Father's Day and AC Challenge Half

Since I was so happy with our new garden, I invited my family to come to Philly for Father's Day last weekend. The whole crew came in from Kutztown and brought a whole DIY pizza picnic. The garden was a hit and I loved having the family to spend time at our house.

I even got Timmy a "Come with me kitty" leash so he can now go outside with us! He doesn't love it but he does love being outside!

After dinner we headed to the Vynamic office to show my family my new office and celebrate my Grandma's 85th birthday on the roofdeck. On Friday I was very surprised to find out that I was promoted, so my family brought champagne to celebrate as well! My Grandma told me it was the "best birthday she has ever had," so I would call that a success!

This year Andrew has really dedicated his time to training for triathlons, so we kicked off the season with the AC Challenge Half Ironman this weekend. His friends from Penn State tri club came into town and we loaded the Civic up with lots of bikes and headed to Atlantic City to get ready for the race.

When the boys signed up for the race months ago, we had hoped for a beautiful day on the beach on Saturday and a potentially sunny, hot day on race day. The weather on Saturday was horrendous, 70 and very rainy, but we made the best of it and spent Saturday afternoon on the boardwalk.

We were up early on Sunday morning (3:30am, yikes!) to find that the weather had finally cleared up. All the rain cooled off the water so the boys lucked out with a wetsuit swim in the bay.

We didn't see the boys on the bike at all so the next time I saw Andrew was on the run. To my surprise, he was in 1st place! I was totally not expecting to see him winning the race and hoped he would be able to hold on - and he did! He won the entire race, it was crazy!

The rest of the boys did awesome as well! Dan got 1st in his age group and 7th overall, Buda got 3rd in his age group, and Marc got 5th in his age group! Our Air BnB house killed it!

We spent the afternoon hanging out on the boardwalk, watching the racers come in, and waiting for the awards ceremony. The race medals up to 5 places so all the boys got to stand on the podium!

It was a really fun weekend and a great way to start off the tri season. I was especially happy to get home and show Mer Mer my new shirt! Only 4 more weeks until we are in Sonoma for the Vineman full Ironman! 

Back to the House - Garden Time!

It has been awhile since my last post! I have been traveling to Long Island nearly every week for my latest project and our weekends are filling up to make the most of summer! The commute to Long Island can be a pain, but I try to take advantage of my time in NYC!

Making the most of work travel

We spent Memorial Day weekend in South Carolina with our good friends, Kat and Nick, and ended up on Folly Beach with my parents! They are celebrating their 30 year wedding anniversary and got a house on Folly for two weeks, so we crashed with them for two nights. The weekend on the beach was a really nice way to spend the long weekend with our friends.

Last weekend was spent near Annapolis, Maryland for Andrew's best friend Graham's wedding. Andrew was the best man so we spent Friday and Saturday night in Maryland celebrating with the bride and groom. We lucked out with beautiful weather and had a really nice time with Andrew's friends!

This weekend we had no plans so we decided to tackle our back yard. We removed the chain link fence a few months ago and built a raised bed around the stump we were not able to rip up. I planted Cat Grass and Zinnias in the bed, expecting nothing to grow in the poor city soil we have.

Before

The flowers are all sprouting and our yard is finally transforming! We decided to buy a "conversation set" off of Walmart.com so we had a place to relax outside. We chose to pick up the order in store and were very excited when we got the email that it arrived early this weekend! Before going to WalMart to pick it up, we headed to Greensgrow Farms in West Philly to pick up some more flowers!

The flowers survived the ride home so we planted everything and then headed to WalMart to find a big surprise waiting for us - the box was much bigger than anticipated! Fortunately, we got it all home in two trips! Gotta love the Civic! 

The assembly of the furniture was much more difficult than anticipated - it took us nearly 3 hours. I cursed WalMart several times but we managed to assemble it! The furniture was a perfect fit!

We were really really pleased with how the entire yard came together in the end. Our sweaty, dirty selves enjoyed a glass of wine and a relaxed evening on our new furniture!

The final piece of the garden project was closing off the path to the alley. We love letting the cats outside with us but they run straight down the alley and we always end up losing them for a few hours. 

We did some research and decided to make a door out of pallets. There is a ton of construction going on around our house so we were able to find enough scrap wood to make one for free! Such a bonus!

It took Andrew and Dan all afternoon but it was a fairly easy (and supposedly fun) door project! I am really happy with the final product, it feels very "Pinterest-y"!

I now feel like our kitchen and back yard are ready for entertaining! Everyone is welcome to join us this summer :)