May started off with some beautiful weather and an Essential Workers parade that came right by our house! It was a Friday evening and we gathered with several neighbors who came down to our common driveways where the parade turned. There’s a video below, but the kids (and adults!) thought it was pretty cool! Griffin drew some chalk art and we decorated some to celebrate.

 

 

Sadly, Pat’s brother Richard (Dickie) passed away unexpected in April. There was a graveside service in May that Kevin and I were able to attend along with Pat, Jim, and Brett. It was a nice service and a sunshine-filled afternoon.  I hadn’t been to the cemetery before, where Pat’s parents and brother, Elwood, are also buried. Their gravesites are quite unique and it was neat to hear the story behind it.

While I left work for a short time to go to the service, Dad was there taking inventory of his hosta seedlings that we planted and to pickup the remainder of the bag of soil. That was a lot of counting!

We haven’t ventured out much  between my work being busy and with the Stay at home Order. But one morning we woke up and I wanted to get out and about and get some fresh air with everyone. So we packed the kids bikes into the car and headed down to pickup Buckeye Donuts! We had a small picnic on the Oval near the Library on campus and the kids loved riding their bikes around. It was really our first time going out with the kids. We had our masks and wore them when we went to the Horseshoe and rode our bikes around. We also ventured to “downtown big city” and walked around some in the public space across from the Arena. We took a family photo at the same place Kevin and I had pictures taken on our wedding day. Reid and Griffin each took pictures of us!

 

 

With the nicer weather and not really having options of going anywhere we’ve been spending a good bit of time outside. Brutus has been really great on walks, in fact I often take him without his leash on and he listens really well. He’s been enjoying some front yard freedom with us too.

 

Look at my little sleeping boy! He is probably faking it here, but he’s cute nonetheless 🙂  We’ve been wearing masks at Millcreek since early to mid-May when businesses were allowed to open up following the guidelines in place  by the Governor.  Even though we had operated the entire time as an essential business, we were not required to wear masks during that time. It definitely makes things interesting and they are not at all comfortable to wear in the heat and humidity. But anymore it’s just the norm. Each person is wearing theirs upon arrival to get their temperature checked each day.  Given that most of the work at Millcreek takes place outside, we encourage our employees to wear them, but they aren’t required if working alone in a greenhouse or when outdoors and social distancing can occur.  Walking quickly in and out of hot greenhouses  or working within them proves to make mask wearing uncomfortable and a “practical” challenge for keeping them on all the time for our employees. And I get it – it’s not comfortable!

An upside to being home so much is the boys are really learning to play well together and have been having a lot of fun. Kevin sends me pictures like this while I’m at work late :).

Reid seems to be our little early morning riser, often getting up just after 6 am. I’m usually up by then too so he comes to finds me and he has recently wanted to come on walks with me each morning. Can you believe here, in May, he is wearing his winter coat and a blanket!! There were a few mornings of freezing temperatures in mid-May and we definitely had some frosts.

We took a drive to Enon to see Pat and Jim and to deliver some spring flower planters to Pat for Mother’s Day. It was a chilly and breezy afternoon! The boys stayed in the car most of the time since it was chilly and we all kept our social distance while walking around the yard a bit. These are strange times! We headed to Young’s for lunch and experienced their new “drive-thru” which was actually quite smooth!

In the mornings Reid helps me make my coffee, he grabs a snack, and then lately we’ve been sitting in the dining room and watching nature. This usually by 6:20 or so. We sit there for a bit and look for birds, bunnies, squirrels, dogs, and such. Then we go up and I get dressed and we head out on our walk with Brutus (Reid in jammies sometimes but if I’m dressed he often wants to get dressed too!). I like our new morning routine.

On Mother’s Day I work up to a lovely morning with the kids. We were all wearing our matching family jammies. There were lovely flowers, coffee mugs, and my most favorite – my yearly painting of the boys handprints, which we later hung in our bedroom along with the others.

We haven’t allowed any customers to walk or shop through the nursery since the whole COVID-19 thing began. Along with that, we haven’t allowed school age children there either, which basically means kids of employees. I did, however, go out on a Sunday with Kevin and the boys to get succulents for teacher gifts for the end of the year. We parked outside the gate and walked to the greenhouse and the boys had a great time. Rock climbing the rock “wall” was their favorite part, lol. It’s been strange to not have Kevin and the boys visit me each week. Typically, they bring dinner out during the week usually one time each week so I get to see the kiddos since my work days are so long. This was the first time they’d been there in over two months!

Griffin made this lovely play-doh version of Kevin, complete with his briefcase! Isn’t it lovely? I particularly like the smile and spiked hair.  Finn also helped Daddy clean all of our car mats, which were horribly dirty. Especially mine from the gravel driveways at Millcreek. They all look sparkling new now :).

Brutus loves it when anyone will play ball with him in the back yard. He really loves his jolly ball.

Our latest thing now that school is out is family bike rides! We’ve decided to make it our summer mission to bike ride to each of the ice cream shops in Powell! So, to begin we went to Graeter’s. It was our first time going out on Jewett Road with Griffin on his own bike and he did a fabulous job. Kevin and Reid went first, then Griffin, then me. We were able to make it there in about 17 minutes and home in even less. We got “curbside” delivery where they brought our ice cream out to us along the path, which I had preordered through the app. It was great!

I’m doing a separate birthday post for Reid’s 3rd birthday, but here you can see him enjoying several of his new things! I think he’s pretty happy!

Memorial Day was a bit different this year with no parade. It kind of broke our tradition of up and at em early to get Tim Horton’s to take to the parade! Instead, we gathered in the early evening at the Vertucci’s new house for a driveway happy hour with the Manning’s and Vertucci’s. We brought our chairs and tent for some shade as it was a hot day! We had fun catching up with everyone and the kids watched some shows and blew bubbles.

Matchy matchy! The boys are really in to wearing the same clothes or pj’s lately. And recently I was able to get them both new shoes that were the same. Griffin’s poor tennies were in such bad shape the velcro didn’t even stay attached anymore and the toes were about rubbed off. Looking sharp boys, let’s keep them looking new for awhile, ok?  Griffin’s athleticism is quite admirable! He’s recently been doing some “trick riding” he calls it where he shows us all of his skills. Here in this video he shows us how he stands on one side of his bike (one pedal) while biking. He’s got some great balance and core strength and I love his current motto “speed, strength, confidence.”. He’s been talking about becoming my trainer, so he can train me to run. He’s quite a fast runner and this discussion came up since I can’t run at his pace, lol!

 

Griffin loves to get Lego sets and typically starts building them and then gets either bored or distracted or frustrated and moves on to making his own inventions. I’m amazed at his ability to make such creative things! His ships, planes, ninja structures, etc., are made with such detail and often symmetry. Full of weapons that actually fire!

Our second bike ride for ice cream was to the new DQ up on Seldom Seen in Powell. We were able to go Jewett Rd., to Liberty Rd., and then cut through Adventure park to the bike path that goes along the railroad tracks up to Seldom Seen . When we arrived, we saw signs that said their lobby was closed. Oops! Didn’t think to look that up first. We then tried to order through the app, which said they were closed. They clearly were NOT closed and after talking to an employee, she suggested we order through Grub Hub. Whew, while the menu wasn’t the same, thankfully we were able to order dinner and dessert as we had biked there for both and it was a good 3 mile ride!

The boys have really been wanting to help in the kitchen lately, which I’m encouraging as they seem to like to eat their efforts, lol. So they fill up on healthy fruits :). They are actually both quite good with their knives. Kevin has been giving the boys haircuts throughout the quarantine. He does a great job and the boys love it! They get hair cuts and then time in the shower or bath which they love.  They’ve been making lots of forts with Haya and also playing Monopoly seems to be a new favorite for Griffin during the day.

While the end of the year ended a bit unusual, it was nice to be able to say goodbye to Mrs. Hale when Kevin drove to the school to pickup his classroom items. It was a “curbside drive-through” pickup and you weren’t allowed to give hugs or anything, but he was able to wave from the car and give her his succulent planter. The buses also drove their routes in order to say goodbye for the summer to the kiddos. Mrs. B drove through without stopping, but thankfully since she goes down to the turnaround on our street they caught her on the way back and gave her  her succulent planter too. Yay!