On Tuesday I was immersed at work in payroll calculations and up against a deadline due to the July 4th holiday. I was on a tight timeline and had much to do to meet my cutoff so I closed my office door in order to lessen my distractions and interruptions. I put in my ear buds and went to work. I heard some chatter on the radio about a grower meeting but didn’t pay any attention to it, really. Then at 10:15 there was a knock at my door, and Fred said “hey, George wanted to have a meeting to introduce Jenn Sizemore (our new Controller who started the previous day)”. I was like, “Oh, ok?”. He followed that up with “he didn’t say anything to you about it?” “No”, I replied and hopped up out of my seat and headed out the door to our shipping warehouse . . . . where I quickly realized it was not a “meeting”, lol. It was a celebration for my 20-year work anniversary. I was totally duped – I had no idea! Turns out the timing of me closing my door worked out quite well for all of the behind the scenes setup that went on! Once I walked out the door I sensed something and turned to my left and saw Kevin standing there with a smile on his face and a huge flower arrangement! I had no idea he knew, or that he would be there, obviously. I must admit, I put all of these “surprise” celebrations together for our employees and take care of all of the details, food, gifts, etc., so part of me wondered if anyone would even remember! And the night before I mentioned that to Kevin, along the sarcastic lines of “I wonder if I should plan my own party?”. So I felt rather guilty that next afternoon when he was standing there amongst all of the Millcreek Team who had put it all together behind the scenes. So, needless to say I was caught off guard and embarrassed and felt guilty. But it was a nice celebration where George gave some background on me and my 20 year history at Millcreek and what I’ve done in that time. Then we all ate fruit and cookies and cake :). It was rather funny that at the end, one of our returning seasonals came up to me and said “I wasn’t even born yet when you started working here”. Ha, thanks Jon!
And I got a new computer this week – a laptop and two new large monitors. Quite a nice setup!
On Tuesday when I came home it began pouring rain. So I sat in my car for a few minutes hoping to wait it out as I had flowers things to take in from work. Finn was so excited to be outside playing in the rain. He rode his bike, jumped in puddles, and made rain angles!
Good old Brutes. And Google, thanks for the doggy video.
On Friday Finn had his dental check up – this time we learned he has two cavities :(. So, we’re going to get those fixed once we’re back from vacation. But, in the mean time we headed to Zoombeezi day for an afternoon of fun since I had the afternoon off work. It was lots of fun and the lazy river was our favorite. 
And here is Reid, doing a balancing act in his bed. He does this from time to time and just babbles in his room. And there he is emptying out the cabinets…..
Trying to get this one to wear a hat is no easy feat! For Finn’s baseball game I ended up putting sunscreen on his head and it easily made his hair keep a mohawk. This week Aunt Amy, Uncle Andy, and the cousins came to watch Finn play baseball! And Finn won a medal this week too, it was lots of fun. 
Saturday afternoon my OU friends got together for a family pool party at Jaime’s house in Dublin. Sadly, our friend Amy was sick and unable to come with her family. But we all enjoyed an afternoon of swimming and eating! The kids had a lot of fun together going back and forth from the hot tub to the swimming pool. Seems hard to believe it was 20 years ago this summer we graduated!
Sunday’s after church we usually head to Costco where we stock up for the week and Kevin rides the cart in the parking lot. Reid was pretty tired this day and he kept laying his head down on Finn’s shoulder. So sweet. 
Those cheeks! We’ve all been saying that since he was born. He’s maintaining his chubby cheeks quite well. I always remember how we didn’t give Griffin his first bath at home until he was 10 days old and thought that was such a long time without a bath. Well, what is that they say happens with your second child – you become more relaxed, document less things, take less pictures and so on. Well, same thing here with the bath – as Reid was 17 days old when he had his first bath at home. Yikes! I’d planned in my head on so many different evenings that I would give him a bath that night but it just didn’t seem to happen. I wanted Kevin to be home for it and he’s been really busy with his work projects, some nights getting home at 8, 9 or after and after our regular bedtime routine with Griffin and Reid’s night feeding I was too beat to do it after all that. So, after much ado we finally were all together at a decent hour and we gave Reid his first bath. Griffin loved helping and Reid didn’t mind it in the beginning. By the end, well, that’s another story. We learned that next time we should make the water a bit warmer :). And wow, did we forget how fuzzy his hair actually is (which also makes it seem a lighter color of brown) when the oils are washed away!
This collage was put together by Google. I love the perfect circle cowlick that Reid has on the back of his head. And this is pretty much how we begin every day. I’m in my room either asleep, feeding Reid, or lounging a bit when Griffin wakes up and comes in. And he likes to begin his day with snuggles. In fact, when he doesn’t get any it starts the day off on a sour note! Griffin loves to hold Reid for short periods of time and he really loves to pinch his cheeks and hold his hands. 
After really long days at work, Kevin really enjoys coming home and relaxing. And one of the things he loves most about relaxing is having Reid fall asleep on him 🙂
I’ve gone in to work a couple of times for short stints for one reason or another. Each time I’ve taken Reid and he’s been quite the good baby. He sleeps in his car seat until he’s hungry and then after he’s eaten he typically goes right back to sleep. It’s been great to be able to get things done while having him with me.
We are grateful for the chair that Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong gave us for Griffin’s room. It arrived on Tuesday and fits perfectly in Griffin’s room. It is going to be great!
The Manning girls came over one night this week and brought a tasty dinner from Mellow Mushroom pizzeria. Each of the girls held Reid and it was fun for Finn to play with them for the evening too. 
On Friday morning Amy and the kids came over for our neighborhood garage sale. They arrived with a delicious box of Tim Horton’s donuts and Timbits that we all very much enjoyed. It was a warm day for the sale and we each had some large items we were hoping to get rid of. 
Griffin was able to get in some t-ball with Debbie and Sam, his cousins, and Cooper and Cole. He lived outside most of the day other than the lunch break. 
When Reid was born he was given a hearing screening at Riverside. They told us at the initial screening that he didn’t pass in his right ear, but that he was pretty irritable (he’d just had his circumcision and he needed to eat!). They said that can be common and they would re-test the following morning. So that next morning they retested and he still didn’t pass in his right ear. We were referred to Children’s for follow up test. We went to the Children’s Dublin location and met with an audiologist who did three test. He had a total of 3 tests, the first two took about 5 minutes total. Next she told us the last test checks each of he different frequencies that relate to speech and language development. When I booked the test the said the whole thing should take about 45 minutes. Well, we sat in this silent room only listening to the clicking of the physicians mouse for nearly an hour – just for this third test. So I was convinced she’d found a problem and was working to determine the severity of it. Kevin and I were giving each other looks across the room like “what is going on?”, “how much longer will this be”, “what is she doing?”. Finally, after about an hour, she stopped clicking her mouse and said something along the lines of “ok, I’m all done and everything is fine”. What??!! Did I just hear that correctly?? Whew, what a huge relief. We were so very thankful and both just kept signing with relief for the next several minutes while we made our way out of there. Thankfully it was a great start to our weekend as it was about 4 pm on Friday!
After the garage sale ended on Saturday afternoon Finn took a nap and then we headed down to the Columbus Arts Festival in downtown Columbus along the river. Amazingly we met up with Cole and Cooper, Brian, and his parents who were there as well. We both knew each other were going but we just so happened to be at the same food truck area when we ran in to one another. So we all walked around and enjoyed the evening for awhile. 
And here are a few other odds and ends of our week. Lots of sleeping and snuggling. 
This week was all about Easter and eggs! We had a fun Easter Egg hunt at our neighbor Brian’s house with a few of our other neighbors. The kiddos enjoyed hunting down the eggs in his backyard and afterward we had a nice cookout at Nate and AJ’s place. It is so nice to have kids in the neighborhood and neighbors that we enjoy spending time with! 
While I was working on Saturday Kevin was quite brave and took Griffin along with all of the Manning girls to the Egg Drop at Liberty High School in Powell. It is a HUGE egg event organized by age groups. And for each age group a helicopter drops a bag of eggs from the sky. Those eggs are in addition to the 10,000 eggs already on the ground!!
Griffin was spoiled with quite a deluxe easter basket. He got all kinds of candy, but also socks, wooden cars, a candy fan and other things. His facial expression when he came downstairs and saw it on the counter melted my heart. 
Our front garden is looking really pretty right now with the creeping phlox blooming and the pretty flowers on our Rising Sun Redbud that we planted last year. And it is always one of my favorite weeks of the year when the viburnum blooms in our backyard near the patio and porch. The sweet spicy smell is so lovely! And Griffin was outside enjoying and observing nature too!
Brutus continues to grow big! Check him out – from the day we got him (upper left) to this week (right) he continues to grow and is inching up on Griffin!