Another week in the books here. Time seems to be moving quickly though this week we were able to enjoy the long Memorial Day weekend. Kevin was home and we did our traditional trip to downtown Powell to watch the parade. We always meetup with my friend Kim and her family and this year we spontaneously went to their house after for a cookout. It was quite nice to catch up and for her to meet Reid. We had to wake Griffin up to go to the parade!
Griffin is really liking taking photos lately. He took some with the big camera and others with my phone. He even knows how to take a photo on my phone without having to unlock it!
Reid slept through almost the entire parade, until the very end when he piped up and wanted to eat. Here he is beginning to realize he’s hungry!
Our annual parade-day family photos. 
We headed to Macy’s to shop for a chair for Griffin’s room. Kevin’s parents were very kind to gift a chair to us for his room so we can move the leather recliner to Reid’s room. Here these two are trying out the chair we ended up choosing. It’s perfect for his room as it’s a durable almost denim-like fabric in gray and wide enough to fit 2 or three people (depending on who they are, ha!). 
We had a lovely dinner of BBQ beef sandwiches, pasta salad, jello and chocolates brought to us this week by the Pilgrim’s. It was delish. We’ve been very well cared for by our friends and family!
Griffin had many fun adventures this week. We’ve been keeping his routine pretty normal. Debbie has been coming around 9:30 in the morning and he starts the day with breakfast followed by art projects, learning games, play or adventures. 
On Friday Kevin, Griffin, Reid and I went to the “Celebrate Spring is Over” Millcreek party at Plain City Lanes Bowling Alley. Kevin and Finn bowled and we enjoyed pizza and other tasty treats. We were there far longer than I had anticipated, nearly 3 hours! Reid once again slept through almost all of it until the end when he was hungry. My fellow Millcreekers enjoyed seeing him and remarked at how cute and small he is. I think he is so big! 
This boy always loves to lay out his clothes and see his “choices”. He’s most often prefers to color coordinate his tops, bottoms, and socks. 
On Saturday we headed up to Mansfield for Graham’s birthday party at the Infield and Grandma and Grandpa Beilstein’s. It was our first road trip as a family of 4+2 and it wasn’t the best of starts! We needed to take a crate for Brutus (as he destroys at least one thing a day currently by chewing!). Needless to say that is pretty large. With all of our gear, people, gifts, dog accouterments, and so on we were loaded to the max. And on top of that Brutus either didn’t want to get in the back or wouldn’t fit, so he rode on the floor of the back seat. Or, as it turns out he sat up and partially on my lap at times. Yikes. This dog cracks me up. He is a giant yet such a baby. He really needs a lot of attention. He regularly picks up things he knows he shouldn’t have and brings them right to me – just to say, “hey, look at me”. He literally wanted to get in my lap in the car. It made me realize it had been many weeks since he’d been in a car for any length of time and even on the trips we’ve taken him on we’d been putting him in the back seat where he would sit on the floor. Guess that’s what he’s gotten used to and the fact that two kids and an adult and a bunch of things were there this time didn’t seem to faze his wanting to be there too!
Once we unloaded the car and crated Brutus we all headed to the Infield for an afternoon of Go Karts and mini golf. It was HOT outside and I was wearing Reid in the Ergo baby carrier for the first time. He slept just fine, but man, I was sweaty hot and so was he when we got him out to cool us both off (hence his smile, perhaps?).
This time Griffin was tall enough to drive the kiddie go karts. He was either tired or unsure of things in the beginning as he didn’t quite get how to work the car. But he got the swing of it after a bit. 
We celebrated Graham’s 7th birthday and Dad’s 71st birthday with cake, ice cream, and presents. Afterward I walked around the yard with Dad and checked out his seedlings. Things are looking great and very colorful! 
Our first photo as a family of 11!
Reid’s first piece of mail arrived this week – his social security card!
And here are some others from our week. 
I took this picture on the morning of May 31st and later that day Reid’s umbilical cord fell off. 11 days – it was a thick cord!
Griffin asks regularly to hold Reid. He’s super sweet about it and likes holding him for about a minute. Then he asks you to take him off – he’s heavy!
He is wearing 3 month clothing already and it fits really well! Yowzaa. 
This is Brutus’ regular spot in our bedroom, especially if he’s being disciplined (read that as yelled at) for doing something bad 🙁 Griffin also loves to cuddle with Brutus and Lily. Brutus is getting pretty big and Griffin just loves laying on him, literally, on him. We ask him not to lay on him directly but to cuddle next to him but he just loves to do it. 
Here is a picture of Griffin when he was about 9 or 10 weeks old. This is at the Memorial Tournament with the Manning girls. He looks about the size that Reid is now! And you can see how they look different – different noses, eyes, and chins for sure. 
June 4, 2017 ~ 2 weeks
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It’s summertime, which means blueberry picking! We headed out on Saturday morning to a new place, Blue Sky Farms, in Marysville and met up with the Bethune’s. It is a 5-acre patch in the backyard of a family’s home and the entire patch is enclosed in netting! That’s the first time I’d seen that! It was a pretty warm morning, but we were able to pick just over 5 pounds of blueberries (Chandler and Draper varieties). I had high hopes of picking like 20 pounds which wasn’t really possible there as their plants are pretty young still. Although what we did pick were super yummy and pretty big! 
Since I had high hopes of picking major quantities of blueberries, we carried on to another blueberry farm south of Columbus in South Bloomfield called Blueberry Valley. This one was entirely enclosed in netting too – and from the highway we were super excited that they would have more fruit to pick. We were sorely disappointed and didn’t pick anything! Most of the fruit wasn’t yet ripe and the workers were weeding the rows (tossing all the large weeds into the grass rows!). So we took some photos, bought a few things from the roadside veggie stand, and headed to Enon. We had a “roadtrip” on our summer bucket list, so we turned this day into that and on our way to Enon looked up other blueberry farms that we could go to en route to Grandma and Grandpa Armstrongs. It wasn’t meant to be though, as the three or four places I found were all closed to allow for ripening. Booooo!!
So we hung out with Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong and checked out the progress they are making on remodeling their new home. It’s looking great! Finn played some baseball in the driveway and we enjoyed a pizza dinner before heading to Young’s Jersey Dairy for some ice cream dessert. 
Sunday was a busy day too with a birthday party for Finn’s friend Owen, followed by a small group social day at our house. It was planned for a friends house, but she came down with a bug and rather than cancelling we just decided to host. I didn’t snap too many photos, but Kevin setup the water table, mini pool, bounce house, and tee-ball for the kiddos to play. We were exhausted by the end of the night!
During the week Finn and I headed to Zoombeezi on my day off. This time we arrived when they opened at 10:30 and were there until 7. Wowzer! We packed a lunch and got a nice chair in the shade this time so we could rest a bit. My plan was for Finn to fall asleep in the car on the way home and go right to sleep – but that didn’t work! He was a tired boy though as we had been in the sun and water all day long. 
Finn may turn into a fish – as he also got to go down to the Fountains this week downtown with Debbie. In keeping with the water theme he made “Nemo’ and a crab. Kevin and Finn also caught lightning bugs (see if you can find them in our video) and let our last two butterflies go this week. 
This week Millcreek exhibited at the Cultivate’16 Trade Show in downtown Columbus at the Convention center. It is one of the largest conventions for the Green Industry in the US. Lucky for me, the convention center is across the street from the North Market, so I was luck to meet up with Kevin for lunch. We had deliciousness from The Little Eater (http://littleeater.com), a vegetarian eatery that makes the most amazing and tasty dishes. I would eat there every day if I could…..
