My Parents, Part II.

Brian had to work most of the time that my parents were here, but that didn't stop us from packing up the boys and heading up the road to Tuscany.  We stayed in a great little B & B in Lucca and took day trips to Florence and Carrara, then did a quick stop by the leaning tower on the way home.  It was an amazing little vacation.

Here's Lucca - 

We ate a lot of gelato.

This is the inside of the main duomo in Florence.  It was beautiful.

Florence was very hot and humid.  Owen had a great time.

My dad found these amazing gardens in Lucca.

JJ ran, ran, and ran until he was extremely hot and tired.

The tower in Pisa was very impressive.

11 Months Old.

Owen turned 11 months old today and as you can see from the pictures below, he is super excited about it : )  He's crawling extremely fast these days, cruising all the furniture, and has stood independently for a few seconds a couple of times.  At this point, we think he's way more tough than JJ was, mainly because he has JJ sitting on him all the time, but he also seems more cautious.  We think it may take him longer to really learn to walk, but that's fine by me!

He finally got a tooth!!  He has one little tooth and is working on another.  I really think he's the slowest teether in the whole world!

My Parents, Part I.

My parents just left after a whirlwind 3 week visit.  We had an amazing time with them.  Last year, we mainly just stayed home and stared at our new baby, but this year we were on the go almost the whole 3 weeks!  Here's what we did the first few days.

The first full day they were here, we went down to Paestum and took a tour of a buffalo mozzarella farm/factory on the way.  As you can see, Owen was super excited about the tour.

These are probably the happiest buffalo that you'll ever meet.  They eat only organic food, listen to relaxing music in the morning, then get massages (as in this picture), then can go to the milking machine and eat.  Our tour guide said that happier buffalo make better milk/cheese, so they treat them well.  I'm not sure if this is right, but the cheese was good!

JJ telling grandpa all about the buffalo.

Here is the beautiful leather factory at the farm.  This is where the 3-month-old boy buffalo go and get turned into beautiful purses and belts!

We did allow a little relaxing and reading : )

Then we headed downtown on the second day.

Next up, our trip to Tuscany!

Catching Up.

Brian had the Tuesday after JJ's performance off from work and we decided that we didn't want to sit around the house with two tired and cranky boys, so instead we headed up to Rome for the day.  JJ slept the whole way there and back.

The reason we wanted to go up to Rome was because we hadn't been to Eataly yet.  Krista and Michael had gone when they were here and we knew we needed to get up there.  It was amazing!

JJ loves sharing his gelato with Owen : )

We did a quick drive-by of the Colosseum before heading home.  It was a very nice day.

Before my parents got here, my friend Alison from college came to visit.  We took yet another trip down to the Amalfi Coast and spent the day at the beach in Minori.  It was beautiful.

My parents have been here now for a little over a week and we've been having a great time.  My next few posts will be about our time together so far.

Happy Father's Day and 10 Months Old.

Owen is now 10 months old.  He's still crawling, pulling himself up, cruising everything, and still has zero teeth!  We keep thinking one's going to pop through, but nothing yet.  Maybe next month!

Happy Father's Day to my dad, and Brian too!  My parents are in town and I got to spend the day with my dad on Father's Day for the first time in years.  It was a nice day.  We're headed up to Tuscany this week, so I'll definitely have lots of pictures and catching up to write about when we get back.

JJ's school performance.

This is the 50 year anniversary of JJ's school, so they put on a big production Monday night at a theatre downtown.  It was a very interesting experience, unlike any school performance we'd ever seen!  There were multiple little dance/song numbers by the older classes and the whole play was in Italian so we basically didn't understand anything that was going on for 2 hours.  Owen did really well though and just sat in my lap, with lots of squirming around, but he didn't cry once.  He seemed pretty interested in what was going on most of the time and then finally fell asleep about 15 minutes before it was over.  It was a night that we will never forget.

Ready to go.

Here's JJ's dance.  As you can see, he really loves dancing and being on stage!  Sorry I had to split the video into three clips, but it was too large to upload as a whole.  I think we've got a little performer on our hands : )

BTW, that's not Owen crying at the end, it was a little boy next to us.

Curtain call : )

Another Weekend.

We did a whole lot of nothing again this weekend.  JJ had his last t-ball game and then we just ran a bunch of errands.  Owen has a really bad cold and JJ's allergies have also been really bad, so we needed some time to relax, especially since none of us have slept this week.  Each of the boys have woken up at least 3 times every night.  Brian was gone for a few days on a work trip, so at least he got to sleep a couple of days.  I think he owes me : )

JJ really likes "reading" to Owen : )