Welcome to our office!

So I promised a friend I was going to (finally) post the final pictures of our office and exam rooms today. It is now 9 pm, and I haven't even packed for our road trip tomorrow, but here they are. Since I am so short on time, I am going to make this brief!

We hired a muralist to come in and paint our exam rooms. We gave him the themes and he came up with the sketches. His name is Scott Willis and he is amazing! What I found interesting is that he is a retired political cartoonist from the San Jose Mercury News. It took him about 7 weeks to complete all the murals. He is a super nice guy and was great to have around the office. So without further ado, our office!


These first 2 pictures are actually of our waiting room. The only thing we had him do in here was paint our office logo on the wall you see when you first walk in the door. Doesn't our waiting room look like fun? Kids throw a fit when it is time to leave!

Here you can see the logo.

Here is a close up of the logo.


Exam room number 1 is my room. This is the jungle room.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but the gorilla and hippo are pretty big.

The toucan by the door


This is my favorite part of the room. I tell the kids that it is picture of Dr. Pete.


Room number 2 is the pirate room, and is also my room.



He based the 2 little kids on our logo.This map is on the wall with the exam table. Click on it to enlarge it. You can see our names in it if you look.
Here is a close up of the pirate kids.

I love the fun little details he adds. Like this squid reaching into my files.



Exam room 3- 5 are primarily Pete's rooms. Room number 3 is the outer space room.


An overview of the room.

The alien hanging over the light switch.

This alien ship is on the wall with the exam table.

A close up of the astronauts. Pete wanted him to go with older looking astronauts. He felt that if they were too kid like (like my pirate kids) it would be a turn off to the teenagers. Whatever.


Room number 4 is the sports room.

Peter went to St. Mary's for undergrad, so that is why that was chosen. Cal and Stanford were chosen because they are 2 of the Bay Area colleges.

This bat and glove are fairly big, taking up a good portion of one wall.


This is enormous and takes up an entire wall. The dog is the Georgetown Hoya, which is where Pete went to medical school.


Room number 5 is the underwater room. This room is truly amazing to me.


Here is an over view of the room. The animals are so realistic.

You can click on any picture to enlarge it.
This is a close up of the submarine. AP One stands for Almaden Pediatrics One. Again, he incorporated our logo into it.

And there you have it. I am going to kill the first kid who draws on it!!

Now off to pack!!

Baseball Party!

Saturday was Vinnie's last baseball game. (Finally! The official end to the regular season!!) He was great!
In T-ball, they switch to coach pitch the last half of the season. Vincent has done really well with the hitting, and has even improved tremendously on his fielding.






We had the end of the year baseball party at our house after the game.


Of course I had to make a cake for the occasion. I used a 9 x 13 pan to make a double layer cake, which turned out to be pretty big and heavy . I made it into a baseball field. I had a hard time getting the green the right color. I used fondant for the bases and crushed chocolate cookie for the dirt.I had pictures that I had taken of every kid on the team that I made into a wallet size, then cut out. I glued it on a cocktail pick and stuck it in the cake. It looked pretty cute. I think I will do something similar for the upcoming soccer season in the fall.

The party was a huge success! When you added up all the parents and siblings, it came out to over 50 people, of which almost 30 were kids. We were pretty happy with our decision to hire a life guard for the pool. It made for a much more relaxing party, and is something we will definitely do for all future swimming parties!
Vinnie was so excited about receiving his first ever baseball trophy. As the coach, Pete does a great job of spending a few minutes talking about each player and their accomplishments over the season.

Way to go Vinnie!!

My All-Star

Just when we thought baseball season was just about over, along comes All-Stars.

For those not familiar, a few kids are chosen from each team in the different age categories to compete against All-Star teams from other little leagues in the area. This year is the first year Zach is playing at a level that has All-Stars.


I have to admit, our season was such a bust, I wasn't expecting Zach to be chosen. (It is hard to be a stand-out when your team is getting annihilated almost every game)Then we got the call. Zach was chosen!! Then we found out when the games were to begin. Right during vacation. I have plans to drive the 4 boys down to Southern California to visit my mom and other family. While my mom visits us frequently, the rest of my family has not seen much of my boys the last couple of years. I am so proud of all of them and was really looking forward to showing them all off.



I also knew how much being chosen for All-Stars would mean to Zach. It is a chance to end the season on a positive note. A chance to proudly wear the special All-Stars shirt. A chance to show those boys that teased his team for losing.
So we gave him a choice. Go on vacation with Mom, or stay home with Dad and play All-Stars. He chose All-Stars. I am so excited and happy for him. But I cried. I am going to miss him.

This has been baseball on an entirely different level. They practice 7 days a week, 2 hours a day. This coach knows his stuff, is tough, and means business. And Zach loves it.

Damn, I love that kid.

Waving the white flag...

I give up. Once again I am unable to run. I still have the chronic issues with my right foot (partially ruptured plantar fascia and posterior tibial tendonosis) but thankfully those haven't changed much and aren't any bigger problem than usual. A few weeks ago I was running and started to feel pain in my left heel. Same pain as the plantar fasciitis in my right, but further back of my heel. It was mild at first. I immediately started the celebrex and wearing my night brace on my left. Despite that it continued to get worse (at a much faster rate than my right ever did!)

Finally, after a 10 mile run last Sunday, it was sore enough that I was actually limping a bit. I thought about the chronic problems on my right and how I had just told someone a few months ago that if I had known I was going to cause permanent damage to my foot by continuing to run on my injuries, I would have stopped. Here I was again, running with a new injury. So I stopped.

I went back to my podiatrist last week, hoping to get a cortisone shot. Unfortunately, this time my problem is achilles tedonitis, and you can't really inject that or you risk a rupture of the tendon. He gave me some heel lifts for my shoes and told me to rest it for a while.

What is with my feet that I have so many issues running?! I was just reading an article in Runner's World about this man in his 60's who runs 2 marathons a week! He runs 1 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday!! For a year! Over a hundred marathons last year. Sheesh. I run 1 marathon and my feet still haven't forgiven me!

Anyway, I haven't run for a week, and I have definitely improved. I am hoping to get back on the road in a week or so. (working out at the gym is so BORING!) I was supposed to run a half marathon in Los Gatos on July 19th, but not sure if I can get my mileage back up in time for that. I don't want to run it unless I am really prepared, so we will see how it goes.

End of (another) era!

Well, almost an end! Potty training has begun once again in the Contini household. Our nanny, Mona, has an amazing ability to know right when one is ready to train. She came to work a week ago Monday and declared Christopher was ready and she was going to train him. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical, but figured what the heck, let her try.

He has done great! Very few accidents all week. Pete and I kept thinking we were in the "honeymoon phase". That he would grow tired of it after a few days and stop using the potty. Nope, he is doing great! (Ok. It has only been 9 days, so he could still change his mind.)

Over 10 years of diapers coming to an end!! (we had a few months reprieve between Zach and Joey over 7 years ago, but that was it) Woo hoo!!

The boys used Zachary's science project display to give him a little privacy. How thoughtful of them!

My new toy!

For my birthday back in March, Pete told me I could pick out a new camera. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted, but I finally did!

Here is my new Nikon D60! I have been having so much fun playing around with it. It is nice to finally have a "real" camera. I was realizing how limited I was with my simple point and shoot camera. Those pictures just weren't able to get any better.


Now I can get awesome close up pictures. Of flowers,


...and of my gorgeous family! My husband Pete,

...my 10 year old Zachary (good grief! Look at that hair!),


...my 7 year old Joey,

...my 5 year old Vincent,


...and my 2 year old Christopher.

The camera gets great action shots, which is perfect for the kids sports games.



A couple more fun shots--

--Christopher looking up to his big brother Vincent


--Zachary goofing off with his good friend Kyle.

At this point I have just been playing around with the automatic settings. I can't wait to learn how to actually use all the bells and whistles!

Thanks Pete for the amazing present!!