Sip & See: Baby Winston

Our dear friends, Than and Darcy, who we visited when we went down to Florida, welcomed a new baby boy in May.  Winston Keith Jones was born on May 16th at 7:43 am.  He joins Big Brother, Jack, and the entire family is adjusting to their new normal!  Since this lovely family lives all the way down in Florida and decided to come up to Ohio for a visit with family and friends, the three of us decided that it would be SO MUCH FUN to host a little Sip and See party for Baby Winston!

And fun it sure was!  You see, Brian and I love to throw parties!  Brian is great at coordinating food and drinks/organizing/set up and I am great at details that bring everything together.  We decided on a blue, orange, and green theme and while we don't have a ton of photos, we did have a wonderful time opening up our house to our friends and their friends!  At one point, there were A LOT of kids and adults, but we had something for everyone to do and all in all our first Sip and See was a huge success!

Kate wonders where the guest of honor is.

There he is!  Baby Winston and Daddy Than!

Kate and Jack are buddies for sure!

Jack (our dog) may or may not have helped himself to some
cupcakes when were were upstairs getting ready...

Mimosas on the house!

These wild flowers just made me smile!

Brian, Duffy, and Than!  These guys go WAAAYY back!

I love these kinds of pictures!  From left to right we have:
Clair, Jack, Kate, Amelia, Baby Winston, Oliver, Lucas,
and Leo.

Heart these two!

Welcome to the world, Baby Winston!  Even though you are second born, there are still A LOT of people who love you!  :)  You are one very special little boy!

Granddad's Back!

Last year, my Dad had a conference for work in San Diego, CA that he attended and was able to stop by Columbus, OH for a little rendezvous with us on the way back to Germany.  This year he was able to attend that same conference and make another stop in Cbus to visit!  The best part about this last visit was my brother was able to fly into town for a couple days to see my Dad too!  I can't remember the last time the three of us were together, so it was so nice to just be able to enjoy each other's company!

Trav, Bri, and Dad!  ♥ them!

Grocery shopping for taco night!

My Dad is an outstanding cook!

Travs shows us all how to pose!

Taco night was a staple for my Dad, Travis and I.  We
always looked forward to it!

Tacos dressed to perfection!

We're a fine looking bunch!

Jack once again thought that my Dad was there specifically to see him.  Sometimes I think my Dad is a dog whisperer and I kind of want him to take Jack and train him so that he walks next to us, doesn't bark at the animals on tv, listens to what we say, (fill in the blank here).  But then I'm reminded of the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  Even though Jack is only almost 5 in human years, that's still approximately 33 in dog years.  I think he is set in his ways now.

And Kate warmed up after a little while to Granddad too!

Look at Mama and smile!

A Granddad and his Granddaughter!  

Fortunately, I was able to take some vacation time off again while my Dad was in town, so we got to spend some good quality time together which included lots of pool play!  Kate has been LOVING the pool this summer!

Jack?  Water?

Why won't he drink it, Mama?!

I heart this!

I've mentioned this before but I love when we have visitors at our house. It allows us to focus 100% on them and it's really nice to be able to keep Kate on her schedule/have her sleep in her own bed.  We've learned that less disruption of schedules = more predictability!

I miss my Dad already and can't wait to see him again soon.  Sometimes Germany feels so far away.

Love you, Dad!

Hot Ribs, Cool Jazz

Jazz.  Ribs.  Festival.  What more could you ask for?!

People watching?  Check.

Crazy big birds...that you could hold.  Check.

Walking on walls?  Check!  Check!  Check!

The Jazz & Rib Festival did not disappoint!  My brother, Travis, flew into town to meet up with my Dad who is also in town, but before my Dad arrived, the four of us headed downtown to the Jazz & Rib Festival. We had no expectations here but as we walked around and got our bearings we stumbled upon the best seating spot and the best jazz musicians at North Bank Park!  We made sure that we planted ourselves in said seats for both once we decided on just the right rib station, which was a task in and of itself...

Every rib joint boasted awards.  "Best in 2014!"  "Award-winning BBQ!"  "#1 Ribs!"  We thought the best way to tell a good one was to see how long the line was, but ALL of the lines were long, so out went that logic.  We ended up picking randomly and landed on Smokin' Joe's Hog Wild Barbeque out of Kentucky. In the end we decided that we couldn't go wrong with any of these BBQ places.  They all looked and smelled delicious!

And we didn't go wrong with Smokin' Joe's either!  We all shared a few items from the menu, sat at North Bank Park, and enjoyed the fabulous live jazz musicians playing with the Columbus, OH skyline in the background.

Oh yeah, and we stumbled upon this crazy bird set up where we got to hold some really exotic birds.  (I'm not entirely sure how the birds go with the jazz and/or ribs, but they were there, so we got in on the bird action too!)

Travis and Bri at the festival!

First stop, beverage tokens.

Uncle T and Kate!

Smokin' Joe's!

Walking on the wall ledge!

I cannot believe Daddy allowed this!

Uncle T with a big blue bird!

Kate and I opt for the green one!

But we had to X her trying to pet him...
I could see that going terribly wrong.

We had a great time enjoying the downtown scene together for a bit.  The weather was slightly cloudy but still unseasonably cool, and the company, jazz, ribs, people watching, bird holding and wall walking was all top notch!

Summer Celebration

A few weeks ago I noticed a Summer Celebration ad in one of our community forums that we got in the mail and I immediately placed it on our family calendar.  The Summer Celebration is a free festival that our local community puts on each summer for one night.  I wasn't entirely sure that we would go or what it would be like but I wanted to be sure we remembered that it was an option come the one day that it was held.

Being that Brian had to head out of town again for work, and the Summer Celebration was held tonight, Kate and I decided to head on over for a look-see!  Folks, we were SO IMPRESSED!  We arrived at the Summer Celebration just after 5 pm, right when it started.  There was a row of blow up bounce houses, slides and obstacle courses!  There were arts and crafts, balloon artists, train rides, hot air balloon rides, LOTS of other kiddos and parents, and live music!  In addition, it was a perfect and unseasonably cool summer evening to partake in such fine festivities!

Bounce house row!

Kate is WAY TOO DISTRACTED for Mommy & Me selfies!

When we first arrived, I showed Kate the toddler bounce house and slide and she wanted nothing to do with them.  She had her heart set on one slide and one slide only: THE BIGGEST ONE THERE!

Seriously, Kate?!

I decided we had better go big or go home, and if that is what she wanted to do then either she would love it and want to do it again or she would hate it and be scarred for life from the trauma.  I trust my little girlie and figured that we'd be able to handle this bad boy together if nothing else.  If we got to the top and she didn't want to go down, well, then we'd figure that out.

Fortunately that wasn't the case!  We got to the top and she barely wanted to sit for a photo with me!

First slide down the biggest slide at the celebration!

The slide was FAST!  And Kate *loved* every second!

We got back in line because she got of an immediately said,
"More?"

So we slid down one more time into this ball pit!

Once Kate saw how much fun bounce houses are, she was
ready to go into the smaller one!

Trying to climb to the slide.

Kate says, "Hey?  Hey you in here?  A little help here?"
(There was a volunteer sitting in the corner.)

That's more like it!

Ready to...

SSSLLLLIIIIDDDEEE!

We then ventured to the big bounce house!  This was Kate's
first bounce house experience.  We saw one at the Clippers
game but you had to be 2 to get in...there were NO
RESTRICTIONS on this one so we gave it a try!

Bounce house love!

Bounce house exit!

Doing some arts & crafts!

Kate made a butterfly keychain/got paint on her shirt that I
still can't get out.

And then she did a little dancing in the street...

...while we waited for this train ride!

CHOO-CHOO!  Chugga Chugga!

We saw the hot air balloon getting filled with air on our train ride!

And while we waited for our butterfly to dry, we watched
some kids make some t-shirts!

Then we topped the night off with a grape snow cone!

The Summer Celebration will be going into the Hendricks' summer traditions!  This free festival was awesome and so much fun for our weekday summer night!