Shift Happens
We watched a great little video in Marketing the other day called Shift Happens, thought it was worth sharing.
First Day of (pre)School
…was several weeks ago but I’m just now getting around to writing about it. 
Womanizer
What’s with the album cover, we’re not going back to the 80’s are we? This is an ominous development…
Ava v3.0
For us, 3 is the new 2. Lily turned into a min-tyrant as 3 approached and Ava is apparently going to be no different. Her new thing is to threaten; we call her “the terrorist.” She’s real calm and just tells you matter-of-fact what is going to happen if you don’t do as she says. The other day she was painting and wouldn’t move to her seat for dinner, and we took something or did something that upset her. Next thing we know, she’s standing next to her chair with the paint brush saying “if you don’t give me that back, I’m going to paint on this chair.” Julie and I both thought it was absolutely hilarious and of course now she does it all the time.
Unfortunately, other times the tyrant act is not so fun. She struggles with correction so you can pretty much guarantee that if you correct her on something she’s going to start pouting and that’ll quickly erupt into a full blown meltdown if she’s even the slightest bit tired and/or hungry.
Disney on Ice
Our first Disney on Ice, not all bad. We scored free tickets from a friend and took the whole crew. The Tinkerbell thing drug on for way too long, but other than that it was ok.
Hall-ZOO-ween
Another weekend, another Halloween festival…
Pumpkin Patch
We met my parents at a local pumpkin patch today, and had a lot of fun! Typically Julie and take the kids to a place in Indiana, but mom and dad have been wanting to go with us one year and the place we’ve always went seemed to be going downhill every year.
This new place, Shaw Farms is a really nice place; tons of pumpkins and a real hay ride to boot! It was crowded, but not crazy so the it wasn’t really a hassle. We forget to get pics with the grandparents, which is disappointing.
Growing up!
They grow up so fast…
Fall-O-Ween Festival
The first, of what I’m sure will be many Halloween festivals over the coming weeks. This one was at Coney Island, I didn’t even know they did Halloween!
Hot Air Ballooning
For a birthday gift, Julie wanted to hot air balloon. We went last Sunday with Gentle Breeze, and it was a pretty good time. Much different than expected, we were kind of expecting to show up, hop in a balloon cruise, around and go home. But not so fast!
It’s quite a bit of work! First we helped blow up the balloon, and that got interesting when 75% of the way through the wind picked up and started dragging us around. We’re tied off to a Suburban, but the knot didn’t hold; just the metal eyelet at the end did. So there’s 6-7 of us hanging onto this balloon doing everything we can to keep it on the ground, hoping this rope doesn’t come free. But we got in (quickly) and got off the ground w/o further incident.
The flight itself was pretty nice, 4 of us passengers plus the pilot. One drawback to being tall, was the searing heat of the gas heaters. I’ve never stuck my head inside a propane grill, but now I’m pretty sure I know how it would feel. Tight quarters as well.
As for direction, it turns out you just go with the wind and then the “chase car” picked us up after an hour or so in the air. We had champagne once we landed, and headed home.