halloween...

weather was great for trick-or-treat this year! in fact it may have been a little too warm for one fur-covered purple-winged unicorn... :) who ended up pulling her hood down for most of the festivities. good thing i snapped a few pics early on!

we met up with a few friends...

and even had a "tooth fairy" sighting! can you believe it?

after the first hour out trick-or-treating for "peanut-free" candy... we spent the second hour at home handing out candy. between dressed-up-kiddos, i snapped this pic of the moon hiding behind our tree in the front yard.

hours of fun...

avery found this by accident. we literally stood here forever just watching these things fly all over the wall!

the similarities are ridiculous...

sometimes i just can't get over how much they look like Amy!

well... sometimes. :)

take your daughter(s) to work day...

i never realized that "take your daughter to work-day" is also known as a "mommy's free to do whatever the heck she wants-day!" never really thought about it like that!

this year i felt like both avery and livi were old enough to come down to CD1o1 to spend a few hours with daddy bouncing around the loft. here we are just relaxing at my desk. notice the always-present "terrible towel" product placement!

while avery wrote a couple commercials for me... livi hit the sierra mist stash pretty hard! luckily we had quite the supply.

after the work got done, avery decided to leave a wall-size mural one of our dry-erase boards.

while avery drew... olivia posed for people down in the lobby... then drank some more sierra mist.

and finally we capped the afternoon off with a walk through the studio. andyman was nice enough to let the girls snap a pic in the captain's chair!

so overall, a good afternoon of bouncing around cd101 for the girls. they had fun. they came home tired. and when we got back we found mommy curled up on a chair... watching "her show," while reading a magazine that had nothing to do with parenting, or kids.

amy asked me if monday was going to be another "TYDsTW" day. sorry hun... you'll just have to wait till next year. :)

oh, what to do when it rains...

there's really only one answer to that question.. an "umbrella party," naturally!  jeez!

 

after an Easter weekend that included a pleasant little trip to the ER for some asthma assistance.. we ended up coming back to columbus a day early.  which meant that there was some "stay-at-home" time for daddy with the girls left.  and regardless of the rain, we decided to pile up the crew and hit creekside in gahanna for a little rain-drop-dodging!

 

any other day... a walk thru the woods at creekside is nice little get away!  but pair it with an umbrella, some rain boots along with a little puddle jumping... and a little rock skipping... and you've got an afternoon that they just can't stop talking about! 

 

even the wildlife had their rain coats on!  the girls loved how the rain drops just beaded off this swans head!  sadly... the water doesn't bead off A & O's heads as well.  no worries.

 

'appy saint'pattie's day.....

down to just a single vehicle this week... i needed to stop at home so Amy could drop Avery off at school today. and since i snagged the camera early this morning before heading off to the CD101 Morning Show live St. Patty's Day broadcast at Claddagh Irish Pub... i got to see... and snap a few pictures of the girls "sportin the green" today!

nicely done mom! green bandana... big fan!

HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY AVERY~~!!!

three celebrations down... one to go!

this past saturday and sunday we got to spend some quality time with pap and grandma shuler. then sunday afternoon was the hugie-luigie 5th birthday party for avery. well... large in the sense that we had about 30+ people in the house for a few hours doing the cake & ice cream + singing thing! crazy that it was only really avery and livi's friends from the neighborhood "mom's group!" AND IT WAS 30+ people! we've come to realize that if we wanted to get more than, like, one or two spheres of friends together at one time... we'd need to add on to the house!

so the cake and ice cream was grand! home-made by a friend of ours (who does cakes on the side if you're interested)! and avery had a blast!

tonight we celebrated her "actual" birthday, just the four of us. nice and calm-like. next we're looking to cap the festivities with a visit from grandma and grandpa hall this weekend! who knows what kind of crazy parties we'll find ourselves in the middle of!!!!!

here's a shot of avery from this evening with her cake and ice cream. you can see that she's a fan of the glittery stickers she got from her friend calvin on sunday. along with many others... she wore the purple one on her forehead all evening!

she's figured it out already...

on wednesday evening just before dinner.. avery was watching tv.  normally when a commercial comes on she reverts to the, "oooh mommy, i want that!"  or a "daddy.. that's what i want!"

last night she took a different approach.

"all the commercials on tv just want to steal your money...  because they keep showing stuff just so you'll buy it."

she's pretty much just summarized my entire career objective... before the age of 5.

january 29th 2008...

one year ago today... i took this pic..

hard to believe it's been a year since we packed both of the girls, grandma and grandpa hall and amy & i onto a skybus to california for like... $45 each.. ROUNDTRIP!!!!!

guess it's easy to see why they went out of business!

here's a quick photo-recap of how the trip went down...

day 1... napa valley + rain...

day 2... golden gate bridge... muir woods...

day 3... fisherman's wharf... ghirardelli... oakland family reunion...

day 4... windmills... pacific (half moon bay)...

day 5... haight ashbury... downtown san francisco...

it was an amazingly sweet trip, that'll probably never happen again! at least under those prices!

one of my favorite photos happened by chance. we were driving back from half moon bay on day 4 and steph (who was nice enough to put up with us staying at her and nathan's place for almost a week!) said.. "hey... i've got a great place to watch the sunset."

taken from a california hillside neighborhood, it overlooked oakland... the bay... san francisco... and even part of the golden gate bridge in the distance.

yes, indeed... she did!