It’s birthday week – which means we’ve had a lot of cake and celebrating in the last several days!
Kevin arranged a surprise birthday dinner for me at a local restaurant, Liberty Tavern, in Powell. It was a Monday night and fortunately many of our friends and their kids were able to join us. We had a nice private room which worked perfectly for our crowd of 24. Growing up my mom made a birthday cake for me each year in the shape of a bunny. The last two years Kevin has sweetly carried on the tradition, as you saw above, and had a bunny cake made for me. Love him!Later in the week it was time to gear-up for Finn’s birthday party on Saturday. How can he already be 2?! Our theme this year was Monsters and we had many of our friends and family come to play for the afternoon. It was a lovely spring day and Finn had a ton of fun playing with his friends. He seemed to really like the monster cake I made for him and he was able to blow out the candle all by himself (after a couple tries!). Here are some photos of the fun. Many thanks to my dad, sister, and Kevin for taking photos during the party!
What a fun week we’ve had with all of our family, celebrating Christmas!
We were fortunate to have my parents and Kevin’s parents watch Finn for the first part of the week while Kevin and I worked and Debbie enjoyed some time with her family. I think everyone had fun with our little guy and I know that he certainly did based on all the smiles and chatter I heard. Mom snapped this cute photo above too.
We spent a couple of nights in Mansfield, including Christmas Eve and part of Christmas day. Time went really fast as it always seems to for me these days. Dad, Amy, and I went out for our annual tradition of Christmas Eve shopping and had lots of fun (all of the kids are saying bye to us through the window below). Later that evening we went to the Christmas Eve church service along with my parents, Amy, Andy, and the kids. Kevin snapped the super cute pic of Finn holding the candle at the end of the service 😉 Then we all gathered in front of the tree (and camera) for our annual family photos. That was quite a trip trying to get all of the kiddos to look up or at least sort of in the direction of the camera. But as always, Amy was able to snap some goodies! We all then headed to a short dessert party at the Dewald’s and then back home to get some shut-eye. We awoke Christmas morning and the kiddos had a bit of play time while the adults grabbed our coffee (or other beverages!). We enjoyed a nice slow pace of going through our Christmas stockings and then had a tasty brunch of sausage, bacon, mush, and eggs before opening our gifts. Griffin seemed to really enjoy everything and loved handing out gifts to everyone. He was an excellent helper.
Greta and Finn are enjoying some tea together, and exchanging some serious looks! Kevin spent many hours setting up Dad’s new computer, transferring files, pictures, getting his email setup and so on. This image captures it all pretty well 🙂
And then he grabbed a cat-nap (er…dog nap?) before we headed back to Columbus to celebrate Christie’s birthday with a fabulous dinner prepared and hosted by the Ackermans. All of the kiddos opened their gifts too. Finn loved his glider soccer ball (I couldn’t get a non-fuzzy pic of him playing with it he was moving so fast) and his new tractor with farm animals!The next couple of days we laid low, relaxed at home, opened some gifts, and played with our new toys. And enjoyed lots of sweet treats (buckeyes in bed while watching sesame street!) – it is the holidays, right?! I basically lost my voice (or at least sounded ridiculous!) for a few days and Finn has had a runny nose off and on for a few days. We think he may be teething some as he has been more irritable then typical and he’s grabbing at his jaw and biting his fingers and playing with them in his mouth alot. But nothing poking through just yet. In any case, he certainly loves to play with his new “tools” and try to fix things. On Sunday we headed to celebrate the holidays with Kevin’s family. We enjoyed a nice lunch with the extended Armstrong family at Cookie and Steve’s. Griffin, however, preferred to play and didn’t eat 🙂 Here he is on the floor with Ora – they enjoyed kicking balls and running with balls for quite some time. And also a bit of fun while Finn played the part of bulldozer and kept plowing into Ora on the ground, albeit pretty gently. Then we headed to Brett and Missy’s to celebrate Christmas with them as well as Pat and Jim. I enjoyed far too many cookies while we all opened gifts together. And Griffin absolutely loved meeting and playing with Babou, Brett and Missy’s new dog. She’s a super cute 4 month old boxer/lab mix. Griffin giggled and ran around and received tons of wet kisses. On the way home he kept saying “Babou, nice doggie, bite” as Babou playfully nibbled at his fingers a couple times. It was cute to see him play with such an energetic pup. Sadly, we didn’t have our camera with us and I didn’t snap photos with my phone either – other than this one here, Grandma learning how to use Finn’s nerf gun that he received from Uncle Brett and Aunt Missy.
We’ve had a wonderful Christmas season and have many blessings for which we are ever so thankful!
Wow, I’m finding myself constantly behind these days. But our days have been loaded with activities and we’ve been having a lot of fun!
I was able to take Friday, Kevin’s birthday, off work and I figured it would be fun to have a cookie decorating party in the morning with Finn and Sam. I made the cookies and frosting the night before in hopes of having everything ready to go. Wow, what a fun and messy time we had as evidenced by the photos 🙂 Finn had lots of taste testing of all the cookie decorations. Later that evening we gathered with family and friends and had a pizza party to celebrate Kevin’s birthday. Unfortunately, I realized after that I didn’t snap a photo of the more than 12 different pizza’s we had from 6 different shops. It was a tasty night, for sure. You’ll just have to believe me. I did get a couple cell phone pics of Kevin blowing out the candles on his devil’s food cake made by yours truly. I’ve been having a lot of fun spending time in our new kitchen testing out lots of new recipes. The cake wasn’t super impressive, but the frosting was delish!And here Finn shows his new skills of racing along the floor on his back. It was actually really cute, he laid down next to Uncle Andy and then realized how he could scoot using his heels – and he was super fast. It was pretty hysterical. Our sweet girl Cameron also celebrated her birthday on Friday too. Yep, she and Kevin have the same birthday. Here is our 13 year old girl in her party gear. Saturday we made a surprise visit to see Grandma and Grandpa in Mansfield to visit their churches inaugural Nativity Open House. I believe they had over 160 nativity scenes to view, many from their own collection. Finn quickly found the kids Veggie Tales set! We enjoyed dinner out and some play time at Grandma and Grandpa’s too before heading home to gear up for Sunday’s festivities. We ended the week with a bang on Sunday with our inaugural Candy Making festivities. I remember from my childhood when my parents hosted other families for a candy making day to make hard-tack candy and buckeyes. All of the kids would come too and help a bit with candy-making and also made some crafts. Earlier this fall my dad suggested that our newly renovated kitchen would be the perfect place to revive the tradition – and I thought it was a fabulous idea! And here you go – images from the day (sorry for those out of focus!) Unfortunately Amy was sick and wasn’t able to come. It was a long afternoon, turned into night, but we had a great time and all of the kids really enjoyed helping. I made some notes of things to tweak for next year, and we will be scheduling the date far earlier so we can have it on a Saturday! We ended up making 6 flavors (6 double-batches) including cherry, lemon, black licorice, buttered rum, sassafras, and cinnamon. Mom and dad had made peppermint a couple days before as the trial run. We also made fudge (which was an interesting experiment and needs some perfecting for next year!) and buckeyes. And mom prepared several crafts for the kiddos, including reindeer ornaments, jingle bell bracelets, and foam ornaments. Everyone had a lot of fun!
It’s birthday week – which means we’ve had a lot of cake and celebrating in the last several days!
Later in the week it was time to gear-up for Finn’s birthday party on Saturday. How can he already be 2?! Our theme this year was Monsters and we had many of our friends and family come to play for the afternoon. It was a lovely spring day and Finn had a ton of fun playing with his friends. He seemed to really like the monster cake I made for him and he was able to blow out the candle all by himself (after a couple tries!). Here are some photos of the fun. Many thanks to my dad, sister, and Kevin for taking photos during the party!
