Busy Weekend

This past weekend we had three separate visits from friends and family, making it a very busy and fun few days. On Thursday and Friday my brother Mike and his girlfriend Chang visited; on Saturday and Sunday my good friend from high school, Aliza, her husband Todd and baby Zachary visited; and on Sunday evening our good friends from college, Jim and Jenn Birdsall, visited all the way from Switzerland.


Mike is finishing up his clerkship at the end of this month and will be starting his first job as an official lawyer in September. He found himself with a handful of vacation days to use up over the next few weeks so luckily we have been able to see him three times over the past week and a half! It was the first time that Chang had visited us at our house so we had a fun two days showing her around good 'ole PA and she even showed me how to cook some authentic Chinese food, so I had a great time doing that. The Lai Lai Brothers takeout will never be quite as good to me now that I've had some of the real deal - yum!

Here are a few photos of Chang with Benjamin. She loves to see him and he loves playing with her too, especially to grab and pull her long hair!!

We took Chang to the infamous King of Prussia shopping mall on Thursday afternoon and wowed her with the prospect of every store you could possibly imagine under one roof! Chang sat in the backseat of the car with Benjamin as we drove there, taking pictures of him and making silly faces at him to keep him amused. He certainly liked that! It helped to distract him from remembering that he usually doesn't care to lay back in his infant seat. All smiles:

In a moment of weakness, Ben remembers how he really feels about sitting in his seat. Luckily (for Andrew and me!), I just purchased Ben's new big boy carseat online today so hopefully he'll like this one better since he'll be sitting upright in it. He loves his upright stroller since he can sit up and view the world so we're hoping the carseat situation will be the same!

Ben always loves when his mommy and daddy act goofy and make silly noises for him and has recently started to unmistakeably imitate us. Chang got the biggest kick when I was blowing raspberries onto Ben's tummy while getting him dressed and playing the PEW! "stinky feet" game with him. He was smiling and letting out deep belly laughs the entire time!

Here we are going on a walk during the day on Friday since it was perfect weather. Ben loves to go on a walk so I try to do it as often as I can. Plus, with so many shops closeby, it's fun for Mommy too :).

Our fun continued on Saturday AM when Todd, Aliza and Zachary Sherman came from Hoboken, NJ for our annual weekend visit together. We had seen the Shermans on Mother's Day but hadn't seen each other since then and it was fun to see how much the two babies had grown in the past three months. Zachary is nearly nine months old and Benjamin is close to five months old. Aliza and I have been friends since George Washington Elementary School in Wyckoff, NJ and love how much fun we can still have together nearly 17 years after first meeting (!!).

On Saturday the big guys played golf in the afternoon while Aliza and I stayed home with the little guys and spent some quality time together. As usual, we had some good laughs and just had a great time seeing each other. We took the babies on a long walk to get the boys out of the house for a while (and to firm up our post-pregnancy Mommy thighs and tushies) and joked about how our husbands were out all afternoon while we were stuck at home with the kids!! We also jokingly instructed the boys to call us "Mrs. Sherman" and "Mrs. Martin" since we have always had a laugh at our old Wyckoff formality where we and all of our friends referred to each other's parents with the Mr. and Mrs. prefix instead of calling them by their first name. It's so funny to think that WE'RE now those "old" parents!!!

Here are a few photos of Zach and Ben playing.

Yesterday all four of us took the little ones to the park and Ben had his first go on a real playground swing. Zachary loves going on the swings in his park back home so he was able to show Ben the ropes and soon both boys were having a great time!

Wheeeeee!! Gotta love those legs, huh?:

Mommies and babies:

Ben and his daddy...Andrew was having such a good time pushing his little guy on the swings!

Last night Jim and Jenn visited and although we didn't take any pictures, we had such a good time visiting with them and introducing them to Benjamin. We're working on Ben's manners, though, since he has been teething lately and was a bit cranky last night for our visit :). With all of the drooling and fussiness he's been doing lately, we'll hopefully soon have a few little teeth of his to show off!