the plane - there were outlets, we got a new antibiotic, and some other drugs and we were on our way....

Poor little man...he is still not right.  After todays visit the US Drs are leaning more towards RSV - either way we are on a 24 hour watch.....hoping that he will start drinking more and breathing better!

Here are a couple of pics before the frenzy...

Enjoying our week

We have been enjoying the weather, the pool and the beach.  We really have not gone anywhere or spent much time anywhere but the pool and the beach.  Thank goodness our kids like to swim.

Brianna has been full of spunk like normal.  She talks to everyone and everything.

We have had a couple of cloudy mornings but the sunsets have been good recently.  It is nice to eat outside with the breeze blowing and the kids playing.

Aly loves the flower...she picks up the ones on the ground everytime she finds them.  We have flowers all over the condo that we are saving for home.....

Baby beach

We spent the morning at baby beach which is on the other side of the island.  The great thing about this beach is that the water is shallow all the way out to the reef.  There are no real waves and the kids snorkeled and played for the morning,

Jack at about 1lb of sand along the way!

A glimpse of my morning run..

We arrived yesterday afternoon.  Of course not without incident.  We had friends from AL and CT meeting us here and staying with us.  Ryans parents came as well.  The night before we left we stayed in NY because our flight was at 7 am....we sent emails to all those traveling with us with flight info and such.

Fast forward...1:30 am I get the following text from our CT gang..."ummm, we have a problem.  We booked our flights for next week March 19-26"  oh dear.....

Off to Aruba we went...when we arrived here I did some major negotiation with the hotel...finally we got them to switch one of the rooms to next week..  All is well.

These were from my run this am....

Check out this guy!!!

Off to the pool!

Getting Ready

Guess who is diggin his new swimsuit.  Ryan picked it out...not a big fan of the skull print....oh well.  How about the fact that the suit is 24 month suit for my rather small 9 MONTH OLD!!!!

Three out of five of us have bronchitis....so much fun. Jackson and Bri were diagnosed on Wed and then by Sat I was in the Dr.  This is a huge bummer since I was looking forward to getting in a great week of training prior to leaving for Aruba. 

Speaking of Aruba.....6 days...I have been working on packing.. and you can tell that I have a whole lot of help

I think Ryan is the worst...he was all encouraging the kids to have a beach party tonight.....so off they went to dig through the piles that I had laid out to be packed....of course they thought it was awesome...why am I always the no fun parent??

Check out my birthday gift

My good friend Tanya found this for me....so cute.  We will have lots of fun reading this in Aruba

We made homemade ice cream last night for Aly's science project.  The girls measured and took turns pouring the ingredients.  Holy sugar.....we had 9 kids under 5 here today to enjoy our homemade treats!

This and that

Why is it that there is always ONE child that is constantly TROUBLE.  This would be the container of blueberries that he got off the table - seriously I have no idea how.  He was alternating between smashing them in to the carpet and eating them.

Is there a boarding school that  accepts 1 year olds?

Meanwhile, these two are reading so nicely...

We had a crazy weekend.  Ryan changed his flights around and then got delayed in NY waiting for the flight to Boston.  He got in at 5 am and we left my parents around noon for the cape.  I spent the morning in the ER with Jackson who was sick with bronchitis.

We got to the cape, ate dinner and had everyone asleep for 9:30...not too bad for sharing one room and having sick kids. 

Sunday was the Hyannis Half Marathon.  I have been waiting for this for a long time,  I finally broke 2 hours and ended up with a 1:56.....it was nice to have everyone there.  We jumped in the car after and headed home to PA!

Living in the moment....

Sometimes when you can't find your binky the wooden puzzle piece seems to work just fine. 

This weekend I am supposed to run the Hyannis Half marathon.  Ryan is in Thailand until Friday night.  It was my weekend away - after a LONG week.  Thank goodness my mom was here to help.  Plans changed and now I am taking the kids to NH.  We are leaving tomorrow and driving to NH.  Ryan will hopefully be in NH when we wake up Sat am.   

From there we are going to head into Boston for the day with the kids and then go to Hyannis Sat night so that I can run on Sunday.  Hopefully the kids will sleep well on Sat night, so that I can sleep!!!  The weather forcast for Sun on the cape does not look to promising...boo for rain! 

It will be a whirlwind trip as we are headed back to PA Sunday afternoon....off to get packing.