June wrap up

So safety town ended a couple weeks ago. That was a really busy, hectic week! I was glad I did the evening session, but it did make that week a bit crazy! That Friday after work, we dropped the girls off at safety town and went to dinner with the Hardins and then over to the graduation. Here's Hannah getting her certificate.

And here are the girls after at the fire truck

Nicholas learned the hard way how not to snap the elastic string that goes around your chin on her fire hat!!! OUCH!

I chopped my hair - no pictures though yet - need to do that! I was getting tired of the long same old hair and it was starting to get where it wouldn't iron straight anymore, so I figured I'd start over. I got a bob, with it just a little shorter in the back than in the front, but nothing drastic at all. In fact, Tony complains that it's not that different than it was, just shorter. He's right kind of - it seems I always end up styling it the same. We'll see if I get more bold next cut!

We went to Reese's 3rd birthday party last weekend. I forgot my camera that day, so no pictures from there - boo! Speaking of camera, mine is acting up. It shuts off when I try to use the zoom. I'm not sure if it's the battery or the camera taking a dump on me, but I need to do something - it's really annoying!

Then we went to the Brunswick Home Days fair last Sunday. Hannah got to enjoy riding rides and poor Nicholas just hung out in his stroller.

This is the hardest age for summer. Too little to really do stuff, but big enough that he wants to go. He did good though.

And this is what he had for dinner that night

Wonder where get got this gene???

Fathers Day - better late than never

I'm trying to play a little catch up with the old neglected blog here, and before I can post our 4th of July weekend happenings, I need to be sure to get in the recap of Father's Day.

I had a little outside get away planned, but I needed good weather, so Saturday looked liked the nicer of the two weekend days of Father's day weekend, so we all headed out Saturday morning. I did the driving since only Hannah and I knew where we were going - she's a good secret keeper! I drove towards Port Clinton and Tony realized we were going to go to Put-N-Bay as we got nearer to the marina. My fun surprise didn't get off to a very good start when I explained that we needed to carry Nicholas' car seat with us so we could strap it to the golf cart. We got on the ferry to go over and that went fine - Hannah loved the boat ride. We got off the ferry and got to the first golf cart rental place and managed to get the very last cart they had available for rent - how lucky......(read on)

We got the car seat on, all of stuff situated and everyone buckeled on and off we went, trying to figure out which way to go. Other carts were passing us since our cart was going a bit slow. We got quite a ways down and I was questioning whether we were heading the right way or not, so we pulled over to take a look at the map (everyone was starving by now and we needed to find a restaurant fast). I then confirmed we were going the right direction so we were ready to get going again, until the cart was DEAD! Like didn't just go slow - it didn't go at all!!!! OH, boy.....my "wonderful plan" just got better. So here we are, on an dead golf cart maybe 1/2 mile or more from the rental place with two kids and a hungry dad - what to do? So I called the golf cart rental place - busy, busy, busy. I was worried that they took the phone off since they were out of carts. Do you think anyone stopped to help - no, that would have been too nice! Finally, I got through to the place and the guy said he'd bring us a new cart (not sure where it was coming from, but didn't care at that point). He got there after about 10 more minutes and we switched all the stuff to the new cart and off we went - to find some food!

We finally got to the strip of bars and restaurants and ate at Mr. Ed's outside. It was a perfect weather day and we had a decent lunch. Finally remembered to take a few pictures then....not that there were many photo ops up until then!

Here are Tony and the kids at lunch:

After lunch, we were headed off to find something to do. As we drove around, I looked at Nicholas and wondered where his hat went............guess he didn't want to wear it anymore and threw it off as we drove off. We drove arond and found it sitting on the grass in the park! From everything I read, there is a ton of family stuff to do, but it was just not that lucky of a day for us I guess. The Perry's Monument was closed for construction, so then we headed to the Butterfly House and Perry's Cave. There were tons of cool butterflies, but it was small and didn't take up much time.

Then we went to Perry's Cave. That was neat, but I held Nicholas the entire time, which was fine, but could have been more enjoyable if he was older. It was neat though - no good pictures from there though.

Then we headed back to the main area and the kids rode the carousel.

And then we played in the park for a while.

Then Tony gave me the high sign that he was done, so we headed back. I guess Nicholas had fun!

Check out his golf cart hair!

He actually stayed asleep after taking him out of the car seat and putting him in the stroller. We had a quick snack waiting for the ferry.

Nick finally woke back up just before the ferry ride back over. We got back to the car and headed home. We stopped for dinner on the way home and then everyone pretty much crashed when we got home.

So my trip didn't go as I had hoped, but we had a beautiful weather day and enjoyed some more of what Ohio has to offer and celebrated Tony's special day as a family, so it was great!

Sunday morning, we got up and got ready to go to breakfast with my dad, Julia, Susan & Will and Rachael. It was a nice breakfast. Nicholas was in a great mood, which was nice so everyone could enjoy him! He was being buddies with Grandpa.

And of course Hannah stopped playing puzzle books with Grandma when it was time to open presents!!!

Then we went back home and Tony opened a couple gifts too.

He's been wanting a new tatoo of the kids footprints from when they were born, so now he has to go get it done.

And Hannah made this special paper and a craft for him.

And then we just hung out the rest of the day.

Thanks for being a great Daddy to Hannah and Nicholas Tony! We love you!!!

How'd she get so big?

Hannah is such a big girl now. She's wrapping up her preschool years. Luckily for us, preschool can last a wee bit longer since she goes to daycare year round. She's learned so much and is so ready for kindergarten. She's so smart and can already read - like really can read a book cover to cover. She gets stuck on words and we help her sound them out and she usually gets it. She's pretty good with most level 2 books already. She can do simple math too - addition and subtraction, count by 10's and counts way past 100. I can't believe how much she learned at daycare. I'm so grateful for all they did for her to get her ready to go to school.

She went for her kindergarten assessment last week. We didn't get much feedback, but I'm sure she did great. I asked her if she showed them how she could read, but she said no, they didn't try and she forgot to tell them. She did however say, "I did tell them I was a smart cookie though!!!" She is - a VERY smart cookie and I'm so very proud of her!

We're excited about getting ready for school. We've started buying uniforms, which I love, but might be a hard adjustment from wearing pretty dresses every day! They're super cute though, so it'll be fine once school starts and she gets used to it. I'm a litte sad to be buying size 6 for her though!

She's so pretty - and such a sweet little girl. So very kind, generous, grateful and loving. She loves her little brother and really enjoys her friends. She's going to be a great kindergartener!

This week is safety town. She was so happy to start yesterday. Here she is finishing a bite to eat with Allie on their first day before it started. Today, she's taking a field trip on the school bus to the fire station. It'll be fun to watch her graduate on Friday!

Oh, Hannah, I love you and am so proud to have you for my daughter!

Silly Kids!

Trying to do a little catching up here…………

Just a fun post to show how silly Hannah and Nicholas are!

Hannah has always thought it was fun to wear the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head glasses. I’m not sure if Nicholas saw her do it or if he figured it on his own that it was fun too. Anyway, here they are modeling their Potato Head look (they should have swapped glasses!)

And Nicholas has also found that sitting in the fridge is evidently a good seat! It’s cute, but when it’s time to close it, usually we have a bit of a fit!

Here was the fun they discovered together one Sunday morning with the ads from the newspaper. It was definitely giving me ulcers seeing the mess, but we played a game out of the clean up too when it was over, so fun for all!

And lastly, wrestling on the floor with Daddy is becoming the thing to do at our house. Nicholas does the full on tackle to anyone laying on the floor.

They’re crazy!

Catching Up

So the good news about summer being here is that we’re busy and spending a lot of time doing things outside and out and about. The bad news about that is finding the time to update the old blog about all the fun (and not so fun) happenings of our life.

So this requires it’s own post, which I’ll do as soon as I have more time to go through finding some good pictures, but I’m sad to report that on May 21st, we said good-bye to our beloved Cody. Cody was a rescue dog when he was around a year old. Tony got him in some time in 2001 and he was pretty skinny and had been abused. He never liked the smell of beer, so we’re assuming the jerk that didn’t take care of him was a drinker. When I met Tony in 2002, Cody was still pretty rough around the edges. He had to be crated a lot of the time and peed on EVERYTHING! When we moved into this house 7 years ago, something totally changed for him. He no longer peed on things in the house (just EVERYTHING outside) and chilled out for the most part, not needing the crate any longer. He was Roman’s buddy even though often times, Cody stayed downstairs and Roman stayed upstairs. He was always so big and was a block head – literally and figuratively (not the brightest bulb and we joked that he couldn’t even catch a cold let alone a ball or a treat!) But he was a real sweetie of a dog too. Even though he was clumsy and excitable, he was always the dog that was gentle around our babies when they came home from the hospital. He was so good with Nicholas as he climbed all over him and ran all his toys into him! All Cody wanted was to make us happy and get a little lovin’. The past couple years, his health was slowly declining. He was getting lumps and bumps all over the place. He refused to get his nails cut and because of that, he often would break them off and then get an infected toe. But mostly, he probably had a cancer in his stomach. He threw up after every meal and toward the end he was throwing up throughout the day and night. He lost a lot of weight and just wasn’t his old self anymore. The Thursday before we put him down, he was up sick all night long and that’s what made us decide it was time for him to go be with Roman. Going through the process with him was clearly very painful, but of course he made it even harder that day because he acted all perky and happy in the car and during the visit. We knew that it was either that day or a day in the near future and since we had worked up the courage to go, there really wasn’t much to reconsider once we were there. Having Hannah say goodbye before we left was very sad. Nicholas didn’t really know what was going on, but he hugged Cody and we all cried together as a family as we said goodbye. Like I mentioned before, I’ll do a special post soon for him to capture a few good memories of him.

So needless to say, that night and the next day (our 7th wedding anniversary) was very sad as was the following week, but we’re getting back to normal for the most part now and have had some awesome days since then.

So now on to the more happy happenings since then…….

Since we missed out on a celebration for our 7th wedding anniversary on the actual day, Tony and I had an awesome splurge weekend the following weekend. The kids went to my moms for the weekend and we spent all day Saturday and Sunday together. We went to the mall Saturday to get a few new clothes and then packed a bag and went downtown. It’s a shame we don’t take advantage of what Cleveland has to offer more often – we really have some great stuff! Anyway, we spent the night at the Hyatt, which is at the Arcade – such an awesome beautiful building!

We ended up getting a room without a view though, which turned out just fine, but we had some good laughs about it anyway! It was off in the corner and had a lovely view of a parking garage!

We got stuck in the elevator a few times – that was before we realized we needed to use our keycard to go up!! Oh, and be careful not to bump your head!!! (I love you Tony!)

Anyway, we walked around for a little while and then got dressed up and got ready and headed out.

We used Tony’s sense of direction to walk to our dinner at Mortons, which means we took the long way! But it was a nice evening and fun to walk around downtown. So our dinner at Morton's was super, extra fabulous! It was definitely first class from the moment we walked in and they greeted us with "Happy Anniversary Mr & Mrs Carrossellia". We sat down and we were waited on with total first class. It was awesome! How about customized menus just for us! (notice the greeting on top)

We enjoyed a lovely bottle of wine, Tony had some oysters, we both had salads (later realized we should have shared a salad) and then had the juiciest, most tender, flavorful steaks we've ever had! We also shared a baked potato and asparagus. We realized too, we could have done without the asparagus, but the lady that came to butter and sour cream our potato was just awesome - again, we felt so pampered and special that night.

We had a "celebrity sighting" if you can call it that. Tim Misney walked in with people that I assume was his family. I wanted so, so badly to walk up to him and say "I know what you do"!!! Anyone that doesn't know what I'm talking about, he's the lawyer with the commercials that say "I'm Tim Misney and I'll make them pay or I'm Tim Misney and you know what I do".

And we finished off our dinner with a chocolate lava cake that I’m sure was so good, but we were so stuffed to really enjoy it (however, we did manage to eat most of it). And the coffee was fantastic – oh and they gave us our dessert on the house. I can’t say enough about how nice it was there. We truly had a memorable dinner. And I even managed not to freak out when the bill came….it was big, especially for a dinner, but it was so worth it, especially as we celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary!

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel (took the shorter direct route this time) and changed our clothes. We stopped in a Lola for a drink. It was really nice in there and we hope to have another evening out soon for dinner there. Then we went to Hilarities for a comedy show. The second guy we saw was super funny. The headliner was OK, but not our type of humor for a majority of the show….it was good though. And then after the show, we went over to the House of Blues for a few more drinks. It was so great to walk around downtown and really get a feel for the nightlife down there and share this night with Tony. We had such a great time!

We got up the next morning and checked out of the hotel, stopped for breakfast and then stopped home for a little while. We ended up going to look at new cars for the heck of it. The Chrysler dealership was closed, so we stopped by the Kia dealership to look at the Optima. It was really nice, but they couldn’t do much with the numbers without our buyoff on the Jeep, so it didn’t really go anywhere. We went to my moms to pick up the kids and stayed for dinner and then came home.

Monday was Memorial Day. It was HOT! We went to the store for a while and then made an impromptu decision to go over to Dawn & Jack’s so we could go swimming in their pool…..and visit them too of course! Nicholas took a little while to get used to being in the pool, but ended up liking it for the most part. Hannah of course was a total fish the entire day and turned into a prune! We need to go over more often this summer so she can get better at actually swimming, she’s getting there!

Nicholas ate some serious picnic food….he actually liked ribs and steak

And totally ate an entire ear of corn – held it just right and went to town!!! (Love it Aunt Susan – don’t know what you’re missing!)

And there you have the update through the end of May…I’ll try to return soon to do a Cody post and fill you in on how June is starting