My fun weekend

I have fully recovered from a crazy mid-July weekend, and feel I must post about it before it gets too overdue. I'll try to keep it brief.
First, Thursday July 16th, Mario and I went out to celebrate our 6 year anniversary (which was really on Sunday, but we were too busy to celebrate it then). We went to The Tuscarora Grill in Leesburg, which is known for it's fine dining. This particular night they were hosting a beer tasting event. It was actually really fun. Normally you are seated with other people at a table, but they set up a special table for us on our anniversary. We tried 8 beers and had 6 courses of excellent dishes paired with the beer. All of the beer came from Lagnoitas brewing co. in California. I should try to find the menu again because the food was awesome.

Friday, Mario's company had their annual Mexican Fiesta held at a partner's home. One of Mario's favorite parts of this party is the sports competitions. I've been pregnant on and off for this party, but he insisted I join him this year to play. We started off with a little 3 on 3 basketball, and our team won. I haven't played basketball in years! Then we played volleyball and our team won again. It was nice being able to play sports together again.

I went home to shower while the babysitter continued to take care of the kids and Mario stayed to enjoy the fiesta. I then went out to begin the celebration of Erin's bachelorette weekend. We made some very cute headbands that night (I had no idea those were still in!)

Saturday I left the kids again to go to two winery's for tastings. We also had a bridal shower for Erin at the second winery. I went back home to play with the family for a bit, and then Mario drove me to DC to join the rest of the bachelorrette party for dinner at Firefly and a night out on the town in DC. Mario was very sweet and picked me up that night (yes, he put all the sleeping children in the car, drove to get me, returned home, and got the sleeping kids back in bed). Our evening didn't end until 3am!

Bright and early at 7am, I was up again on Sunday to drive back to DC, this time to co-host a Baby shower for our friend Andrea (the very adorable pregnant one in the middle). Sheila came with me this time and I think had fun trying out all of the new baby gear.

Mario was incredibly generous the whole weekend and did a great job taking care of the kids. He even managed to finish the railing to the front porch of our home that weekend. I'm lucky to have such a great husband! And what a way to celebrate 6 years of marriage!

Work around the house

It's been awhile and we've been working on a lot of things. I'm borrowing this post that Mario made on the Suarez family blog. Hopefully I'll have another update soon.

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Here are some changes we've done recently...

First, we redid our deck, b/c when we moved in, we had this:




And now we have this:

Another before angle:



And an after angle:


We also added a new wood railing to our front stairs. For full effect...

When we moved in:




After some work:


Now:

4th of July weekend

Nothing says lets celebrate America like taking on some home-improvement projects. We decided to go with refinishing the deck since Mario had the extra days off work. The threat of rain prevented us from fulling finishing the deck, so I don't have complete before and after pictures. But if your deck looked like this, wouldn't you want to do something about it?

The actually staining of the deck isn't so bad... kind of like painting a room in your house. There's just a lot of prep work. Mario was master of the sander. I found it was a bit stronger than I am.

So I was stuck with the tedious task of setting the nails that had popped up back in the deck. I'm only smiling b/c MJ asked me to. I am glad I learned to sink nails and eventually got into a pretty good groove.


This is what happens to our home when we do projects (especially outside ones). The kids entertained themselves pretty well. This is a very creative home made out of patio cushions that were quickly tossed inside to clear the deck for work. That night I thanked the children's guardian angels for keeping them alive since we didn't watch them that much all day.

I do think it's nice that the kids see us doing projects. MJ certainly enjoys it.

He really loves power tools and has taken several still shots of the various tools we own. Typically he has to pose them in the exact way they are on their boxes or the front page of their instruction manual (which he loves to read and thinks are his magazines).

Despite all the work, we managed to celebrate the 4th in a more conventional way of a BBQ at our neighbor's house. It was great getting to hang out and get to meet more of our neighbors and all of their kids. Plus, a few of the men had some great fireworks so we all enjoyed a very nice show on their lawn.
Mario didn't like that I let Joey use a sparkler on his own. (I still did it after taking this picture, but I held it with him).

I have a cute video of the boys and their sparklers as well as the 2 dozen neighborhood kids, but I didn't know if you'd find that interesting.

What would a blog post be without a picture of Sheila and one of her cute faces?

Oh, I have to get a video of her crawling before it's too late. She continues to improve in speed. Our new song for her is sung to the Spiderman theme song tune "Danger girl, danger girl, goes wherever the danger is"
The projects did not end there. Sunday I returned to Home Depot to rent their 14 ft ladder (which after renting the sander on Friday, I think they began to recognize me). With more threat of rain on Sunday, we couldn't work on the deck. So we moved inside and replaced the chandelier in our foyer. It is now my new favorite part of the house to stare out. Mario still amazes me with all the new things he takes on. His only comment is something like, "The more I do, the better I get at trying new things."

What kind of toothbrush do you use?

I was asked this at the dentist on Tuesday... I tried to figure out why that mattered as the only answer I could think of was "green?" The hygienist wanted to know if I used a manual or electric toothbrush.

I know we've had a good discussion about movie ratings, but I had to post a few pictures from our quick visit to NY last week. Mario had a conference in New Jersey, so the kids and I tagged along to spend some time with family in New York.

We first made a suprise visit with Grandmama and Grandpapa. I never tire hearing Grandmama's stories and the boys had a great time playing. I'm so happy they were able to play where Mario played as a child and hopefully they will have some memories like their dad had from his youth. It was hard to stop the fun to take pictures, and I hope I didn't overstay my welcome in doing so.



Two of our four Mario's

Then we stopped by Michael and Sarah's who generously hosted our very tired crew. As an added bonus, Luke was also visiting them at the same time. The kids had a great time scooting around inside the house and running in the front yard. I especially enjoyed watching Sheila and Michael Jr. play together. It was hard to pick only a few pictures of them. Michael really knows how to smile for a camera. This was definitely Sheila's favorite toy at their house.

Michael and Sheila shared so well, she even let him suck her hand. Of course, since Sheila likes eating her feet it wasn't a big deal for her.

It was so wonderful to see sweet Maria. She is growing so quickly! Maria was a very generous cousin and shared her toys so well. I am looking forward to returning the favor very soon!

6 months

This post is a little late, so I have to post it soon and I'm going to attempt to put it behind Michelle's birthday pictures. Our little baby Sheila became half a year old on June 4th. Here's a recap on how our other babies looked at 6 months old.

Superman Mario James!


Joyful Joey!

And now there is Sheila.
Is it any wonder that a big concern of mine at her check-up was if she is a healthy weight. I mean, I began to question failure to thrive. Since this is so fun for me, here's our 6 month chart. Blogger had trouble with my chart, so I saved it as an image and then posted it - weird. Sorry it is blurry. The second row is height and the third is head size.

The doctor insists she is growing fine. Still, the last time MJ or Joey weighed
17 lb 10oz they were less than 3 months old. Oh well, we still think she is adorable!

Perhaps her brothers are just giving her a good workout?
The following are not related to Sheila's 6 month celebration but are just fun.
We are so happy we got the SAMs chairs and enjoy rocking on them. Here are the boys watching one of the storms from last week.

As you already know, we were very lucky to have Luke stay with us last weekend. We had so much fun. Here's a playful moment between godfather and godson.We miss you Uncle Luke!

Trip to PA

We made a quick trip to Pennsylvania Friday night to Saturday night to see Bobby and most of his family. He was in town for a baseball game about 15 minutes from my grandparents' house and Suzanne and their new daughter Maryn flew out to suprise him as well. It was nice to hang out Saturday and take pictures at the Keppel "farm". I had fun attempting to take a "photo shoot" with my family. I don't want to bore you with all of the pictures, so if you are interested, I put more of them on facebook.

We had a great time hanging out with Bobby, Suzanne, Maryn, and my grandparents. The moms and their newest babies.
We were able to go to the baseball game that night to cheer on Bobby's team (Rochester Red Wings). We were extra lucky that he was called in to pitch for an inning.
We all had a great time, especially MJ. We didn't get home until 2am Sunday morning, but the first thing MJ wanted to do when he woke up was play baseball.
Monday it was back to work, so I decided to get some weeding and mulching done in the backyard. Do you think this is poison ivy?
I researched a lot about poison plants today and I thought it was so I proceeded with caution. I left the kids to fend for themselves as I took care of all traces of poison ivy in our yard. Poor Sheila was very upset with me, but I think she'd be more upset if I picked her up and gave her a rash (let's hope that doesn't develop in the next few days).
Mario worked from home and had to tolerate the episodes of sadness. He came down to entertain the kids. This is his idea of a "photo shoot" for Sheila.

She did not like it when I tried to put the glasses on her. BTW, girl babies definitely have a higher-pitched shrill-like scream than boy babies.