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!

The Babies

Henry had a cousin born just a week before he was this year. Joe and Marnie had Anson on March 5th (I think). They were hilarious together. They would lay on the floor and just roll over top of one another. They loved checking each other out. Marnie has a great picture of Henry with Anson's leg in a arm lock and Henry just sucking on his leg like he was going to gnaw it off. It was so funny. We had to keep separating them, but they always managed to get on top of each other again. We think they are going to be best friends.

The Dolphin & Lion Habitat

We tried to do a family outing each day while in Vegas. On this day we went to the Siegfried & Roy Dolphin & Lion Habitat at the Mirage. We saw a baby dolphin, which was super cute, and the lions and tigers were amazing. They were the retired ones from the shows, so they were old, but still pretty spectacular. Colin came with us, which was fun for the kids. I thought he was going to have a heat stroke in his jacket, it was so hot, but it was new and he didn't want to take it off. He is such a sweet kid. Charlie, especially, loved hanging out with him.

Boating at Lake Mead

We loved going boating while in Vegas. We only went out one day because we were worried that Henry wouldn't thoroughly enjoy it. But, we all had a great time. We went with Betsy's family and Brandon and Colin. It was so nice of Kate and Brandon to bring their boat down for all of us to enjoy and for Brandon taking us all out each day. Check out the "shark" infested waters in the first picture. The carp were crazy there at the dock! You should have seen them once the kids threw in some goldfish. They were just climbing on top of each other. It was kind of gross.

I couldn't believe that Meg and Charlie got in the water, especially after seeing the carp. They loved it. Lake Mead is very beautiful. The kids also had a ton of fun on the tube. Seth and Tom did some tubing on their own, it got pretty scary. Meg was balling the whole time, she was so worried about her daddy! So, Tom didn't do much tubing after that. We had a blast though.

The Trip Home

These are a couple shots during our long trip back to Ohio. It took us almost 3 days! These are pictures we took in one of our hotel rooms. Can you see how exhausted we all are in the first picture? And can you tell who stayed up the latest that night??? CHARLIE! He was so funny!

Leaving Texas

I didn't get many pictures of our exit, but here are a couple cute ones. We left Texas on August 16th. It was a whirlwind and an emotional roller coaster. We are excited to be home, in a house and near our parents and friends, but are heartbroken to leave Betsy's family and our dear friends that we made while there. Our kids miss Makena, Cameron and Bode like you would not believe. Changes are very hard on all of us, and this has been the hardest thus far.

My Dad flew down to help drive the truck back so that Tom could help me in the van. However, we had so much stuff that we ended up having to get a second truck that Tom had to drive. So, needless to say, it was a very long drive home that took nearly three days. We had a crew of 10 men show up at our house Sunday afternoon to help us load the truck. Not only was this a huge surprise to us, it was also an incredible blessing. These men worked for several hours in the hot Texas sun, we are in great debt to them.

Goodbye Tejas.