July 2022

July is hot and the pool is cool 🙂 We scattered in a visit to Zoombeezi bay (me, Lilly, and the boys) in July in addition to our other trips to the pool. Reid is really swimming quite well. No more floaties!

We finally were able to get Reid his COVID shot! He was a champ at Powell Pharmacy and as always the staff there is great with everyone, especially kids. Reid also had his 5-year well check (in July! as I had totally forgotten to schedule it for around his birthday – yikes) and he is a super healthy kiddo. He weights in at 43.7 pounds (68th percentile), 43″ (48th percentile), and 16.61 BMI (81st percentile). No shots this go round though we did ask them to treat his largest wart on his right hand.

 

Several family fun activities in July included Bocce at Mom and Dads, family bike rides, and a movie date for Reid and me.

 

This summer we were home during the week of Vacation Bible school at NPC. The boys really enjoyed it. Griffin was a “Wagoneer” and Reid was a “Beetle”.

My parents are always planning fun activities and traditions for everyone. Traditions are something that I really love. This summer it was Griffin’s turn to have a weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s all on his own. This is something each grandkid has gotten to do when they are 9 years old. Griffin was so excited to begin this weekend he was counting down the days for it to begin. Mom and Dad picked him up at our house and later that evening they showed in the tool box of fishing supplies they had purchased in order to teach him how to fish and cast the fishing rod. Their weekend also included a fishing trip to Mansfield where Griffin caught 27 fish, including two big bass!  They took him to the playpen and he got to learn how to drive the Mule, a dinner out at Roosters, he painted a shark at the pottery shop, painted rocks at Grandma and Grandpas, and built a fun lego car!  What a fun and memorable weekend for him.

While Griffin was away at Grandma and Grandpa camp we had Reid solo for the weekend. It was a busy weekend with a tour for Cultivate at Millcreek where a busload of people from all over the country came to tour our facilities. That took up most of my Saturday (and it poured rain all morning for the tour!). We took Reid on a fun date to Lion Cub’s cookies 🙂

We also went to the St. Timothy festival to see our friend Paul Koehler play live music. Reid loved all of the kiddo rides, balloon artist, and fun stuff.

Another cross country meet at Liberty Park. This time Griffin was running for Olentangy (lol). They ran 1 mile and Griffin finished in 7:48:21, 25th overall out of 100 boys. He had a lovely cheering section including Mom, Dad, Greta, Rowan, Graham, and Andy. The cuzzies even made awesome signs of encouragement for Griffin 🙂

Lilly, Reid, and I had a fun day cruising around the Zoo. We even rode a bunch of fun rides in the Jungle Jack’s Landing area and we rode the Dinosaur water ride.

A big week for Griffin was Crew Camp at the Historic Crew Stadium. This was a day-long camp (9a-4p) and had a lunch break. He had a fun week of skill drills and scrimmages playing on the real field at Crew Stadium, tours of the stadium, a bus ride to Lower.com with a tour of some cool places there too. The Crew players came through one day and gave high fives to the kids and Griffin was fortunate to get Derrick Etienne Jrs autograph on his Crew flag! The Crew 2 players signed their camp shirts and balls on a different day as well. They were long and hot days but he really had a good time and was of course enamored with meeting players!

More summer t-ball for Reidy. He has a pretty good throw and he likes playing on the field. Though he certainly remains distracted by the dirt infield and is regularly playing in it and dust flies everywhere. But this season he has shown so much maturity in that he is no longer getting so upset if he doesn’t get the ball and a teammate does instead. Woohoo!

Griffin finished up Learn to Play 2 Hockey at Chiller North this summer. He’s really liking hockey and we plan to sign him up to play CAHA House hockey this fall.

Friend Wyatt’s birthday party!

Reid lost his first tooth!  It had been pretty loose for some time but he didn’t want it pulled. Eventually it kind of disappeared and we actually never found it! In order to leave something for the tooth fairy to visit, Lilly and Reid made a tooth for out of clay. It looks great, right? And sure enough the Tooth Fairy made her visit.

We had a fun visit with Haya and Summer before Haya’s little girl #2 arrives next month. And Kevin and I enjoyed a Picnic with the Pops at Columbus Commons with the Kessler’s, Manning’s, and Pilgrims one evening. It was really fun to bring our own food and drink and just hang out in the park and listen to music!

Mom, Amy, Greta, and I had a lovely afternoon of vacation prep in the way of pedicures (for me and Amy, Greta and Mom had previous during Greta’s camp weekend), a meal at Kitchen Social, ice cream at Jeni’s, and a walk across the bridge.

Chrissie turned 40 this year and while Kevin and I weren’t able to make the fun trip to the Dominican Republic with friends I went out with the girls to celebrate at Novella Osteria in Powell. This place is delish and it was awesome that Lisa was able to pick all of us up in her car and we all rode together.

Summer is for sleepovers too, right? Miles spent the night and Reid joined in as well in Griffin’s room.

Kevin’s company had a social gathering at Lincoln Social as many employees were in Columbus from Mexico and other areas out of town. It was a beautiful night to enjoy the rooftop bar and Kevin was able to arrange using the space via his connection to friend Alan Assaf (who is the COO of company who built and manages the property).

Oh Reidy. I remember when Griffin did this kind of thing too. This boy is so silly.

When Griffin returned home from his weekend with Grandma and Grandpa he wanted to show Reid all the things in his tackle box. They sat on the garage floor and went through the whole thing!

Here is a pic of the brisket that Kevin gave a go at in our patio Smoker. It was tasty! And below is a pic of the front garden. I’m pretty happy with how this garden is maturing and the pop of pink with annual color is nice too.

June 2022

It’s summertime! And this summer we have a packed schedule more so than any I can recall in the last decade or more and for sure since having kids. And summertime means ice cream, right? Even a fun trip for Brutus to Graeters.

June started with a Cub Scout camping weekend for the whole family. Two nights in a tent with fun adventures during the day including fitness tests, hiking and learning about poisonous plants, s’mores and more! They both got to practice with BB guns at the shooting range too and they did well! And Griffin started his first fire! Camp ended with each den moving up, so Griffin has moved from Bear to Webelo!

A fun new thing for Griffin this summer is OYAA cross country. His soccer buddies Rowan and Caleb were running as well, which is why we did it actually. The kids practice at Alum Creek Dam and Highbanks Metro Park. They have a few meets throughout the summer too. I signed Griffin up for Liberty High School (ours) but he practiced with Olentangy High School coaches (so he/Rowan/Caleb could run together). At the first meet some people thought he was with the wrong group (as he was wearing the Liberty pinney) so after the first meet we picked up an Olentangy pinney for the remaining races.  Each race is 1 mile and his first race time was 8:12:26! He came in 41 out of 103 kids entering grades 3-6 (Griffin will be entering 4th). He did amazing!

Summer is also means graduation parties and here the boys wore their Derby outfits to attend Elizabeth Ackerman’s grad party in Dublin.

The boys and I made a trip to the outlet malls in Sunbury to do some school shopping. We hit up the Under Armor store and later at home enjoyed sundaes prepared by the boys. It’s literally their favorite thing to do.

Kevin and I went to the Chris Tomlin & Hillsong concert with Chris and Sarah at Nationwide. It was a great concert which had been postponed from February.

Summer is also pool time, right? We are so fortunate to have awesome neighbors Jane and Bryan Martin who open up their pool to our neighborhood crew each summer. We generally meetup with the Bolans and Duncans on Sunday afternoons. Jane is always such a gracious host and puts out all kinds of food and serves drinks on occasion too. We typically order pizza for everyone too. We enjoyed pool time at soccer buddy Brady’s house after the Braves Soccer camp one night and also are hitting up the Powell Pool for the first time this summer too.

Reid has been attending soccer classes at Locker Soccer in Powell (he even made their Instagram page, lol) and we also signed him up for Olentangy United Juniors program and he received a cute invite.

More soccer….this time the Crew Game where Griffin’s team had been invited to celebrate and be recognized amongst a myriad of youth soccer teams. They were able to go down “near” the field (but don’t touch the turf!) to get their photo taken with the Campeones Cup. Nearly Griffin’s entire team was there and the kiddos had a lot of fun together. We were also joined by Mom and Dad (their first time to Lower.com) and the Bethune crew.

After teammate Xander’s surgery our team family collected tons of fun activities and foodstuffs to lift Xanders spirits while he was home and had to have a low-activity recovery period. His Mom Heather sent us this awesome photo of him.

We got connected with a high school soccer player at Berlin High school, Aidan Ackermann, via Brady’s dad Danny Mount who coaches basketball at the high school. Aidan plays varsity soccer basketball and he worked with Griffin once a week for most weeks this summer on soccer skills. It was great fun for Griffin and Aidan was so polite and prepared bringing balls, cones, and all sorts of things for soccer drills. Griffin enjoyed it and we also were able to go see Aidan play at a home game at Berlin later in the summer.

Here is the gang at Caleb’s house to celebrate his birthday one evening after the Braves soccer camp which many of the boys attended together.

Next birthday celebration was for Dad. It’s always a day filled with giggles and sillies and Grandma and Grandpas house.

Dad was on a road trip in late May and early June. He’s getting used to using his upgraded iPhone though he did a couple of facetime butt-dials which resulted in lots of giggles for me and Mom. How he called both of us via facetime video is still undetermined, lol.

This year the weather was finally nice for the annual Powell Festival. We took in typical fair food and beverages, the kids played for hours in the kids area/bounce houses, and we listened to live music.

June is also wedding season, right? Though we’re beyond that season for our friends it seems we’ve moved into that season for our friends kids. That’s crazy, right, as we have a 5-year old. But nonetheless we enjoyed the wedding and reception for Emma Koehler. I also enjoyed a fun girls night out for my friend Claire’s birthday.

This kiddo sure does have a big personality. He loves all things small and loves to put things in things and carry them around. We can’t go anywhere without him asking to bring a toy and usually that is a small bag or container of other really small things.  Reid is also playing t-ball this summer on Saturday’s.

As we do every year on June 15, the day Nathan was born and passed, we visit the cemetery in Dublin as a family.

Trade Shows and Conferences are back and Kevin exhibited at one here (Interactive Customer Experience Summit) in town for Base22 with Joe. He was a panelist as well.

Build It or Buy It? What You Should Consider First

When going down the path to implementing interactive technology, organizations must ask themselves: does it make more sense for us to buy it or build it ourselves? Off-the-shelf software, for example, is generally a one-size-fits-all proposition, with some customization possible. Building your own app, for example, means it can have all the customized features you want, but building it out may be a long and expensive proposition. Some find that the answer may be a hybrid of the two approaches.

Panelists:

  • J Ackley | Vice President, Spark Technologies Development | Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.
  • Kevin Armstrong | Chief Innovation Officer | Base22
  • Richard Bell | Senior Director of Enterprise Applications & Retail Systems | Krispy Kreme

Moderator:

  • Cherryh Cansler | Vice President of Events | Networld Media Group

Sponsored by Base22

Kevin Armstrong
Chief Innovation Officer | Base22
Kevin Armstrong is Base22’s Chief Innovation Officer. He has a twenty-five-year career leveraging his experience as a CTO, CIO, owner, and consultant. He successfully designs and implements business outcome-focused solutions while applying innovation methodologies to lead and support transformational enterprise initiatives for commercial and public clients.

May 2022

May began with a fun Derby Party at our friends the Bolans up the street. Our fam sported some fun attire for the evening. It was a fun time with friends and fascinators – ha!

My annual Mother’s Day handprint painting! Each year I look forward to the new creative way the boys capture their hand prints. This year it is fun cactus plants with hand flowers! I also received a lovely necklace with Griffin, Nathan, and Reid.

This kiddo was lucky to get his face painted at the zoo on a trip with Lilly. I was working late and wasn’t able to see it in real life before bedtime so we facetimed and then he wanted to sleep that way so I could see him in the morning.  Raaawwwwrrrr!

Brutus and Reid both took note of the little birdy on our patio that wasn’t faring so well. They both just watched the birdy. It was cute to watch them watch the bird.

I think these Christmas family jammies are on like year 3. They are some of the most frequently worn when they want to match each other at night. And on this night they both wanted to show me their styled slicked back hair.

 

Kevin took the boys to the 1 year anniversary celebration of Father and Son Sports Cards and Collectibles shop. They had cake and fun activities. Griffin loves going to the shop and asks to go at least once a week. He enjoys looking through the boxes for specific players and also takes in cards (sports or pokemon) to try to sell.

On the 20th we celebrated Reid turning 5 years old! Woah, it seems so hard to believe it’s been 5 years since our silly, stubborn, fun, goofy, expression-filled, hug and kissing little man was born.  He loves movies and popcorn. He is always hungry yet never eats much in quantity and prefers food in crinkly packages (aka anything processed). He eats PBJ, mac and cheese, yogurt, crackers, butter butter toast, and loves his MILK and not much else unless it is a “snack”. This one keeps us on our toes.

This year Reid’s birthday fell on a Friday and being a weekday at the end of a busy spring week I didn’t have much free time to make a cake. My sister came to the rescue and made Reid an AMAZING rainbow cake (which is what he’d asked for) for his birthday! Look at this thing. It was so awesome and he was amazed. Being a Friday and Griffin’s soccer team had a game that evening and a pool party after at teammate Brady’s house – we opted for cake for breakfast and prezzies before school!

Reid enjoyed watching Sonic 2 with friends at the Dublin AMC for his 5th birthday (directly after a soccer game, of course)!

Reid’s birthday celebration continued with our family gathering on the patio! We also celebrated Graham turning 12! Woah. Last year before he will be a teenager!!

And here are some more soccer memories captured this spring. These boys on the OUFC B09 Blue team are so fun as are their families. We had a great fall and spring season and the boys improved to much throughout that time. They have such fun together and truly enjoy hanging out with each other. They go to so many different schools across the Olentangy district as well as private schools it has been fun getting to know others from outside of Powell.

Special roses from the boys on Mother’s Day at the game!

Spring brought our first out of town Soccer Tournament down in Cincinnati at the Kings Hammer tournament. The boys went 4-0 and were champions in their bracket! We spent two nights in Cinci getting to spend time with our teammates and families between games and in the evenings at the hotel and restaurants. It was fun!

To celebrate the end of the season we hosted a cookout after the last game. The weather thankfully was warm enough to be out on the patio and the boys played soccer and other games outside while many of the girls created art on the driveway. Sadly, our friend Xander injured his eye toward the end of the party slinging water balloons. Ugh. I felt terrible that it happened but our team rallied around him over the next couple of weeks (he ended up needing surgery for a partially detached retina) but has since healed well and we are so glad!

Prior to hosting the soccer team Kevin and Dad built our patio tables. He got the design from Chad’s tables (that Chad built) and made two tables for under our pavilion. Altogether we can seat 12 or when separated we can do 8 and 4 in different areas of the patio. Yay for having a big table!

Last day of school starts with a donut celebration for the kiddos!

And celebrating after school with dinner at Cap City followed by fun at Pins Mechanical. My busy work season is winding down as well.

We celebrated Abbie Manning’s graduation at her party though somehow we didn’t get a photo with her in it (other than the table decor!).

Brutus is such a good boy he often accompanies me outside when I’m working in the yard or just sitting around out front. Even when other dogs walk by he just lays there and I often don’t even know they are nearby. On occasion he may sit up. I love that he can have the freedom to hang out anywhere.

Dad was off on hosta adventures so Mom joined us solo for the Memorial Day Parade in Powell. Griffin walked with his Cub Scout Pack (along with Kevin) me, Reid, and Mom tried to find a shady spot on the sidewalk. Afterward we watched the flag burning ceremony that Griffin participated in at the Municipal Building in Powell.

Look at this 5-year old pre-K monkey and some fun pictures from school.

Reid, Titus, and Garrison – these three are buddies!

And our annual end of school neighborhood hang out. These two also love to play together. Abbie even calls him “Reidy” all the time.

Griffin has been invited to join the Black team for next season with Olentangy United. We are excited at the opportunity for him to play a level up (this year he was Blue, Gold was  a level up – for 2023 the team colors/names change from Gold to Black and Blue to White). We’ve learned two other teammates, Graham and Emerson, will also play on the Black team so we’re excited about that. But we will surely miss the remainder of our team and families who will be playing White.