Back To The Grind

Our fun few days on LBI are over...

The Family

Feeding the Gulls

We went down to the beach this evening to feed th gulls after the boys (including me) woke up from their naps. They had a blast throwing bread...



Owen has a good arm!



Sam's is pretty good too :)



Uncle Rich had the underhand action going...he was the "finesse" thrower in the bunch!



STRIKE!



Ba tried capturing it all on his blackberry...

Morning Shots

Sunset Park

The park near the "beach house" is called Sunset Park. It's a cute little place that the boys love.

Lots of fun things to climb on...



Some great swings...





...and some fun slides too :)

Sam and Owen

The boys spent a beautiful morning playing at the beach today. Lots of tools and a big hole...what could be better!

Sam had the rake...



...and Owen had the shovel



Uncle Rich got this started, and the boys continued digging...

Cute Boy

Story Time

Beach Day!

Double Fisted!



Digging With Ba...



Scooping Water...



Watching diggers on the beach is VERY exciting



Being buried is so much fun!

Breakfast With Ba

Our Visit To PNC Park

Here are a few pics from our game in Saturday, which, incidentally, was the Pirates' first win in thirteen games...thanks to Papa and Jack

The entrance to PNC Park in the rain...



It was a really wet start to the night, so we got to roam around and see some of the neat statues around the park, which Sam was all smiles for...









Finally things cleared up and we got to see some baseball!



Here's Sam's first major league pitch...



Enjoying the game with Papa and Grandma P



Us :)





Drinking lemonade and hanging out with the big boys, Doug and David...





...and winding down with Mommy

Nice Night For A Game

NYC

Today we took Sam into New York City to go to a few museums. All in all it was a really fun day, the highlight, for Sam, was sitting on a park bench eating ice cream ;)

The first adventure was to the New York Historical Society which has had a Grateful Dead exhibit since March.



It was an interesting exhibit (for me). The highlight of it was seeing Jerry's guitar "Rosebud" up close and personal!

After that we went next door to the Museum of Natural History, which Sam seemed to like a lot. Here's one of the few good pics we got there...



...a nice pic of Ab outside of Natural History :)



And me and Sam relaxing

Layout

Thought I'd try a new design...any thoughts? Good? Bad?

The Baby's Room

We've been working hard to make the baby's room a baby's room, and not a room with peach paint and wallpaper and a blue rug. It's starting to feel like the upstairs is finally becoming "ours." Sam's room is next! Here is the transformation so far and there will be more when it is furnished, but so far we're pretty happy :)

Before...



After...

Sleep Time

We painted tonight and were taking pics of our paint job so far, and Sam looked cute while he was sleeping so I took this pic

Dead Animal Hunting

So we've been noticing this horrible "fishy" smell in our backyard that had been getting worse and worse as it had been getting hotter and hotter. Tonight the smell became a distinctively "dead animal" smell. Ab found something up against the foundation of the house under our deck. I wanted NOTHING to do with it because I was feeling like dirt all day, and gagging at the prospect of dealing with it, but we had to do something so I went to Home Depot and Sports Authority for some supplies to psych myself up and I didn't mess around...HD for gloves, mask, and plastic suit, and Sports Authority for a huge net and nose plugs :)

Here's the Pre-Removal pic...



Using our big huge net (thanks to Ba for the idea) I jammed myself under the deck and scooped out a dead possum. It was probably the most disgusting thing we've ever done, but we did it, and hopefully the smell will go away soon!

Baseball...kind of

We went to a BlueClaws game on Sunday. Before the game Sam took a turn in the bouncy room, which is the only picture we have of the day. We also got to see Buster, who gave Sam a high five and, thrillingly to Sam, took off and wore Sam's hat for a second...it was cute.

'Cooperating'

This is Sam's "cooperating" face...tough to resist :)