hosta | Our Armstrong Family

This week was full of fun! We kicked it off with a Memorial Day Parade in downtown Powell and then ended the day at the Kessler’s for the New City Memorial Day Cookout. Finn had fun with friends everywhere we went! At the parade we ran in to my college friend Kim, and her family. Seems so funny, but we can be at the most crowded events and still randomly find each other!

It was also the Memorial Tournament week and I was able to take Friday off work to head to the course with Kevin, Paul, and Megan. It was a HOT day, but we enjoyed sitting on the course, having a few beverages, and hanging out. Later that evening it was Millcreek’s end of Spring Celebration at the bowling alley in Plain City. It was a pretty fun night with a large portion of our crew!

Saturday was a super fun and busy day too! We started the day at a birthday party for our neighbor, Cooper, who turned 5. It was a fun, energy-bursting party held at Buckeye Bounce. All of the kids burned a lot of energy and then fueled back up on pizza and cake. Initially, Kevin and I watched Griffin bounce around and play with the other kids. But then we figured, what the heck – let’s bounce too! It was a lot of fun – we have added it as a “summer bucket list” item to go back and bounce some more.

After Cooper’s party, we went home and picked up Lily and headed to Mom and Dad’s to celebrate Dad’s 70th birthday party. Whoa! When we arrived we heard the loud sounds of the cicada’s, which were around in huge numbers. Eeek, just walking around (in flip flops) is kinda crazy and “dangerous”, lol. You are at risk of squishing one on your foot! But Finn was quite brave (way more than me!) and picked them up, let them crawl on his arms, and such.

IMG_6740-2 IMG_6743-2 IMG_6747-2 IMG_6748-2 IMG_6754-2 IMG_6765-2 IMG_6766-2 Recently, Mom and Dad had the concrete sidewalk along side of their house re-done when the gas meter was moved. When the new concrete was poured, they etched the initials of each grandkid in the concrete. Here is Finn in front of his 🙂We celebrated Dad’s birthday with lots of time outdoors followed by dinner and a DQ cake for dessert. Next up were the presents which all the kids helped “open”. Kevin came up with a great idea to give my dad engraved hosta name markers for each of the hostas that he has either named, introduced, registered, or bred that are on the market. The funny thing is, once Kevin pulled the info from the hosta registrars site – we realized there were 69 hostas associated with my dad. Sooooo….being that it was his 70th birthday, we had one extra sign made to equal 70, for Hosta ‘World Cup’, which just so happens to be the 2017 American Hosta Growers Association Hosta of the Year! IMG_6778-2 IMG_6782-2 IMG_6784-2 IMG_6797-2 IMG_6810-2 IMG_6821-2 IMG_6831-2 During our visit Graham gave everyone a piano concert in the living room. Finn really wanted to do one too, so he gave one for me, Kevin, and Mom. And just so we don’t paint the picture that life is always roses, our last pic is one of Finn mastering the grumpy face after not getting his way for something (for which I can’t recall!).

What a busy week we had! With the Thanksgiving holiday this week we headed north to Mansfield for our annual Hosta seed planting tradition with my parents. Around the first week of November each year my dad lists his hosta seed offerings on his website www.hostaworks.com. Last year Kevin gave it a face lift complete with the addition of the Seed Shoppe, an automated shopping cart type sales function. It is so much easier than the manually tallying of years past! So early in November Kevin got he site up and running for 2013. Then, every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my dad and I plant the seeds in the basement “seed room” while Amy and Andy package up the seeds to be shipped to those who have ordered them. With the addition of two more kiddos this year we weren’t as productive in the seed room as in the past, by the end of the weekend we had only 27 trays planted – that is about half! But we had fun nonetheless!

On Thanksgiving Day we woke up and had a nice breakfast at my parents. Graham helped Beepa make strawberry pancakes. Finn had his first taste of both bacon (see first picture below) and pancakes. I mean, it is Thanksgiving after all, right?! Check out the video – Finn is pretty good at chewing these days 🙂

Then we headed south to Enon for the Armstrong Thanksgiving at Uncle Steve and Aunt Cookie’s home. We had a fun visit though Griffin was rather shy for the better part of it. He enjoyed some butternut squash and some of Grandma Armstrong’s corn dish. Yum! We enjoyed seeing all of the cousins, aunts, uncles, and kiddos! Then we returned to Mansfield for dinner with my family. The kids had some play time while dinner the turkey was getting prepped. Finn is very observant when he’s around other kids. He and Graham had some fun play time together as G was showing him how his toy worked. At dinner Finn tried turkey and peas. I know, they say to introduce foods gradually!! Thanksgiving was the exception on that rule…..but Finn did great with everything – no tummy aches and no reactions.

Yummers. Turkey and peas! Finn is getting good with his pincer grip!

Yet another family tradition going back to when I was a little kid is Black Friday shopping with the family! Here we are starting out for breakfast at Bob Evans, and then by the end of the day Finn was tuckered out and fell asleep on Grandpa in the store! It was a fun day complete with lots of food and shopping success. And here is a final pic of the week along with a video of Finn dancing and laughing.

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Tag Archives: hosta

June 5, 2016

Finn ~ 37 weeks