Joys In My Life

The boys are officially 2 1/2 years old today!!!  In six months, they will be 3 years old!  I wanted to take some pics of the boys tonight to commemorate the day, but they were exhausted.  I wanted to take the pictures with the boys in my favorite of their pajamas, so we waited until they ate dinner and got them changed afterward.  They ate so much at dinner tonight!!!  We had pineapple chicken sausages, roasted rosemary potatoes, and steamed veggies.  They had seconds and in some cases thirds.  I haven't seen them eat this much in ages.  So we did PJs and then I got them on the couch.  These are what I got..... So how are the boys personalities these days?  They are amazing, exhausting, sweet, lovable and amazing!!! Tommy is my bull in a china shop, but he's also very happy and always expressive.  You can see the way he is saying "cheese" with his hands included in the pictures above.  He's also a bit of a drama king ...

DH went to Villanova University for his MBA and he loves to take us to Villanova basketball and football games.  This was against University of Delaware and unfortunately we lost :-( The game was played not at either university, but at a soccer stadium for the Philadelphia Union team.  It was really cool.  Here was the view of the waterfront from our seats. We were all decked out in full Villanova attire.  I'm pretty happy with this pic DH took of me. Me and my girl, Phoebe.  She was so into the game.  She won that hat at a game in the alumni tent before the game, lucky girl! Here's DH and I, photo courtesy of Phoebe.  She is a good photographer! Phoebe then took over the camera for awhile.  Here's one moment she noticed of someone wearing their pajamas to the game. She liked the cheerleaders and the team mascot.  They are the Villanova Wildcats.  Here's the cheerleaders showing off their gymnastic skills. Here's th...

Phoebe and her aunt prepping one of our two turkeys. They were huge at 35 and 36 pounds. The stuffing of the bird!  You can see Phoebe is having a hard time. We cook them overnight. They went in about 11 PM on Wednesday night at 250 degrees.  We turned it up to 300 degrees at 4 AM and then up to 350 at 7:30 AM.  They were done about 10 AM on Thursday.  They take up the whole oven!!! Here's the table with the turkey and all the trimmings. Phoebe and the boys all tried to tackle eating the same turkey leg.  Finally, their dad got what was left of the turkey leg.  Here's Phoebe tackling the leg.  Notice all the pies behind her.  I made those the day before. Here's Tommy trying to tackle the same leg when Phoebe was done.  The boys both had fresh haircuts from Wednesday morning when their dad took them to the barber.  #2 clipper on back and sides and scissor to match on top.  Or as my one friend said, "time to join the mi...

Wow!  A lot has been going on around here, with much more coming too!  I'll give the update next week on my goals.  Some have been working out, others not so much....  LOL  It's nice that I tried.  I'm sure next month's goals will be better.   One big piece of news - I finally dropped my cell phone in the toilet at work after so many years of bringing it in the stall afraid someone would steal it.  Of course it was my nice iPhone that didn't have insurance, as I've never needed it before.  It seemed like a waste of money.  Well, I've ordered the iPhone 4S and I'm going to suck it up using DH's old phone until my new one comes in sometime in December.  I did get insurance this time. Right now, I'm working from home today so I can get some pies baked, other Thanksgiving foods prepped and straighten up the millions of hotspots that seem to surround me.  I currently have two pecan pies in the oven.  Soon to be followed by 3 ...

Here's Phoebe's 5th Grade School Picture.  I really like her in red or bright colors.  She's definitely becoming quite the little lady.

Marcia has prompted me to think about and write down my November goals.  Mine are lofty, but I believe some are very doable.  Here we are: Personal Work out 6 days a week (I'm trying to become a person that works out daily.  It's good for my back issues) Practice my morning, after work and evening routines everyday Get up and dressed before the flow of the family (I'm pretty bad about this) Plan for the holidays (both Thanksgiving and Christmas) Build my Financial Control Journal and budget Meal Plan weekly - even if it's just documenting what we did eat, LOL Blog on my progress on these items Work Ensure the completion of the conversion we're working on goes smoothly Finish and deliver the presentation I've been working on to my boss's boss (Sr. Director) and my team Transition the planned work to the new Mumbai team Keep minor ad-hoc requests at bay at work in emails I'll report on 12/1/2011 with how I made out....

Hope everyone had a great Halloween.  Here's Phoebe before she left for school yesterday.  She recreated the "humilitard" that Jordan had to wear on "Big Brother" this summer. The boys still fit into their dinosaur costumes from last year, although the legs kept riding up.  They were not in a great mood yesterday, so we only went to a few houses with them and then took them home.  Here they are with Daddy watching Shakira's video "Waka Waka" before we went out.  It is their favorite music video to watch.  She came out with that song for the Soccer World Cup in South Africa.  I think their thought is "Guys playing soccer and a pretty lady dancing... It doesn't get better than that!" Here's trying to get a view of their costumes. Bye! Happy Happy Halloween!  PS - like the bushes across the street?  That's at our house!

We got the earliest snows this year ever!!!  I don't ever remember it snowing in Philadelphia in October. Maybe a freak snow late in March, but never this early.  Here's some views from our back deck.   I was very motivated today.  As Marcia would say, I ate a lot of frogs. But oh, they tasted so good!!!!  The saying means to do the biggest, most important stuff you need to do in the day.  Today I did the following: Cleaned the kitchen very good, including kitchen appliances wiped down, the inside of the microwave, the top of the stove, and I mopped the floor. Drove Tom to the train station.  He's opening a new office in NYC in the morning.  He'll be back for trick or treating in the afternoon. Vacuumed and shampooed all the carpets on the second floor and the back staircase.  I am sorry to say it was the first time ever since we moved in 2006.  They look awesome! Did the same to the living room where the boys play.  I swear, ...

Feeling minorly overwhelmed right now.  There is so much I need and want to get done.  I'm hoping to have time to do it all.  I keep making my lists and then I get distracted by my daughter getting sick, working from home and having a toddler or two come over to me and the computer, a husband that needs to talk about something, etc.  I know things are moving in a forward direction, but I'm having such a hard time not feeling that I wish I was getting things done faster and able to avoid distractions. On another note, I recently read Julie and Julia and I have to admit I liked the book much better than the movie.  In the movie, I thought Julie was kind of whiney and Julia Child saved the movie.  The book is much different.  I can completely get into where she is in her mind.  Did you know the book character Julie has PCOS and part of her issue that drove her to cooking was doctor's telling her that she better try to have children now because of h...

BTW, we did get a phone call from the gluten-free girl's mom on Monday after school thanking us for handling her daughter's diet restrictions so easily and making her seem like she was eating what everyone else was eating. Here's a pic of the girls all asleep at 9 AM on Sunday morning.  Phoebe is the one on the left air mattress that looks like she's running in her sleep. And here is Phoebe in her 1950s finest for the cotillion party that Sunday night. And yes, I'm a Yankee that makes her daughter do cotillion.  It's the only thing we've not given her a choice on.  This is her first year and I think we'll do it again next year.  For those that don't know what cotillion is, it's a very Southern USA thing where children are forced to dress up (boys must wear suits and girls must wear skirts that are not more than 2 inches above their knee) and learn to dance ballroom dances such as the Rumba, waltz, cha cha, etc. and learn about table mann...

Wow!  What a weekend!  I don't know what to do other than give it to you in chronological order with all the fun details. Friday night we went out to a great French bistro restaurant in Philly called Zinc .  The food was amazing!  The wine was amazing.  I say if you are in the Philly area and want to try the best yet unpretentious French food in the area, make a reservation and get thee to this place!  It was by far the best restaurant I've ever been to and had the best service.  Our server actually recommended the white wine - a wonderful white Bordeaux which is my current favorite wine nwo.  I have a case on order from my local wine shop.  It's very reasonably priced when you're not at a restaurant markup price.  I also highly recomment their private label French sparkling wine.  We had it with our appetizers and it was very very good. Saturday we ran errands getting ready for our daughter's sleepover party that night....

Wow!  It's been a long time.  I'll try to get better, but things have been very busy lately in a good way.  We've been working hard at living intentionally.  Doing things around the house and having good family fun.  We went to the Renaissance Faire this past weekend.  Here's a pic Phoebe took of the boys and I with a knight.  Tom was off in a long line for a pint of beer, LOL! Phoebe also had her 11th birthday and got braces.  Here you can see both! And a few weeks ago we went to a wine tasting, corn maze, fall fun stuff for kids to do at a local vineyard that we hadn't been to before.  Went with a fellow blogger in the area who her and her husband are so much fun!  And their daughter is way cute!  Here is a pic of Tom and the boys that day.  Liam does have an odd expression on his face in this pic. I started working out again last night, so I'm feeling pleasantly sore.  I'm doing the P90X and I'm working on gett...

I've been continuing to get lots of things done.  My favorite thing lately that keeps me from blogging is reading "Game of Thrones".  I'm on the second book now.  Yes, I am a dork, LOL!  It really does take a lot of thought to read. So you end up reading a bit, your brain gets exhausted, and then you have to stop and rest the brain a bit.  It's so interesting though, so you keep coming back for more. On the title front, Tommy peed on the potty today!!!!  Very exciting.  Liam has no interest in the potty, but Tommy is so excited and kept saying after dinner, "I'm a big boy!  I go pee pee on the potty"  I'm a big boy!"  What a cutie patootie. Tomorrow Phoebe gets the top half of her braces in the morning!  She's so excited.  Of course she wants every color of the rainbow (and then some!) in her mouth, but I'm talking her down to two colors.  One on top and the other on the bottom. Hope everyone else is doing well. ...

Wow!  Have I been busy!  We've had the beginning of the school year, the garden has been cleaned out for fall planting and I've put up some roasted red peppers, regular salsa and salsa verde up in pots.  I promise to  post my recipe for salsa verde soon.  We think it's pretty yummy! Today was a very busy day, but I think I was making up for being so lazy the rest of the weekend.  I'm cleaning the house very well as I will be having people over Friday night for a Tastefully Simple party.  I'm getting things as clean as possible and that feels pretty good.  I got the laundry done too as that was getting backed up.  Now things are looking much better.  Tom hung up a bunch of paintings and cleaned out the grill.  We had a mouse build a nest in the grill for herself.  There were no babies in it, but she had a nice cozy space for herself.  Sorry to tell her, but she had to move out. The boys are back from their grandparents ...

Tornados, earthquakes and soon to come hurricanes!  What's going on with Mother Nature in southeastern PA?  At work about two weeks ago, we all had to go to the interior of the building as there was a tornado coming through.  I'm sure everyone knows by now, us wussy East Coast people just had an earthquake and it freaked us all out.  Myself included.  I can safely say I will not be moving to California, Japan or anywhere that has had an earthquake in the last 100 years.  I was on the 12th floor at work starting to give a presentation when it hit and we were all pretty confused.  We were all wondering what it was:  train derailment? gas refinery explosion, terrorist attack?  Something that would make sense other than an earthquake.  I can now say I've been through one and lived to tell the tale, LOL.  There was no damage, but it is so weird to feel the earth move beneath you.  It's like the one thing you feel you can depend on...

Tommy asked to sit on the potty today and he was so proud of himself for doing it!  He didn't do anything but sit, but that is huge for us!  Every time we would talk to the boys about the potty, they would be adamant they wanted nothing to do with it. "Nooooooo!" is the answer we would get, every time we asked.  But this morning as the boys were getting their morning diaper change (which they hate), I mentioned if they would go to the bathroom on the potty, we might not have to change diapers anymore.  At this Tommy started asking to sit on the potty, so we all acted very excited, got him situated and sat with him praising him while he sat on the potty.  Liam still insisted, "Nooooo!" so we didn't make him, but we made a big deal out of Tommy trying. And where has the month of August gone?  Last post was at the beginning and now we are at my DH's birthday at the end of August!  Yes, Happy Birthday, DH!!!!  I love you very much, and I am te...

It's been an interesting week full of ups and downs.  We fought the battle of the head lice and I quite believe we won.  Phoebe's head is looking like there's nothing there and the house has never been cleaner.  I know from some things I read online they said not to concentrate on house cleaning as much as the individual, but I think anyone that's been affected before will agree, that you feel that you want to clean the person as well as the house.  It just makes you feel like you have less concerns of it coming back. I'm also getting better at not beating myself up as much.  It's more of a feeling that I'm getting back to being organized.  I hate feeling unorganized.  I feel I waste time doing things I shouldn't be doing and then not doing the things that are more important.  So now I have my list of home to-dos and my work list of to-dos and I'm making headway in taking care of them both.  Sometimes one gets more priority than the other...

I've been trying to write a post all week last week on how I was beating myself up too much.  Last week was a rough week back at work, but by the end of the week, I felt like I was getting a handle on things there at least.  Having to take off Monday this week, made today at work feel out of control all over again though. At home last week, I was beating myself up for things I knew I wanted to get done, but I knew I shouldn't be hard on myself.  I know our friends we went on vacation didn't even finish unpacking from when we went away.  We had unpacked by the same day we got back and started laundry.  But bills were behind where I wanted to be, meals weren't planned, and I knew Phoebe had to get back on track with her summer reading and math work.  They go back to school the last week of August. The reason I had to take Monday off work at first was to take Tommy to the doctor and see if he had another ear infection.  Well he doesn't, but Phoebe got...

We had a great time.  We went to the beach (New Jersey shore), the zoo, the boardwalk, did amusement park rides, hung out at the house during nap time in the wading pool, drank some wine and ate some good food.  One night we had a girls' night and went to a local martini bar.  It was nice and relaxing.  Ready to get back to reality with work tomorrow.   I'm sure I'll have lots of emails to clean out and lots of catching up to do on projects.  It was so nice not to think about work for a whole week.  Before I get back to reality, here's some great pics from the vacation. The boys really liked playing in the sand.  Their favorite word was "rock".  They loved finding rocks and putting them in their pockets or the sand buckets. Phoebe loves playing with her boogie board in the surf.  She could stay there all day and do this.  It's a shame the boys can't keep up with her.  They were still not big fans of the water, but they lov...