Galena Tri

Yesterday I mentioned that Ryan ran the Galena Tri last weekend.  He does it every year.  We love this race for different reason.  He loves it because he gets to race on hills.  Although it makes it tougher, it's much more fun to ride hills than to go through flat cornfields for miles on end.
I on the other hand like it because we've got this race down to a science now!!  Ryan leaves early to start the race and Mom and Dad and I tag along just in the nick of time to see him finish.  It's pretty spread out, and transitions are hard to get to due to closed roads so instead of fighting it, we say we'll see you at the finish.  We've got it pinned down so well that as we were driving to Eagle Ridge I said to Dad, he should be coming out of the bike at 10:15.  At 10:14 I got a text that said he'd been through transition.  We parked, walked less than a half a mile.  Found this shady spot and within 5 minutes I saw mah man coming up the hill.  It was awesome!!

Let's be honest though.   All those race logistics aside, I love this race because it takes place in Galena.  That  means we have post-race lunch at my favorite Italian restaurant, Vinny's and we get to walk around historic downtown Galena.  There's a brewing company there (the boy's favorite part of the day) and a knitting store (my favorite part).

Gotta love this guy!!  He finished just one minute longer than last year's time.  But!  They changed the course this year so it's hard to tell how those times really do compare.  I'm sure the course was much longer this year and Ryan actually raced it much faster than he has in the past.  That's what happened right??  Let's stick with that story!!

1 Family x 12 (May)

I think this is one of my favorites this far!!!

This past weekend Ryan raced the annual Galena Triathalon.  Most on that tomorrow.  For now, just enjoy this lovely family photo.

Photo contest?

I might be biased....but I think I could win a photo contest with this picture.

In my opinion, that's one cute baby, and one great photo!  Thanks Ryan for helping me take it.

Check out those baby blues against that beautiful sky!  I love my camera.

Can you pick out the update?

Just to give you a little hint:

That's the before.  And here is the after:

Pretty hard to see from here, but this one will really give it away.

It's a little blurry, but you can definatly tell that we painted our front door!!

And the back door.  Well, one of the back doors.  Of course, after doing them, and putting away all the paint and brushes Ryan smiles and says "you forgot that the door in the basement is red....and the one to the garage".  To which I might have not so nicely responded "Don't pretend like you knew that all along and were letting me figure it out on my own.  You'd have told me to buy more paint!"

In any case, I'm really happy with the color.  Ryan needed a little convincing when we were at the store.  He hated the red and no matter what I did, I couldn't convince him of a nice bright, cheery yellow, so I choose blue and called it a day.  Ryan still wasn't sold until I had it all finished and pulled the tape off.

Survey says:  We love it!!  I'll be painting the other doors this weekend I think.

Oh, and!  We also re-did the fire pit.  It used to be a big square just dug in the ground but Ryan reused some pavers we found in another area of the yard and build this little beauty.  I can't wait to have you all over for a bonfire and pool party.

Side story:  As Ryan was pounding down the dirt and rocks for the pit, our neighbor came over and asked "Now what are you working on"?  Ry listed off all of our projects for the weekend.  Brian then asked, "Are you going for a run after this then too"?  Ry laughed and said no.  He responded "Good!  You guys are going to use up all of your heart beats!".  I think that's the best way to describe just how hard my hubby works.  I'd like to say that I contribute too, but mah man is one hard working dude ladies and gents.  We've turned our house around pretty quickly in these last few months and it's mostly because Ryan tirelessly works to make it perfect.  Gotta love that!

Who's ready for a pool party??

You're ready to come on over and jump right in....right?  HA!  Isn't this amazingly disgusting??  Big thanks to Zach for offering to come over and help us out (free beer probably helped, but we are thankful either way).  I joked that I was going to charge a membership fee to use the pool (to help pay for all the maintenance), but Jamie and Zach can swim for free this year :O)

When we were looking at buying this house Ryan and I agreed that the pool would come down.  Although everyone thinks they are a ton of fun, I know that they can be a TON of work.  And, this particular pool looked like this last year when we moved in.  After a lot of convincing Ryan got me to agree that we would keep it.  So, we are in the process of taking this gross pool and making it into a place that someone would actually want to jump into.

As you can see, we started by draining about a third of the water out and the boys hopped in with waders to try and scoop out some of the muck.  When we bought the house, the pool didn't have a filter/pump hooked up.  The owners said they'd used it all the way up until the summer before and then the pump broke so they basically stopped caring about it.  Well, the fact that there were being foreclosed on didn't help either.  So, when we moved in, we knew it was nasty like this.  They did have an old cover on it, but it had all disintegrated (as you can see from the little blue bubbles everywhere).  So, we threw a tarp over it and called it "closed for winter" and figured we'd tackle it in the spring. 

Last weekend we decided it was finally time to pull the cover off and see what we had.  Sadly, winter didn't magically make this pool clean and clear.  So, the boys started scooping.  It's not quite swimming weather around here yet, but we've got to fill this back up with hose water, the add all the chemicals and see where we are at.  Since the water will be freezing cold we wanted to start early so that when it is finally warm enough to swim, we've got a pool we can actually use, instead of starting here in a month from now. 

So, that's how we spent part of Mother's Day....what did you do?  Can't wait to have you all over for a pool party!

My first Mother's Day (well, second if you count last year and a baby in my belly *smile)

We had a great weekend!!  Ryan got home from Kansas City early afternoon on Friday so he was home and we got to spend the whole weekend together.  Instead of trying to cram in too many projects in one short weekend, we decided to work on some of those smaller projects that have been lingering and just need to be FINISHED already.  But, before we get into the hard work, let me tell you about Mother's Day!  Stay tuned for more posts on pool clean-up, front door color changes, and the finishing touches on the bathroom (yeah, that bathroom we started months ago!). 

First Ryan took Abby and let me sleep in.  It was glorious!  When I woke up, they were gone.  They'd run to the grocery store to get a few things.  I thought about brewing a cup of coffee and sitting on our back deck, but the sunshine was misleading.  It was CHILLY!  So I cleaned up the kitchen and watered a few plants.  When they got back Ryan had picked up some tulips for me from him and "some mum's for her Mum" from Abby, an US weekly (I love that crap!) and a silly card.  We ate breakfast and then decided to go for a little hike.  There are tons of forest preserves around us so we picked one we hadn't been to and headed off on an adventure.  Can you believe we were literally the ONLY ones there?  It was such a nice morning and being Mother's Day I was sure that more families would be out, but we had the whole place to ourselves.  I wished we'd have brought the dogs along too.  We walked for about an hour, just looping our way through the trails.  Abby was so good....just soaking it all in (and keeping her eyes closed because somehow the sun was always in her eyes!).

Couldn't resist the opportunity for a quick family photo!

After our hike, we headed home to start draining the pool so Ry could work on it when we got home.  The knitting store in St. Charles was running a Mother's Day sale for 20% off yarn and I've got a big project in the works so I wanted to make sure to get there.  We did a few quick things around the house and jumped back in the car to head to St. Charles.  While I was looking at yarn, Ryan and Abby went next door to wait.

Here's how they spent Mother's Day while I was shopping away!  Sadly I didn't find what I needed at the store, so I met them next door for a drink.  It was a long drive for a beer and some pretzels but who cares, we were together! 

We made a quick stop at the pool store, grabbed some ice cream and headed home.  We ended the day with ribs, beer and friends.  All in all, it was a great first Mother's Day!!

Hope everyone else had as nice of a weekend as we did!!

Iconic Baby photos - as random as this post is about to get!

Doesn't EVERYONE have at least a few pictures of them as a baby just sittin' around in their diaper?  Well, since Abby was born in the late summer it's been too cold to just let my little peanut sit around without a real set of clothes on, but Spring is FINALLY here in Hampshire and now it's time for those iconic photos.  I apologize up front for the randomness of these photos.

You can practically see the determination in her eyes to crawl.

Her "old man" neck in this picture cracks me up!

"Just a llllitttle farther...."

Lily HATES to have her picture taken.  She puts her head down or walks away so I rarely get one of her.  I can just imagine Abby's thinking "Hey doggy...where are you doing?"

Er - Abby LOVES this little doll. She's the perfect size for her. 

Splish Splash - Round 2

So, you all saw this video from last week.  I think that post was my most viewed post.  For sure second to the new house tour I did awhile back.  Anyways, Abbers was making such a mess that I moved her tub to the bathroom.  I was avoiding the swap because having her at counter height was WAY easier than having to bend over awkwardly into the tub and with her in the kitchen I was able to do other things and keep an eye on her.  But, in the end, I got tired of having a soaking wet kitchen so we moved to the bathroom.

I figured you all would enjoy a little update on how the big swap went.