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August 2022

August means it’s family vacation time! This year we went to Lewes, Delaware along with Mom, Dad, Amy, Andy, Graham, Rowan and Greta for a nice week at a lovely home in a neighborhood with amenities. A social area with a couple of pools, workout room, tennis courts, walking paths and such was all within walking distance. We enjoyed many a trips to the pool and hot tub.

And as with each and every vacation we spent time in line for ice cream 🙂 These cones were ginormous!

We went to Funland which as the name reveals is full of arcade games, rides, and fun things for kids and adults. Griffin absolutely loved collecting tickets and redeeming for things at the ticket counter.

This is one of my favorite pics of the boys. Classic candy necklaces and happy smiles.

We visited Rehoboth Beach for a brief walk and to dabble our feet in the water. The waves were super rough and I was a nervous wreck! The beach was so crowded with people but no one really in the water as it was a red flag on this particular day. We even met up with the cousins for a bit on the beach before heading back to dry land and a stop at the ice cream shop. I was happy to be on dry land!

This trip is so nice each year for the kids to be able to hang out so much. TV time, games, some sports mixed in. Even though we live nearby we truly don’t get together very often amid sports and school schedules.

I took each kid on a “date” during our trip. Griffin, in particular, has been needing some one on one time. We drove to Rehoboth and walked the boardwalk, had a pizza lunch, went to Zelky’s Arcade, and Griffin got a henna tatoo – what is wanted to go there for! He was so happy with it.

Each year Mom and Dad graciously watch all of the kids while Kevin and I and Amy and Andy go out on date night. They’ve moved on from English Muffin pizzas when they were little kids to full-size pizzas now that their appetites are so much bigger!  Kevin and I had a delicious dinner at Raas, and Indian restaurant in Lewes. We walked around the little town afterward and perused some cute little shops.

For Family dinner night we headed to Matt’s Fish Camp, only about a 5 minute drive from our house! This was awesome considering traffic in the area could be really heavy and though we didn’t always go far it could take 20-30 minutes to get around. Afterwards we enjoyed a family round of putt-putt.

Bunk beds in the kids room and lots of time at the pool!

Our traditional “cousins” group photo. In this one they are reenacting the photo from when Reid was 3 months old. They are all much bigger now, ha!

Back home it was time to gear up for school. Here are a few pics from our yard. The shrub I’m standing next to was only planted last summer. It has grown a crazy amount in height and looks awesome.

We finally got around to planting the hostas from Mom and Dad in our garden around the patio. We are planting all of the family hostas there including Mighty Finn, Reid All About It, and Megan’s Angel.  It’s taken us awhile but we finally have all of the shrubs and other plants planted in all of the beds in our outdoor patio area. Whew. That was a big check mark.

During the beginning of Covid we bought the boys desks and set up the basement like a classroom. In order to give them more open space in the basement we decided to move their desks to each of their rooms. They’ve really been enjoying them! Reid has been writing and drawing and Griffin’s is full of his cards and he uses it as a workspace to sort and organize.

This summer Reid played T-Ball through I9. He’s definitely growing up and having less frustrating moments and fits. He was so happy at the end of the last game that he earned a medal as well as receiving the season ending trophy.

Griffin’s soccer club has a new 2-year kit and the colors are now black and white. He wasn’t too excited at first, but after picking them up in person and putting them on he’s decided he really likes them and thinks they look sharp.

We also signed Reid up for OUFC Juniors this Fall and he is playing with his buddy Orin. These two have a lot of fun each week. It has worked out awesome that Reid’s practice on Tuesday’s is during the same time Griffin’s is as well. Two for one!

Griffin and Kevin attended a Crew game and had a great time. They met up with buddy Rowan too 🙂

Reidy and I stayed home and had “breakfast for dinner in bed” and watched a show. The best of both worlds for each kiddo.

The start of soccer season arrived and we’ve begun spending lots of time at practices and games. I really love watching Griffin and his buddies play together. And we made to it watch Aidan play in a Varsity game for Berlin and were able to chat with him after the game.

Griffin is also really enjoying hockey. On occasion our neighbor Brian will reach out with a fun extra lesson or practice that he extends to Griffin and other neighborhood kiddos. He even takes them all!

We also signed Reid up to play OYAA soccer this fall as the OUFC is really just skills work and practice but not games. Reid is on team Royal (pre-K). He is excited! We got him a soccer bag as well like his big bro. He’s super cute to watch. He’s either all in or totally distracted as you would expect at 5 years old. But man, when he scores he beams with excitement and a smile!

OUFC Coach Pete has tremendous patience with these kids. I wish we had known about or thought to enroll Griffin in club soccer earlier than we did. The skills Pete is teaching these kids at the age of 5 is so cool! Reid is learning “foot skills” and if any one kid scores too often when they scrimmage he’ll tell them to do a “foot skill” on their way to the goal before they can score again. So fun!

Griffins OUFC U10 Black team was asked to be ball boys for the Olentangy Varsity game one evening. It worked out great where they were able to walk over to the field after practice. Each kiddo received some food (a pretzel or nachos or hot dog and a drink!) and got to stand along the edge of the field and retrieve balls.

In Scouts Griffin is a Webelo this year which means all new scouting gear that is tan/green and no longer blue. Kevin and Griffin attended a campout together at Camp Lazarus in Delaware.

I’ve been trying to be more intentional with one on one kiddo time. Griffin and I went on a date to the movie theater where he chose to see Minions: The Rise of Gru. It was a cute movie.

One night I went in to check on Griffin and I found this – his light on, shining on a sports card on his desk. This kid just absolutely loves sports. Sports players, teams, games – he is full of information. He knows more than Kevin or I about any of it!

August also means Back to School time. This year Griffin will be in 4th grade and has Mrs. Price as his teacher. We went to the Open House to check out his room, find his desk, and meet Mrs. Price. We ran in to a bunch of buddies too :).

Night before the start of school trip to Graeter’s with our neighborhood crew.

Prepped our first day of school outfit the night before!

Traditional first day of school pancakes by Daddy.

Look at these kids all getting so big. Last year at Tyler Run for Cooper and Ella! Dewey and Jay in 1st, Miles in 3rd, Griffin and Cole in 4th. Reid in Pre-K – next year will be  in this photo as a kiddo headed to Tyler Run!

Donuts and OJ on the patio before the first day of school.

Lisa was home on maternity leave this year so she was able to join in the fun with Myla! She’s typically at school, as a teacher on the first day shenanigans.

My date with Reid took us to the same place – the movie Minions: The Rise of Gru. This kid loves movies and popcorn.

We’ve really enjoyed spending hours upon hours outside on our patio. We gather every chance we can for dinner, with neighbors, or just to watch a movie or sports.

These PJ’s are classic. They have worn them all-year-round since November 2019. They used to be so big and long on Griffin and Reid and now look at those ankles! They are favorites!

We also got to go to meet the teacher morning at NPCA for Reid. Lilly joined us also and Reid did the traditional handprint on the class canvas.

August means neighborhood block party too. Another fun night with friends and this year the bubble truck!

Griffin loves to go to the card shop. He would go every.single.day if we would take him. This week was a special treat to be able to go and meet famous baseball player Jose Rijo who played a majority of his career for the Cincinnati Reds!

Look at what is missing from this kiddos mouth! Reid lost his first tooth! We are not sure, however, where it went! It seemed to have disappeared and he didn’t really realize he lost it. Lilly and Reidy made a tooth out of clay to leave for the tooth fairy!

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.

January 1-15, 2020

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Reid wishes everyone a Happy New Year (check out the video below)!

We’ve started off the new year with some lounging and relaxing family time. Movie nights in the loft, Griffin has been making ice cream “sundaes” each night with our yummy peppermint ice cream and mint meltaways. We’ve been playing with duplos, legos, magnets, and dressing up like superheroes and cops, jumping in big puddles, and I got a cute video of Reid playing with Brutus (rather being bossy, lol) and trying to ride him like a horse.



 

Kevin and I had a date night and headed out to dinner at Cap City followed by a stop at Urban Meyer’s Pint House, and then we ended up at Vaso Rooftop Bar in the new Bridge Park area of Dublin. They have super fancy and unusual cocktails and it’s a pretty different vibe than most Dublin and Columbus spots. Honestly, the drinks were a bit too unusual for me, lol and I’d rather just hang at a more low-key place but it was fun to get snazzy for the night and go somewhere different.

We joined Amy, Andy, Graham, Rowan, and Greta along with Mom and Dad at a Blue Jackets game. Rowan’s team got to play on the ice during the second intermission so it was fun to see him score a goal and hear his name announced on the speaker! It just to happened to be Kids Takeover day so each of the kids got a CBJ piggy bank and the whole game there were kid-focused programming.  Afterward we enjoyed dinner at the Bethune’s and then the following day we watched Graham’s hockey game.

Our boy Brutus can be a hard one to figure out. Griffin and a friend were in the garage and Brutus rushed out into the garage and barked  and chased Griffin’s friend out into the driveway. It scared me to hear the screams and barking though Brutus didn’t “do anything”. Trying to figure out what triggers him to be so fearful and react by scaring off his perceived threat is a challenge. I must say, I was in tears over this situation. We’ve spent a lot of time and money in training, daily walks, and we love him so much. But the lack of certainly and unpredictable behavior is worrisome to me. I took these pics wondering if we need to rehome him and all of the emotions that go along with that. Ugh. He’s such a good dog with our family, I just wish he wasn’t sketchy with strangers!

Each week after swim or gymnastics we typically go out for a quick dinner before bedtime. The kids like to choose (typically Canes or Culvers) and Culvers is always a hit on Tuesday’s as they have a face painter there. She is so kind and will paint anything you want! This week the boys both got Pokemon.

Reid is at such a fun age. He’s stubborn and sassy but also quite often loving and cuddly. He definitely likes to put on a show and be bossy from time to time (even if he’s just re-enacting or repeating something he’s seen or heard). He absolutely still adores his pacifier and doesn’t sleep without it. He makes so many different facial expressions! He really enjoys gymnastics class and I believe he quite enjoys me having to chase him down or bring him back to the circuit he’s supposed to be doing (rather than what he wants to do in the moment!). He is affectionate and caring and his verbal skills, words, and concepts that he grasps are impressive for a 2 3/4 year old!

We ordered a bookshelf for Reid’s room so he can more easily get to his books. He was so excited to help build it! Griffin wanted to hang out while we built it so he brought his Pokemon cards to the hallway and periodically handed me parts :).

Griffin came home with another Pawsome note and all of the promise areas were circled: Teamwork, Respect, Effort, and Spread Kindness. His teacher is very encouraging, which I really appreciate. The Cub Scouts had a special Pack Event at the OSU Planetarium. Kevin took Griffin and they had a fun morning learning about the solar system. Afterwards they explored campus starting with Buckeye Donuts and then heading on to a fun adventure. I think Griffin has seen more of the campus than I ever have! They ended up walking so far from where they parked that they rented scooters and scooted back!

This Winter I signed Griffin up for indoor Flag Football. It is 4 on 4 and he’s on a team with his friend Owen. He gets so excited each week for game day. The boys really enjoy baths (bath bombs in particular) and for the most part playing together. Though it doesn’t take long before there is screaming and crying, lol.

For Christmas I gifted Kevin an Order of the Moth membership at Nocterra. It’s our hang out spot so I figured he would enjoy it and it supports our local business. We’re excited for the launch party of 1/24.

One of our date nights we headed to the Remodeling Show at the Convention center. We got several ideas for an outdoor treehouse/playhouse from these “she sheds” that were on display. We also signed up for all kinds of free quotes for various projects. We’re hoping to get some pricing info together and then put together a plan for making some improvements around here like painting, lighting, our front step/walkway that’s falling apart and such.

The interior building project in our Shipping Facility is moving right along. Framing is done, electrical and networking is complete, the insulation is in, drywall is up, and the weather covering is up too.

And our Amaryllis is adding a pretty look to our kitchen with three large red flowers!