in syracuse...

ok, so here i am out of town for the night and im actually finding time to blog!! amazing the things you can do without kids around. so here's whats been accomplished today...
i left the house at 820am...stoppped at starbucks and got my grande soy no whip 3 pump white mocha with caramel drizzle on top. got on the thruway by 845...
stopped at the outlet mall in waterloo to get some winter jammies for the babies - i had a 25% off coupon for carters...and yes i did stop in the children's place, was tempted..but resisted! and by 1055am i was headed for the northern lights plaza where i was meeting kelly at the christmas tree shops ( www.christmastreeshops.com ) awesome store, i love it!! got all the paperware for the twins bday party out of the way...then we grabbed some lunch and got really great pedicures...and they were only $25!! the best part was that while your nails are drying, they come over with a hot towel and massage your shoulders! it was awesome...something i havent done since last summer when my parents got married! i was over due!
then we stopped at starbucks, for my round 2...i had to use my treat receipt!! im never out of the house after 2, so i have never had a chance to use one before...stopped at wegmans for shower last minutes (lunch meat and cheese) and came home to finish preparing.
since arriving home we have rolled 25 ham and cheese roll-ups and 25 beef and cheese roll-ups, finished the shower favors, i painted wooden signs for the baby's nursery, we re-arranged furniture for tomorrow...its been a pretty busy day!! but awesome, lots of chatting, reminiscing...just really great girl time for both of us.
and i have heard that my parents had a great day with the kids. beth said they are like clock work and everything happened exactly when i told her it would!! good news...maybe it means they would be willing to do it again (like on oct 25th when mandy is in town??) anyhow...tomorrow will be fun, the whole weekend will go by way to fast, but its nice to know that i will see kelly again on oct 26th for my lia sophia party (her aunt is the consultant) and again the week that kellie is in town, we are already planning a day up here whether the baby is born yet or not..(keeping our fingers crossed that "he" is...)
pics to follow of pedicures and other shower weekend festivities!

painting, painting, painting...

i apologize, i havent blogged in a while, again! but i have been very busy, painting!! i can now say that the foyer closet is complete, as well as the front half of the livingroom....finally - something is complete!! my dear friend andrea came over last night and helped me get the second coat of keoki coffee on the walls in the livingroom. with her help we were able to get it done in an hour!! amazing timing i must say...then i finished the trim and crown moulding when i got home this morning. i painted the closet during nap time and tonight i might work on scraping off some more border...but we'll see how much energy i actually have after i type this blog!! it might turn into a a bowl of popcorn and movie kind of night, something i havent done much of recently! i promise to post some pics of the livingroom after i get the mess cleaned up!

i have recently received some amazing news too...not only am i going to spend this weekend in syracuse for kelly's baby shower, but mandy is flying up from florida for a weekend at the end of october and there are already plans in the making for a girls night that weekend!! i am super excited!! and kellie is flying in from colorado on the twins 1st bday to spend 8 days with us!!!!!!!! i cant wait - it has been a year and a half since we last saw each other...i cannot wait to spend a whole week with her!! and how amazing that she gets to meet the twins for the first time on their first birthday!! i dont know if she will ever understand how absolutely amazing that is to me!! and the best part is, the whole week was a big surprise for her! obviously she knows now...but i knew about it long before she did - the date just hadnt been set in stone until recently. we are planning on taking a drive up to syracuse while she is here, really really hoping that kelly will have had the baby by then, but otherwise just to hang out with kelly for a day. kellie and kelly have only met once, the week of my wedding, but over the years through me and the internet they seem to have developed quite the relationship! so it will be fun to spend a day with both my kelly-ie's!

so many things to look forward to in the next few months! i just hope i can have most of this work done around here so i can really feel comfortable relaxing and enjoying the mere moments that i'll have with some of the most important girls in my life!

nothing much else new around here...the boys are good, getting more bumps and bruises everyday as they try to become more and more adventerous. frank has been spending a lot of time in the yard this week trying to get things cleaned up for fall. we have spent a lot of time picking apples and pruning those trees...hopefully soon when the temps drop we will have a day to devote to pie baking!

heres a few recent pics of the kids, incase you forgot what they look like!!

a very happy mr. matteo!

a big mouthed grin from mr. cenzo!
sexy italian boys showing off their baby bodies!! and vincenzo's amazing standing abilites!

and the biggest stud of them all, tuscan -

with his hair all done and his nice shirt on for uncle dom's wedding!!

summer is over...

so we went on our vacation...it was a vacation...it was nice to get away.
the construction was 98% done when we got home, so that was even better!! now we just have a lot of painting to do...but thats the fun part, when we can find the time!
the twins went to their 9 month dr. appt on the 2nd.... vincenzo weighs 20lbs...and matteo weighs 19, but he also had a temp of 103! not good, we were relating it to teething at first, it started on sunday and was that high by tuesday, so we knew something was wrong. they tried, unsuccessfully to draw blood at the dr. office and ended up sending him home with a script for motrin. he took the motrin around the clock and by wed morning his temp was even higher. back to the dr. we went and from there they ended up sending us to the hospital because his temp had gotten up to 104.6 - very scary, especially since he hadnt been showing signs of anything...no ear infection, no sinus infection...nothing. i spent the day with him in the hospital, beth spent the evening so i could go home and take care of tuscan and cenzo and then when frank got out of work he went up and spent the night. by thursday morning matteo had broken out in a rash and the fever dropped immediately. apparently he had roseola...we were very grateful that it ended up being something diagnosable before we had to run anymore tests and by friday at his follow up appt. he was given a clean bill of health, so thanks to those of you who were praying for us....needless to say it was a very stressful way to spend our first week home from vacation!
im happy to be back to work, i actually missed it, a lot!! and frank was able to admit the same thing! we have gotten the new closet in the new foyer primed, but thats about it so far.
matteo has 3 teeth, cenzo has 4...they have started stage 3 baby food and they arent sure whether or not they like the chunks!!
my brother in law dom got married on labor day (my dad and beths 1st anniversary) we had our parents over on the 7th for dinner - happy grandparents day!! and today vincenzo decided to climb up a stair...looking at me the whole time with a look on his face that said he knew he was doing something he shouldnt be! that i am not ready for yet!! crawling is one thing, but they all need to stay in the same room!
thats all for now, time to get the little ones to bed - hopefully i will be able to get back on track now that the craziest month of my year is over!

we are all still alive!....construction day 28...

i know it has honestly been forever since i blogged...20 days to be exact, and i deeply apologize, but life around here has been way to busy.
my cousin sarah got married on 8/8/08 and my whole week was planned with her, and it was awesome. on tuesday, 8/5 we had her wine tasting tour bachelorette party up at niagara on the lake, canada...in a limo!! it was awesome...then we had her rehersal dinner on the 7th and the wedding the 8th. the wedding was gorgeous. it was such a fun girl week, i was able to spend some time finding myself again!! pics will be sent out through snapfish in a week or so....if you arent on that mailing list then add your email in a comment! i'd be happy to share...
the wedding week was quickly followed up by a girls weekend, saturday the 9th, my bff kelly drove down from syracuse to spend the weekend. our day was very full of excitement. we hung out with the kids at the house for a while, then drove out to my parents so she could see the house and so my aunt and uncle from california could meet the twins. then we headed to supercuts so my mom could see kelly pregnant!! and we had a "for old time sake" lunch at louies - slime dogs (hotdogs with texas sauce on them) and fries, a buffalo tradition!! then we headed back to the house to highlight and trim her hair and we spend the remainer of the evening finishing up her baby shower invites (i made them, they are amazing!) and going through all my baby stuff. i sent her on her way sunday, after a shopping adventure at the waterloo outlets, with a truck overflowing with baby stuff...a swing, a papysan bouncy seat, tons of clothes - she better have a boy!!
thats it for tonight though...im off to bed...i promise there will be many more updates to come - tuscan/taenato tift...tuscan and vincenzo tift...(there seems to be a trend here - tuscan!) and on a happy note, our vacation, we leave saturday morning 5am (i hope) and we wont be back for a week!! so talk to you then!!

crazy days of summer...construction day 8

there isnt really any picture updates of the house for the week, without a before and after shot, the things that have been done wouldnt look very significant. but there is now a new roof over the foyer and front half of the living room...so no more water in our living room!! yeah! they have also framed in the new ceiling in the livingroom.
frank and i went yesterday to buy our tile and an outside light and a light for the foyer, we were very excited to be making such important long term purchases for our house, which is becoming more and more our home everyday!!

yesterday was our 4 year anniversary and i can honestly say, it was a perfect day. i worked in the morning and did a little running around, grocery shopping, etc.. but then we spent our day together with the kids, we ran to lowes to get the stuff for the house and then came home and had an amazing dinner together! frank cooked of course, not me!! but we had steak, that was cooked to total perfection, stuffed hot peppers which were just hot enough and loaded with a homemade cheese mixture, fresh beets and mashed potatoes! it was very comparable to eating in a resturant, only it cost us about a third of the price!! once dinner was over we bathed all the kids and packed everyone up for a sunset walk along the river and some ice cream at cousin vinny's doghouse! we all shared a bowl of perry's canolli ice cream and it was to die for!! tuscan of course loved all of the miniture chocolate chips, but just to see him walking along the river path was so awesome. the river walk and ice cream was something i remember doing with my parents when i was a little girl, so to now be instilling that summer tradition on my son, it just solidified one of the many reasons why i am so happy with where my life is at right now. it was a simple, yet very amazing way to spend such a special day in our life! we truly are more blessed than i would have ever imagined...

today was also a pretty good day...everyone was very well behaved all day - the atmosphere in the house was pretty calm and relaxed, dispite the banging and hammering happening out on the roof. well, that was until bed time - the babies are currently approaching an hour of screaming, i have been up there multiple times to rock them, burp them, hold them, sing to them...they are so beyond tired right now, they just cant seem to figure out how to calm down and go to sleep, they are screaming with their eyes closed!! and now my nerves are shot. i hate when there isnt anything i can do to make my babies feel better...and with two of them its even harder. sure i could go up there and rock one of them until he falls asleep but then the other one lays there screaming even harder because he can see me! its a horrible vicious cycle that no mother should ever have to endure...its the kind of anxiety that makes me wonder why God chose me to become the mother of twins, sometimes i feel like i just wasnt cut out for this job because there are just days when i cant seem to figure it out....
on a happy note today though, tuscan woke up from his nap today and peed on the potty right away, and then he put a pull up on for the first time!! he wore it all through dinner and kept dry, peed on his potty before his shower...but then wet the pull up when Nonna got here with new pez for his pez dispenser. apparently the excitement made him pee!! i say all the time that kids and puppies are one in the same! that was my justification!!
with the weekend approaching, the to do list is getting longer. my cousins wedding is a week from today, we have a wedding the weekend after that and then the following weekend we are heading to the beach for a week!! yeah!!!!!!!!!! i cant wait...its the one week this year that i have been counting down until. and its finally almost here!

day 2...

so the guys were here working again today...more walls are partially gone and so is part of the ceiling...the current condition of everything is really bad...the worst of the worries we were anticipating, so the guys definitely have their work cut out for them!! tomorrow is a day off for them and for us...we are heading to pittsburgh for the day with the kids and our parents, to celebrate our anniversary!! 4 years on thursday!! so we are heading to chipotle chipotle.com for lunch (yeeaahhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) im super excited about that...they we are going to the pittsburgh zoo and the national avairy and we will finish the day with dinner at fatheads fatheads.com, our favorite hole in the wall-amazing resturant!

but here are the pics of what got done today...

the front hall, looking into it from the dinning room... no more door, for now!

the living room, looking in from the side of the foyer, there will be a wall back in that spot eventually...

the pile of garbage where the stone platform used to be...

the kids and i headed out to the east aurora farmers market to pick up some fresh stuff today...beth met us there and then we headed back to my parents house for some hot dogs! its always so nice and relaxing out there...sitting out on the deck breathing in the fresh country air!

say a prayer that we make it down to pittsburgh without any major issues...ie - crying babies for 3 hours!

under construction...day 1

yes, my house is under construction...today was the start of a few very long weeks, but weeks that will be worth every minute in the end.

we have been having some problems with water leaking in our living room ceiling the last several months and today was the day to start correcting those issues. as it turns out, the front of our livingroom and our foyer, used to be a front porch. the previous owners (previous before our parents 25 years ago) apparently decided to enclose the front porch, make a foyer and make the livingroom bigger for a wood burning stove. well we had taken the stove out a few years ago, the week before the october storm - go figure! but we never took out the stone platform that it was on or the brick wall that was behind it. its out now though!!

franks cousin rich and stepdad mel are doing the work on the house and todays accomplishments were:

- rip out the wall between the foyer and livingroom.

- take down the brick wall

- tear out the stone platform

there is dust everywhere!! but today was just the beginning of some pretty amazing changes. ill post pics as the weeks go on so you can see where we began and where we end up. i think you will be pretty amazed in the end. we are changing the floor plans around a little and its going to be amazing! we also will end up residing the front part of the house that is being repaired...and we're changing the color! unfortunately we can afford to reside the whole house this year, but its a start...and who cares if its a different color for a little while...a good friend once told me (bridget) "it will just be your accent wall!" and hey, who ever said the accent wall had to be on the inside of the house!

today was the day...

to get my other tattoo that is! and it turned out totally amazing! its not completely the idea i orginally had, but in its own way i think its a lot better...i really really wanted the twins names to be on it somehow, how could i have tuscan's name and not the twins...but in all honesty, their names are really long and to fit it on my foot with the tattoo itself would have been way to much...i do think i want to at least add their initials to it, but we'll wait and see how it heals first. the whole tattoo ended up just being totally symbolic and representative of the twins instead of spelling it out.

(pic to be posted once my computer wants to load it properly! - and more details of my day to come...it was an awesome day, totally what i needed, but what i need most right now is to plop on the couch with my honey and enjoy some alone time with him...priorities!!)

well for whatever reason the picture doesnt want to load in the right direction, but here it is anyway... just lay across your computer desk and u will be able to see it the right way!

and to conclude a great day, not only did i get to work with jess this morning, but she also joined me to "hold my hand" while i got my tattoo...she is no longer a tattoo witnessing virgin! but then she also came over for dinner with me, frank and the kids (she's husbandless this week!) and she also joined me at my first meeting with my new girls group from church. it was so awesome to have a whole day devoted to not only being me, but being me with a bunch of other girls!!

frank was home with the kids by himself pretty much all day and he did amazing...everyone was in bed when i got home! it was so nice to have a day where we switched rolls more or less! i look forward to the next tuesday that i have a chance to get together with all the girls. we're trying to make it an every other tuesday thing, but the next week they are getting together is my cousin sarah's bachelorette day - an amazingly fun day with the girls...just different girls!!

i will find my innerself once again, if its the last thing i do this year!

im in love....

with my new double stroller that is!!


we have been having issues with the double stroller that we had for a while now (it was $40 at a yard sale, bought before we knew we were having twins...thought it would be great for tuscan and a baby.. but then there were two) so recenly we have been talking more seriously about investing in a better one...one that offered more support in the seats, one with more reclining options in the front and back and right now, very importantly, something that had a 5 point harness in the front and back. the one we currently have the back seat could either be straight up or flat down...there was no in between option and the front seat barely reclined at all...not enough for a baby to comfortably take a nap. and it didnt have 5 point harnesses...a must have for our babies at their current age...my daredevil vincenzo has recently decided that he really likes to ride in the stroller, hanging over the edge so he can watch the ground go by...it scares me to death!


so after showing up at jess's friday with only 3 wheels on my stroller, i decided it was time to move forward. i spent the weekend comparing prices and model and decided on one at babies r us. i got a great deal, as i had a 20% off coupon for there and i got the exact stroller that i wanted, all the way down to the color combo i wanted!! and i love it, maybe even more so than the kids did!! it folds nicely, its easy to open, its so much safer, its sturdier...its basically amazing!! so heres some pics of tuscan and matteo trying it out, inside - it was raining when i got it home!

and matteo decided to play with tar tonight...i love seeing tarzan with the kids...its something i used to dream about when i first got him 8 years ago...and its amazing to see it really happening, he is sooooo good with them, so patient, never snippy...the can crawl on him, drool on him, pull on him...he doesnt care!

a summertime tradition...7/20/08

so today was a fun filled, action packed day...for some reason two of our favorite summer festivals decided to finish up on the same weekend - the canal fest and the italian fest. and come on, who can choose between those?? canal fest = craft show, italian fest = great food! so we didnt choose, we went to both!


our sunday started, as every sunday should, by going to church and i can honestly say, church has been so much more enjoyable lately since tuscan has made the decision that he would rather go to kids church than sit with us! so he goes and does his thing and we hang out with the twins during the worship and sermon...we're almost ready to start sending the twins to the nursery too though so that we can truly regain focus on the things we actually go to church for - no interruptions, i can barely imagine that in any aspect of our life!


from church we headed out to the canal fest and no sooner do we find a place to park, its starts pouring rain! fortunately we were able to kill time in the van feeding the twins lunch and letting tuscan watch a movie because once the rain cleared up we had a pretty good time. it was just nice to be out and about, walking! we didnt get anything for ourselves, but we did get nonna's request taken care of... all three of the boys handprints in clay that will be turned into a gorgeous ceramic piece to hang on the wall.. beth has done it the last two years with just tuscan and this year she needed all 3! ill post a pic when it gets here.


then we headed over to the italian fest, it rained the whole drive over there, but was fine once we parked...matt, bridget and chase met us there and we were able to share a summertime favorite with some of the favorite people in our life. FYI - they are friends of ours from church, chase is a few months younger than tuscan but they are pretty much best friends! we ate all of our favs...stuffed peppers, stuffed artichokes, gelato, pastry hearts, giant pizza! it was awesome, we had a really good time. tuscan and chase ended the night with a few games of "i got it" and then we all headed home. we got our babies to bed quickly and quietly and started a new movie...hopefully we will finish it before the week is over!

it was bright out, we're all squinty! but we sure do all look italian!

oh, and the twins were there, i promise!!

tuscan really enjoyed that pizza and finished his night off with a giant smiley face cookie...it was as big as his face!