Update

About 10 days ago, a little voice in my head told me to try to put Joey to sleep in the other twin bed in the boys' room. Mario has been pushing for this move for awhile now since MJ was 15 months old when he climbed out of his crib and got a big boy bed. Joey is 20 months old, but such an amazingly good sleeper that I didn't want to tackle the difficult transition to a big boy bed yet. (This was a nightmare for us with MJ). I must have been feeling ambitious b/c I tried it one Saturday night, and wouldn't you know it, Joey stayed in his bed! I could go on and on about this amazing phenomenon... sharing personality differences and all sorts of things; but the bottom line is, Joey still sleeps just as well as before. He falls asleep fine at night, and still takes 2-3 hours naps and just sits in the bed waiting for someone to come get him once he wakes up. I anticipate this ending sometime soon when he realizes he can climb out of bed, but I think he's just one of those kids who just likes to sleep.

MJ hasn't had a bed rail for a long time now, but when he saw Joey had one, he wanted me to put the other one back on his bed. The crib is still there, just in case, and I think it provides nice separation for them and is still familiar.
This is just a random reminder of how sometimes the boys are very cooperative. I can be rushing around doing whatever it is that mommies do, and then come to see my kids quietly entertaining themselves. (It's harder to get pictures of them going crazy - but this does happen to them, and I'll try that next time).
Here is the beginning of our serious of pictures from our visit to Uncle Luke's seminary. It was a beautiful day, and we were so happy that he was able to host us and give us a tour of his life at Mt. Saint Mary's. We are lucky to be so close to him.

MJ with his new 3 favorite library books by Peter Sis.
My boys (before Joey tries to dip his arm in the water.)
They were so cute and adventurous, but I wished I could have had them sit still for more pictures.

Joey wasn't the most cooperative, but we did manage to get one picture with Godfather Luke.


I think it's funny how we separated by families mostly, except for Tommy and MJ. I think that would be a fair trade (maybe not for Tabitha & Babu).


.... in other news...

The punches keep coming with this house... we learned early on (but not early enough to ask the sellers to get of it as some buyers do) that we have a dreaded Bradford Pear tree in our front yard. These are known to grow like crazy, get very top-heavy and then crack. A "tree guy" who did some other work, mentioned we might need to do something about this tree soon. So, Mario and I began thinking about it, and had decided at some point we will be getting rid of this tree. The wind decided that timing for us today as it blew down half the tree. I guess it's nice that it landed in our front yard (definitely better than on our cars) though if it landed on our house, I think our homeowners insurance would have paid to have the tree removed. We moved our cars already, just in case the rest of the tree once to join the half on the ground.