We’ve had another fun week with cousins and friends and celebrating America’s Independence and enjoying the fun days of summer. On Thursday this week my sister was kind enough to watch Griffin while I was at work. He was spoiled and able to enjoy a fun play day with his cousins including a trip to the bunny splash pad complete with ice cream sandwiches! It was a pretty warm day so when I picked Finn up we had planned to go to Zoombeezi on our way home for a couple hours since it was the beginning of our weekend. I was able to take Friday off so that we could go to Red, White, and Boom in the afternoon and hang out at Bicentennial Park listening to live music and hanging with friends. It’s our tradition, for Kevin and me, to go to Red White and Boom. It’s always sentimental as it’s the day I found out I was pregnant back in 2012, and it is fun to see how Griffin continues to grow and experience different things with each passing year. 
He hadn’t taken a nap – so he didn’t even eat much of his pretzel (normally he can finish the whole thing!) and was out before we made the 10 minute trip home. 
On Friday morning, Finn and I skyped with Kevin while he was at work. We enjoyed the dark and stormy morning at home before we headed out to tackle our list of supplies for Red, White, and Boom. I might have gone a little overboard this year – but we were meeting up with several friends and so I packed enough food and drinks to feed an army. We also experimented with dry ice for the first time as it was really warm and we were going to be there for a long time! I decided to experiment and pack frozen treats so we took frozen ice cream snickers bars and cones, firecracker popsicles, ice cream sandwiches (as my sister had told me “Finn says you don’t have these at home and we need to fix that”), and frozen chocolate covered bananas. Anything touching the dry ice stayed frozen the entire time – I was impressed! We had a bit of melt down on the sandwiches on the edge of the cooler – so you know, we just ate them! Kevin had taped off our lawn space at Bicentennial Park this year, our first time doing that. It worked out great so we didn’t need to rush to get a great spot at the park. We had a huge area and great space to see the fireworks. 
It worked out great that Finn fell asleep on our way down to pick up Kevin from work 🙂
This year we took our pop-up tent for some shade space and a little play area for Finn. It was great!
We went over to visit the horses prior to the start of the parade and Finn was able to sit on the lap of the Police Officer who led the parade. 
Holywell, the band we went to see which includes some friends of ours, put on a great show!
On Saturday we decided to camp out in the backyard as the night time temperatures were cool and perfect for being outside. Kevin and I both had tents from before we knew each other, yet we hadn’t ever used them. We thought it would be perfect to use them as our first family camping experience. Amy called it “glamping” which is probably a better description as we ordered pizza since our time was kind of limited. It was delicious and fun. We had a campfire using our neighbors fire pit so we made s’mores, had some pizza, chips, juice boxes, beer and then hit the hay! Lily even stayed with us, which Finn loved. We used Kevin’s tent which is an 8-person tent, so we had plenty of space and Kevin was even able to stand up inside. The next morning we headed inside to get coffee, juice, and a yogurt sundae for Finn and then we headed back out to our tent for a bit before church. 
Lily spent some time under the table at my feet as she didn’t really care for some fireworks that someone nearby was setting off. 
Our garden is growing quite nicely and we have harvested several zucchini. We use the red romaine on our lunch-meat sandwiches pretty regularly too. 
In keeping with the July 4th theme, Finn made some awesome fireworks art this week with Debbie. 
And we’ve had some crazy storms lately, including a really bad wind and rain at Millcreek, over 5″ of rain, and many shade cloths, ground cloths, etc., ripped to shreds and blown all over the place. Pretty messy, but fortunately not too much loss of plants. 
And Finn continues to love his building blocks, he loves to build fun structures with Daddy, and Lily likes to stay on her perch and watch. 
This week we had fun with all things Easter, including pictures with the Easter Bunny at Polaris Mall (followed by ice cream, of course) and several Easter Egg hunts too. We also explored the Ohio Bird Sanctuary in Mansfield during our weekend roadtrip. We had fun exploring nature with Grandma and Grandpa Beilstein and the Bethune’s. 
We snapped a quick cousins Easter photo after church. Later that afternoon we were invited to Easter Brunch at Mike & Laura Pilgrim’s new home this year. It was a pleasant afternoon with the kids playing together and yet another egg hunt all on top of a delicious meal. 
Griffin also had a fun afternoon at the Franklin Park Conservatory with Debbie and Sammy this week. Always remember to slow down and smell the flowers!
And while the weather ended on a warmer note this week – it was pretty cold earlier in the week and at Millcreek we ran the water to protect the plants that were outside already. The water turns into ice which serves as an insulator to protect the plants from the low temperatures. It works really well!
And here Google put together a movie of my photos from the week. I think perhaps I should just post one of these every week, ha!
This being the week of Valentine’s Day we had a lot of crafts and fun throughout the week. We ended the week with lounging Saturday morning during which Daddy surprised us with some tasty pancakes complete with chocolate sauce and strawberries! A pre-Valentines Day treat. 
Even though it was really cold on trash night, Griffin insisted that he help Kevin take the trash out. So he got all bundled up (even though he was in his jammies) and out they went. 
And Griffin got a Valentine’s Day card from Grandma and Grandpa Beilstein – all the way from Florida, Elmo delivered a hug!
Lots of learning of shapes, sides, numbers, and about Humpty Dumpty lately! And family movie night in the basement, complete with popcorn and movie theater candy. 
And here is the latest stage of the new greenhouses at Millcreek. One of the slowest building processes ever due to the wacky winter weather this year. It’s either frozen or wet and swampy!