10 years

 10 years ago on 5/12/2006 we said I DO. This year we celebrated a decade of life and love.  When we got married we promised each other we would go to Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary, How naive we were!! 5 kids, a nursing baby and no babysitter- Hawaii ain't happening any time soon. The kids had the day off because of a teacher workshop day. I had a Dr appointment I had been waiting 4 months for and Mike had to go to Worcester for meetings. Nevertheless we were determined to do something. We told the kids we were celebrating the birth of our family.  It was 80 degrees so we headed to the beach at 4 pm, Thanks to Facebook recommendations we tried a fun take out/eat outside type place and checked out a new beach neither of us had never been too. It was a great evening. And thanks to the DVD player in our new van we could talk the whole way there and back without a peep from the overtired kids in the back. A win win all around.

 Everyone in our family loves a good burger, especially Israel!

 He mostly enjoys the fries and ice cream

 Blurry cell phone pics but cute lighthouse right?

 #keepingittreal

 Avila was there too I promise... thats her hood clad head in the turquoise

Avila's first haircut

 Avila had a baby mullet going on. Super long in the back, well past her neckline.

 But shorter in the front. I had my hairdresser just trim/shape the back part of her hair.

 No more mullet!!

 All trimmed up

Still crazy from the front though :P

Avila Rose at 4 months

Legoland Boston

The Threenanger!!!!

Project family room

 Step 1- redo the beige fireplace. Remove tile and mantle and sides.

 Step 2 remove upper part of wall above stove to open up family room to kitchen. Would love to remove the whole wall but the gas line is there and thats too much $$ to do right now.

 better view of whats being opened up. Step 3 remove nasty carpet and replace with hardwood floors

A reminder of what the family room looked like when we moved in....

Avila almost 4 months

 This was how I made dinner last night. Avila fell asleep on Keira's lap. :)

About 15 lbs and wearing 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers. She is such a love. She has started sleeping so well too. She usually only wakes up once to nurse between 8 pm and 6 am. Sometimes she sleeps all the way through. Much better than the every 1-3 hours she was doing the first 2 months of her life. She is a happy content baby.

The new ride

Once Avila arrived it became apparent that our 7 passenger van wasn't cutting it anymore. Not only was it almost 10 years old but it was completely trashed inside. It became frustrating when we couldn't bring a friend or cousin along when we went anywhere so we started car shopping. The big debate was to just go up to an 8 passenger minivan or to go big and look at a suburban or SUV or NV or transit. Mike wanted to go big but I was afraid to drive anything massive and anything bigger wasn't fitting in the garage. After 3 days of car shopping we ended up with a pre owned Honda Odyssey. We love it. Its so much nicer than our old Odyssey and it has all the bells and whistles like a DVD player which comes in handy on the hour long school pick up.