The Blue Jackets!

When Joe and Marnie's family came to visit Tom's dad was able to get 10 box seat tickets to the Columbus Blue Jackets game! So, Jen and Rob took Calvin, Joe and Marnie took Joey and that left Tom and I and Dad Kiehl plus one more ticket. So, we thought we would take our big boy...Charlie! After getting over his initial fear of the height we were at, the noise, the blimp that kept floating by our heads, oh and the cannon that would shoot off when they scored...Charlie had a blast! Unfortunately the Blue Jackets lost after overtime and a shoot out, but it was still a ton on fun.

It was so fun to have Joe's family here. The kids love playing with their cousins so much. Meg said she wished that all of her cousins lived close by! We all do!

Halloween

What some people don't know, is that in Ohio, we do things a little differently. One example is Halloween and Trick-or-Treat. Most people would assume they are one in the same...but not in the Buckeye State! We like to mix it up a little. Trick-or-Treat is always on the Thursday before Halloween...why you might ask? We're not exactly sure of the answer, it just is. So, Joe & Marnie and the kids were coming to visit on the 30th of October, assuming their kids could Trick-or-Treat with all of us here. But, it wasn't that easy. After some research, we found that a few communities in the Central Ohio area were sticking to the tradition of Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, so we found one close to us so that Joe & Marnie's kids could still get some Trick-or-Treating in this year, and our kids could have double the fun and candy! Unfortunately there were several others thinking the same thing (getting twice the candy) and there were so many kids in this small community (most of which were commuting in like we were) and not enough candy to go around. Most houses were fresh out by the time we got there, so poor Maddie and Holland didn't get the best experience this year. But, we still had a lot of fun!

So, to explain the above picture: Maddie was a Spa Girl, Anson was a bat, Charlie the Great White Shark (not just a regular shark), Holland was Dorothy (ruby slippers and all), Chloe a beautiful witch and our flower fairy Meg. (The caterpillar was sleeping...again!)

More Trick-or-Treat

Trick-or-Treat

We had so much fun this year trick-or-treating! The weather was perfect! A beautiful fall day. We had a flower fairy, a Great White Shark, and a very hungry caterpillar! The were super cute and hilarious! We were afraid that Charlie would not want to trick-or-treat this year. He is a little timid sometimes. He was scared of all of the costumes we were showing him. But, he has been in love with sharks, whales and dolphins lately, so when we heard that Pottery Barn had a shark costume, we thought we would take him to see it. They didn't have his size though, and he didn't like the big hood on it, but the lady working there gave me a great idea! So, we bought the trick-or-treat bag and then just went to Wal-Mart (my mecca!) and got a grey sweatsuit and I used my super human Martha Stewart skills and made a fin for the back! And Tom made his Shark hair and we were all set!

We walked around with some neighbor kids and the kids had a great time filling up their buckets, all except our little caterpillar who slept through the whole thing in the stroller! Their bags were getting heavy by the end, but both kids refused to hand over any of their loot to try and lighten their load. It was pretty hilarious to watch Charlie dragging his bag by the end!

We hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Meg's School Halloween Party

Here are some photos from Meg's Halloween party at school. The kids were all super cute! We love Meg's school. We think it is really helping her come out of her shell, slowly but surely! We think she look pretty beautiful too!

Tom is officially old!

I love these pictures! You could put them in a flip book...before...deep breath...blows them all out...and he's pleased with his work!

Tom turned 30 a couple weeks ago. People keep asking me if he's been affected by that. My response is: He doesn't care, he still looks 18!

We had Tom's parent's and Jen's family over for dinner. We had beef stew, mashed potatoes, rolls, berries, German chocolate cake and homemade ice cream. It was a lot of food!

We all love Tom very much and wouldn't know what we would do without him. He continues to be everyone's favorite person! We are loving having him around more now. He works a mile away and comes home most days for lunch and is home for dinner. What a blessing. The kids just can't get enough of Daddy! Happy 30th Tom!

Circle S

We had to make our traditional trip to the pumpkin patch this year. The day we went it was absolutely freezing though. We had fun in the hay barn where the wind wasn't as bad, but the hay ride to pick out pumpkins was pretty torturous, not to mention the fortune it costs to go to as well! I think our new tradition might be driving around Grandpa Kiehl's farm on the riding lawn mower then stopping at the garden to pick pumpkins there! The kids were great troopers though and had a ton of fun!

The Baby Elephant

We love going to the zoo! We are so lucky to have such a wonderful one close by. Here is the new baby elephant. I couldn't get over how cute it was. Brand new, fuzzy and wrinkly...very cute!

Charlie is obsessed with the zoo and would love to go everyday if possible. He is especially in love with sharks, manatees, dolphins and whales. Unfortunately there are not dolphins or whales at the Columbus Zoo, but he still loves going. We need to make a trip to Sea World sometime!

The Neighborhood Kids

Tom has been in Texas finishing up work for the past few weeks, so we have been without him here, which is not fun. We have some great neighbors though, and two little boys that live right next door who are 7 and 8 years old. They are pretty much Charlie's heros. They go outside almost every night to play football with their dad and some other kids from the neighborhood. Charlie likes to go out there and "play defense" as my dad says. He just kind of stands in the middle of all of them and runs around having a ball! You can see a slight shot of our house in the bottom picture, it's the one on the right.

Charlie's First Day of School

Charlie started pre-school last week. He is really loving it. He goes on Monday and Tuesday from 9am to 11:15am. He is really doing well. It has been really helping him learn to socialize better and work on transitioning from one activity to the next. I wish he could go every day, he really benefits from structure like that. Henry is still not of the best schedule yet, so you never know, from day to day, what our schedule might be.

Charlie's teachers are Mrs. Butcher and Mrs. Gavin and he loves them. It's just down the street from us. It is very nice to have so many things close by.

We love our little Charlie.

Meg's first day of Kindergarten!

Our little girl started kindergarten! We can't believe it! We moved to Ohio, bought a house in Upper Arlington and started Kindergarten, all in about a two week period. Some serious changes, but we are adjusting. One of my favorite things about where we live is that we can walk to school. Meg's school is about a half a mile down the street. It's called Greensview Elementary School and her teacher is Mrs. Radu. We love it. Meg goes to morning kindergarten which starts at 8:15am and goes until 11:05am. Her first day she wanted to ride her bike...it sounded like a good idea at first, until I realized that I would then be carrying it home while pushing the boys in the double stroller. That didn't go as well as planned! I'm laughing at the picture of the four of us. We look pretty exhausted! Not much sleep happening then. Charlie was having a hard time adjusting, and kept coming in our room at night, and Henry is still struggling with wakeful nights, teething. And I had been spending every waking moment scrubbing the house trying to rid it of the yucky dog smell! I have cleaned dog hair out of every imaginable place in the house, even the refrigerator! I think it is finally gone though. Or, I'm used to it, I hope not! We recarpeted the entire house, except for the finished basement, because the previous owners had just finished it and the carpet was new down there. But, that is the most pungent place because of that. We now are focused on painting and the bathrooms. But, we love it and it is a great home for our family. Our yard is Tom's favorite part. We have a huge backyard with a million trees! It is very shaded and feels great sitting outside watching the kids play. It will require some serious hours of racking this fall, but it will be worth it.

Vegas Baby!

For our annual Kiehl Family Vacation this year, we went to Las Vegas. We wanted to go some place out west, to be fair to our western families, and Vegas was the only place close to a lake with a big enough house. This is a very rare shot of all 33 of us (35 is you count Betsy's twins in-utero!). This is at the fountains at the Bellagio (the only outing we attempted as an entire group) they were amazing!

We had such a great time. We wish we could all live closer. The cousins all love each other so much, it is sad that they only get to all see each other once a year. I know we are very blessed to even be able to do that though. Dad Kiehl is very generous, or it would not be nearly as easy to all get together for a vacation. We loved it!

Above, from left to right, you have Joe's family (Maddie, Joe, Joey, Marnie, Holland and Anson), our family, Betsy's family (Seth, Bode, Makena, Cameron, Betsy and the twins :)), Sam's family (Jake, Sam, Marci, Alli and Spencer), Jen's family (Rob, Calvin, Jenny and Chloe), Mom and Dad, and Kate's family (Maggie, Brandon, Kate, Jack, and Dylan). What a group!