Ryan is 2!!

We had all the family and some of our friends over to celebrate Ryan's birthday.  The theme was...what else, but Elmo!

Ryan loved his Elmo cake.

He was so excited to dig into it that he didn't want to wait for us to sing.

Who writes a birthday cake in all lowercase letters?

Amelia went first at "Place the Nose on Elmo."

Everyone was able to get the nose on perfectly.

...except for Ryan.

Nathan was a super helpful big brother by assisting in the gift opening...and gift playing.  

He must have known that he was my present :)

Ryan is wondering why Nathan is playing with more of the toys than he is.

Ryan was practicing on his new plasmacar.

After the party, there was a hardcore game of Sorry going on.

Then on Ryan's actual birthday, we had cupcakes and sang...again.  

Niagara/Toronto Vacation!

We just returned from our summer vacation.  This year we went to Niagara Falls and Toronto.  We made a quick stop along the way in Ithaca.  You can see all of our pictures via the slideshow on the right side of the screen.  

I had to post one video here though.  It is of our last night in Toronto.  We stayed at the Skydome hotel and our room looked directly into the Blue Jays stadium.  So cool!

Video from the Skydome Hotel

Da 'Burgh

Here are some pictures from our recent trip to Pittsburgh.  It was a very entertaining weekend!

The cooks in the kitchen!

New type of beer?  We don't have that in New Jersey.

Here are 2 of Charlie's grandsons with our boys.  They all really like playing together.

We took the boys to play in the water at PPG Place.  They went wild!

Then we had ice cream for lunch.

Nathan and Grammy split a banana split.

Ryan ate all of his...shocker!

Nathan had a hard time finishing his.

Then a few weeks later, we took the boys to DC to see Mets vs. Nationals.

Brothers hugging it out pre-game.

Nathan started jumping off the diving board at swim lessons.  He is growing up too fast!

Baby You're A Firework!

This was one of the best 4th of July's ever.  We had a long 4 day weekend and we did fun stuff the entire time.  We started the weekend off by going to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden.

Nathan is riding a gigantic turtle.  Ryan would run as soon as we let him out of the stroller so we had to  contain him.  Poor guy.

The aquarium has an awesome view of Philadelphia.  Nathan is such a tough guy.

Here are the boys riding the hippo.

And here they are playing some drum.  I'm not sure what this has to do with sea life, but....

Nathan even pet a starfish.

Later that night, we went to see fireworks in Collingswood.  As you can tell, Ryan wasn't that interested in it.  

We had been wanting to get the boys Crocs and we finally found what we wanted.  Ryan is rocking some Yo Gabba Gabbas.

And Nathan is stylin' in his classic blue style.

On Friday, we took Nathan to the movies to see Monster's University.  It was a really cute movie.  We went to a theater that has reclining chairs.  It was quite a unique experience.

Then on Saturday, we spent the day lounging around Pap Pap and Nonni's pool.

What is Uncle Bobby doing?

Summer wouldn't be summer without popsicles.

Nathan jumped in the pool about 100 times.

We have a fish on our hands.

We also had to convert Ryan to his toddler bed this weekend.  He had been crawling out of his bed so we were forced to convert.  It was a little early in our opinion, but he is doing surprisingly well.

He falls asleep every night on the floor next to his door.  Then we move him to his bed and he sleeps fine for the rest of the night.  Hopefully, he'll realize that the bed is much more comfortable than the floor.