Arriving in New York

We flew to New York on Wednesday, June 23rd and the flights were great!  Once Joseph is in front of the ipad he gets into a zone and we downloaded a full season of Jake and the Neverland Pirates and he was mesmerized.  The only time we heard from him was when he would yell out, "Yo ho ho" and "Yes!" from answering Jake's questions during each episode.  Ella would watch it for a little bit (meaning approximately 2 minutes) but was more interested in playing with the chairs, snacking or thankfully sleeping!  She slept for basically the entire second flight with Rich and I even caught myself taking a little snooze...I woke up and was in shock that I had slept on a plane-haven't done that in years!  

We are in search for a new car before baby #3 arrives so when the rental company asked us if we wanted to upgrade to a Suburban without a price increase we jumped at the chance since this is one of the cars in the running.  We loved it (it is huge!!); however, I do think it helped us to eliminate it from our search.  With three young kids we just think that the minivan will be much more family friendly and practical so off to shop for minivans once we arrive home.  It was definitely fun riding in style for the week though!

We stayed with my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Gloria while we were in Mechanicville for the night before we headed up to Lake Placid and then for another night after the race.  It was so much fun to be together wtih my mom's family and they were so gracious to give us their house (they both spent the night at Gloria's parents' home) and we appreciate them hosting everyone for dinners while we were there.  My mom and Lindsay arrived on Thursday afternoon so they had everyone over again on Thursday night before we headed to Lake Placid.  

Ella found a friend just her size!

Rich put together a power point presentation titled, "The Road to Ironman Lake Placid 2014"  which he showed everyone before we headed to Lake Placid on Thursday night.  I had no idea he was planning on doing this and was totally shocked and brought to tears.  I decided to include it here so that we'd have a copy of it in the blog book.  He put it to the song "Always Trust Your Cape" by Guy Clark and then explained the story behind each slide to everyone...it was really neat and special.   It has been basically 2 years of him training for the Ironman race (Texas and Lake Placid) and he has done a great job of balancing family, work and training but it definitely is a lot but I know that he appreciates our support of this crazy hobby of his and that we are always his first priority. 

Carrie and I at Ironman Texas (her husband, Mike, was Rich's training partner for this Ironman)

Love this picture of Norah from Ironman Texas!

Can't believe this was a little over a year ago (May 2013)

The Kemah triathlon is the race that started this all!  Rich and Mike decided to sign up for the Kemah Triathlon in April of 2012 (the year on the powerpoint is wrong) and this got them hooked. It was such a fun weekend though in Galveston and really the start of our awesome friendship with the Conley family. After the race, both Rich and Mike definitely had the triathlon bug and I still remember the day when Rich and I talked about him registering for the Texas Ironman-we were in San Diego in August, I was 6 months pregnant with Ella and we were out to dinner in Little Italy!  If you want to read the blog entry about the Kemah Triathlon click here

After the training from August through May came the big race!  This was such an awesome (and exhausting!) day but it was so neat to have it be in our own town and to be surrounded by all of our friends.  If you want to read the blog entry from the Ironman Texas click here and here

He also included the other two triathlons that he had done this past year.  The 1/2 Ironnman in Galveston which is described here

And the other triathlon which was a sprint tri here in The Woodlands is described here

I loved this part of the show!  It made me laugh and also showed how dedicated he was to the training. Definitely the most dedicated and motivated man I know!

For the past year he has been training with a coach with Outrival Racing who would send him daily workouts as well as advice on nutrition, supplements, etc.  This is what the calendar would look like

This explained how far he swam in the past 18 months

And how far he has travelled on his bike...

And the run...

This part made me laugh, too (and cringe a little bit!)  Triathlons are not a cheap sport!

We would always joke around that our kids will need to get scholarships since all of our money is being spent on triathlons!

And, I loved that he included this...I'm such a good support :)

And, by this point I was in tears (as well as my mom, Lindsay and Rich).  This has been quite the journey but I am so proud of not only Rich but our entire little family and we are SO looking forward to cheering him on in a few days at Lake Placid.

After finishing up with dinner and dessert, we loaded up the kids (and Aunt Lindsay!) in the Suburban and made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Lake Placid to our cottage.  It was an easy drive as Ella fell asleep almost instantly and Joseph watched the ipad basically the entire time.  We arrived close to 10 and were pleasantly surprised at the cottage and everyone crashed immediately...more to come on our stay at the cottages and of course all of the race excitement! 

8 years!

Rich and I celebrated our 8 year wedding on anniversary on July 21st!  Well, we actually celebrated by going out to dinner at Morton's Grille at the Waterway on July 19th, two days before our actual anniversary.  We had a great time at dinner and then did a little shopping and grabbed dessert before heading home.  It was a really nice night.  I am so thankful for such an amazing husband and to share this incredible journey with him.  Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures that night so figured I'd include one of my favorites from our wedding.

Happy Anniversary Babe!  Love you lots!

Randoms from first half of July

The past few months I have found myself just splitting the months into the first half and second half and posting that way, well except for the "major events"-not sure if I like doing it that way but it definitely has been much faster!  So, with that being said here are some pictures from the first half of July...

I have been teaching the 8 a.m. summer baby bootcamp classes at Kidville (an indoor playplace) which has been awesome.  The kids loving having the hour to run around and play!  

Here is Ella and her big smile on July 1st at Kidville!

 Ella and her big buddy, Kolton, at a library activity on July 1st.  

 Joseph and Brody engaged during the library the following week on July 8th.  

 The mad scientist creating foam

 At the end of every swim lesson Coach Matt would catch him at the bottom of the big slide, which he loves going down!  Now we just have to get him swimming to the side by himself once he gets to the bottom of it!

 After swim lessons on July 8th we stayed at the park to play for a bit and Ella was having too much fun getting ready to slide-she is definitely a strong, little monkey! 

 On July 10th we headed to Will and Sam's house for a fun morning with friends.  Here are most of the kiddos on the hammock-sweet friends!

  Joseph had his last swim lesson the afternoon of July 10th.  We actually decided to sign him up for two weeks in August with a small group since the price is so great and he really enjoys it so I guess they aren't officially over.  Here they are leaving the pool after the lesson-I think it took us about ten minutes to get to the car this day.  They were just so interested in checking every.single.thing out on the way.

 On July 11th after bootcamp we decided to hit up the carousel.  Ella is becoming much more of a fan of it!

 Trying to get the two of them together without much luck

 Carousel selfies!!

 I just love this picture of Ella from later the day on the 11th.  

 Joseph has really been into Jake and the Neverland Pirates after watching the DVD on the trip to Florida so we spend a lot of our days playing "pirates".  Usually he is Jake, I am Izzy and Ella is Cubby and our bed is Bucky the ship.  He wears my black boots around the house and we go on different adventures.  Today (July 14th) he begged to wear the black boots to HEB but I wouldn't let him (I have to draw the line somewhere), so we compromised and he wore the bandana, as well as brought his parrot and his treasure cups which were filled with gold doubloons.   It's so funny because it didn't even phase me that he had it on in the store since I am so used to him wearing it at home.  

 To finish out the first half of the month, we went to the library on July 15th for their "Gone Wild" program which was great!  Joseph (and most of the adults) were in hysterics laughing at the presenter-he was great.  Not only was it funny, but it was also very interesting and educational.  A fun way to spend the morning after boot camp.  

Our days definitely go by fast as we stay busy but we are having such a fun summer!  We are looking forward to the second half of July!