I have totally gotten out of the habit of blogging. So much going on! I haven’t even been taking too many photos the past week or so. But of course, there are always SOME photos that must be blogged and there is fascinating stuff going on around here which the world must see.

The first thing on my mind this morning is my new niece, Vivi Lee, born yesterday! Here she is with my mom (Grandma Viv) and her big brother Cody.

Congratulations to my sister Janet and my brother-in-law Bob! I can’t wait to meet her in person in a few weeks. I wish I was there now! My arms are literally aching to hold this baby.

Send more pictures please!

The next thing on my mind is the fun evening I had Saturday night. I was invited by the Tampa Bay Rays to attend the game versus the San Diego Padres on Saturday and to stay for the Kenny Loggins concert afterwards.

{Disclosure: I was given free tickets to the game and VIP field passes for the concert in exchange for helping to spread the word about the Rays Summer Concert Series.}

My friend BJ agreed to be my date and we had awesome seats right behind home plate.

It’s always cool to be at Tropicana Field. I have been there many times for Rays games and for other events (like when I did a bootcamp workout on the field, and when I ran through it during the Women’s Half Marathon), but it never gets old.

After a few innings we met up with my friend Ali and her boyfriend Mark and moved over to their seats near the outfield.

We were ready for some ballpark food, and on Ali’s suggestion Bobbi-Jo and I got these awesome turkey carver sandwiches at a kiosk called Carvers.

There was like a pound of turkey on this thing, and the thick-cut chips were awesome also.

We had instructions to head down to one of the outfield field entrances during the 9th inning. While we were waiting in the VIP holding pen (feeling very important) we watched the game on a television that was down there and got to see the Rays win the game!

We felt pretty special to be one of the first few people allowed onto the field after the game.

We were positioned right in front of the concert stage!

The Rays have been doing a Summer Concert Series for a few years now, and the concerts are very popular.

The field filled up behind us and there were tons of people still in the stands for the concert.

We were so close to Kenny!

Thank you so much for the VIP treatment, Rays!

We had a blast singing along with all of Kenny’s 80’s hits like “I’m Alright” (theme song from Caddyshack), “Footloose” (theme song of Footloose, duh), and “Danger Zone” (theme song from Top Gun). He’s the sound track king! 

I got pretty nostalgic and a little emotional when he sang “Forever”, remembering what it felt like to be 16 years old in 1985. We were surrounded by a few Kenny Loggins superfans, and I thought one lady was going to faint during this song because she got so emotional.

It was so fun. Thanks again, Rays, and thanks to my date BJ and my BFF Ali. You guys are always awesome.

Be sure to check out some more of the Rays Summer Concert Series: Martina McBride (June 8th, Rays vs. Baltimore Orioles), Imagination Movers (June 16, Rays vs. Kansas City Royals), Carly Rae Jepsen (July 14, Rays vs. Houston Astros), One Republic (August 17, Rays vs. Toronto Blue Jays), and Victoria Justice (August 18, Rays vs. Toronto Blue Jays).

Also last week, there was tons of improvements happening at our old house including professional cleaning, interior painting, new carpet, and a few odd jobs for the handyman.

It’s now gleaming because it’s so fresh and new and clean. And it’s on the market!

It feels so weird to see that realtor’s lock box hanging from MY doorknob. We are really hoping that it sells quickly!

Because now we have this other house…lots of unpacking going on last week.

I pretty much have the kitchen and dining room unpacked and set up now, but there are still boxes everywhere.

I escaped the madhouse on Friday to go on a Principal’s List fieldtrip with Mack.

It was at a local gymnastics place, in case you couldn’t figure that out.

Good times. Probably the last fieldtrip of the year, I guess.

It’s hard to believe there are only a few weeks of school left!

Finally, I had a great Mother’s Day.

I pretty much spent it ordering the boys around and unpacking because that is what I most wanted to do. I can’t wait to finally have the house set up so we can actually just LIVE in it. I’m so tired of digging through boxes and not being able to find stuff!

That’s it for now…

Cya.

From that random title, I guess you can tell this is a catch-up post. I just haven’t had time for blogging and I think that’s how it’s going to be for the next month or so. I do want to try to blog and keep a record of this exciting time in our life, though. The whole point of this blog is to record my memories for posterity and I don’t want to forget the details of our days during this time. So I’m just going to do the best I can and try to get some photos and words posted here and there. This post is going to be long and random and have tons of photos because I am so far behind. You have been warned.

This week was filled with packing, house painting, booking movers, and inspecting the new house. Lots of fun stuff. We are closing on the new house on April 30th and have the movers booked for May 3rd (a Friday, so Chad can take the day off and then have the weekend). It may seem like a month is plenty of time to pack, but I feel stressed about it. We have lived in this house for 17 years and have so much stuff! Getting ready to move is my #1 priority for the next month. I do still need to be training for the swim at the St. Anthony’s Triathlon on April 28th because I don’t want to let my team down, but other than that I am going to be focused on house stuff (getting ready to move to the new house and getting the old house ready to put on the market).

One of the highlights of the week for the boys was hitting the box bonanza at Fit2Run thanks to my friend Dawn who used to work there and suggested it. They loved getting up on the loading dock and throwing boxes down at me.

We are burning through boxes and I’ve been looking for them at liquor stores, grocery stores, and from friends (thanks Kate!). Fit2Run was the mother load of nice sized boxes! We filled the car up and I’m sure we’ll be back there for more.

The house is in total chaos. It’s bad.

My bikes are living in the house temporarily so that they are safe from the painters’ pressure washing and spraying paint.

We did take a break from packing to dye some eggs on Friday.

The painters have been great.

Our shed is a good representation of the true color, which is basically the same color that it was before.

It looks so cute!

On Friday I took the boys out to Fort DeSoto to hang out with our friends the Z’s who were camping out there.

They had a blast canoeing and running around and getting filthy all day.

While they were at Fort DeSoto I also had a blast spending three hours at the new house while our home inspector was doing his thing. My friend, the other Caroline, met me there and helped me take measurements of all the rooms because we need to buy some new furniture and I needed to know what I should be looking for in terms of size. It was awesome to get a longer and closer look at the house. I will be sharing more pictures once it is really and truly OURS and other people aren’t living there, but here’s a picture of the pool and lanai. It’s fabulous.

It’s pretty much impossible for me to think about anything other than moving right now. We are not people who move a lot, obviously. This is a really big deal to us. We plan to be in this new house for the next 20 years or until we are ready to move to a retirement community (and that IS what we plan to do one day).

Yesterday morning we all headed to Ybor City in Tampa for the Cuban Sandwich Festival.

We were invited to attend as VIP’s this year after I blogged about the festival last year. We arrived around 11 a.m. and it wasn’t too crowded at that point. It was a perfect, gorgeous Florida spring day.

We walked around the festival for a bit, getting the lay of the land. The boys got some samples of mini donuts…

and beef jerky.

We found the Yelp table and said, “Hey” to my friend Brett, the Yelp Tampa Bay community manager.

We found the VIP area, which was a nice shady secluded area with tables and chairs. They were going to have food there after the sandwich judging, but we were already really hungry so we decided to just go buy some food. Since we had already perused the vendors we knew what we wanted.

From Datz…

we grabbed two Havana Hotties and an order of chips with drizzle.

From Pipo’s…

we got a plate of pork, rice, and black beans and a Cuban sandwich.

That was a lot of food that we all shared!

From Datz:

From Pipo’s:

Everything was delicious. It was great to have a nice comfortable shady table at which to sit and eat.

Thanks Victor and Jolie for inviting us! This is Victor addressing the judges and other VIPs:

The pork and rice and beans were the best thing from Pipo’s. Their Cuban was good, but did not come close to the awesomeness of Datz’ Havana Hottie. Datz got our vote!

While we enjoyed the shade the judges were hard at work (locals will recognize the local news celebrities).

One of my blogger friends, Megan from I Run for Wine, was one of the judges!

I also ran into my friend Amber in the VIP area.

Amber and I went on a crazy bachelorette party weekend cruise together a few years ago and have been Facebook friends ever since. We are always at the same events and never run into each other, so it was great to reconnect with her.

I found this pic from our cruise, Amber…from before I was blogging so regularly (Feb. 2010):

So back to the Cuban Sandwich Festival…I capped off our VIP experience by trying a cappuccino from this fabulous coffee machine:

I shared it with the boys and it was delicious.

As we were leaving, around 12:30, the crowds had really thickened. These are basically the same shots…

11:00 am:

12:30 pm:

So the moral of the story is arrive early to festivals! Last year we couldn’t get a Cuban to save our lives, and this year there seemed to be plenty to be had. We had a great time. If you went to the Cuban Sandwich Festival this year I’d love to hear about your experience (and so would Victor and Jolie, I’m sure).

Since we were already in that neck of the woods, after the festival we went to Ikea to scope out some furniture for the new house.

We are moving from a 1440 square foot house to a 2950 square foot house. There are lots of things we are going to need and we’ll be acquiring things slowly as we see what becomes a priority. We know that pretty quickly we need some sort of media console as our current entertainment center won’t fit where we need it. Also, the boys are both getting new beds and we are going to sell their current bunk beds. We also need a sofa bed or some sort of bed for the guest room. There was lots of bed testing going on in Ikea.

We spent at least two hours in Ikea and the only thing we bought was a $2 milk frother. But now we have some ideas of things that may work from there (boys’ beds) and things that we need to look elsewhere for (media console). The boys were thoroughly exhausted and bored by the end, but they hung in there and were pretty well behaved. A reward was in order.

So that brings us to today. Are you bored enough yet?

Happy Easter!

I hope the Easter bunny can find us in our new house next year, but he definitely didn’t forget about us today.

Just like last year, that rascally rabbit brought the boys weapons. Last year it was steampunk nerf guns…

This year it was airsoft pistols.

After Easter baskets it was time for the annual egg hunt with Joey Z., weapons included.

And…go!

We have been doing this egg hunt since they were so little. It’s the end of an era, I guess. We may have to drive over next year for the egg hunt. I hope that whoever owns our house then doesn’t mind if we hunt for eggs in their yard.

After the Easter excitement was over I drove to Home Depot to get some yard beautification supplies.

Chad thinks that sprucing up the yard is a waste of time, but our realtor assures us that it is worth it. The flower bed at the foot of our stairs went from this…

to this:

I hope the flowers fill in nicely over the next month.

The shed went from this…

to this:

The evolution of the shed over the past couple of months is awesome.

Okay, whew. I think that’s all I have for today. Sort of caught up. I really need to try to blog a little every day instead of massively every four days. It’s too much, I know. But at least it’s all recorded for posterity!

Cya.