Christmas Morning

It was an early morning for Amelia. And for mom and dad. Abbey is getting the Santa idea better this year. She went right to bed Christmas eve and woke up early Christmas morning.

Stalkings first! I remember last year Abbey was way into chocolate. This year it was Amelia who wanted the chocolate more than anything. We found her later with half sucked chocolates all over the coffee table and her hands. None left for Abbey. Most had one bite missing (I don't know how you do that with a Hershey's Kiss) or they were sucked on and spit out. Fun fun!

Some one was way excited about the MARACAS but it wasn't Abbey....

After the morning rush was over, the Dora table and a few other items scattered around.

Elmo's Christmas

Someone asked us what the girls' favorite presents were. First I thought the amazing doll house that our favorite neighbor gave us. (they got it the day before Christmas and haven't stopped playing with it) Later looking at the pictures I remembered ELMO!!!! Both girls had so much fun looking at and playing with the elmo chair and "tickel me elmo." So cute.

Later that day we went to the Shafer's home for dinner and the girls had another present explosion. So many people love our girls. It is almost like having family here in Ohio. We are so blessed!

The Cougar King gets an A!

Congrats to the COUG for getting a 4.0 the first quarter of college. He made the Dean's and the Gibbs list.
Watch out Columbus State, don't make him angry.



No that is not Columbus State, that is a replica that Danielle made.
School tastes delicious.

Merry Christmas!!!!!

The Girls

Abbey 3 Amelia 1.5



Abbey 2.5 Amelia 1



Abbey 2 Amelia .5



Amelia .005 Abbey 1.5

Adult book store explodes, why were we there?

We Had Some Visitors!

If you can't tell we've misplaced our good camera....
So we had Ben's Best Friend from high school (Brooke) and his wife stay with us for Halloween. They were passing through to Colorado. We thought we'd show 'em a great time in Westgate. Well, on our way down Broad St. to visit the fabulos Science Museum, COSI, there was an EXPLOSION. No joke. There was a natural gas leak and it filled "The Cherry Box" and the house turned Adult Book Store EXPLODED. We were right there and had been seperated from our friends. We were behind the building in the ally (doing who knows what...) and Brooke and Christina were stuck at a stoplight. They saw the whole building blow up. We both thought the other was smashed by the tons of bricks that were sprayed into the air. To see a full article see THIS.

We still made it to COSI and back home to carve pumpkins. Just in time for the trick-o-treaters.





























We also took them to OSU. We ate lunch on "the big stairs." It is part of the OSU Architecture department. Abbey wanted to walk all the way to the top. So we ate at the tip top trying to keep our baby and Brooke and Christina's baby (Isobel) from falling down "the big stairs."























The whole building is made of concrete. Everything echoed. There are NO secrets in the Architecture Department at OSU.
And no flying brick possibilites. We had a semi-safe Halloween visit.

Oahu!

Here we are at the PCC. I went to BYU-Hawaii for a couple of years. The show is done by students paying for their college education. The night show is the best part. My Hale (dorm) was right behind the stage and I used to do my homework/fall asleep to the music of the night show. They did such a great job. I feel so lucky to have gone to school at such an amazing place and to now have returned for a visit. Maybe I can talk Ben into do some sort of Summer sabbatical there in a couple of years....

It was very very windy at Pali Look Out. Ben is wearing a tie if you can't tell!

This is a great place to stop and take a look. No hiking involved. The view so beautiful but the coolest part is the wind.

jon & jodi

We were so excited to see Hawaii, we even took pictures out the window in our airplane!

We stayed with jon and jodi in Waikiki for a couple of days. They had the best accommodations! Our bed was on the Lanai of their 19th story apartment. Then they took us to their favorite Korean BBQ for dinner. You get to cook your own meat over the grill in the middle of the table. So good!

Here is the view we woke to every morning. If you look close, you can see a faint rainbow!

AND to every one's disgust ben continued to work through our vacation. (there was a big deadline he was aiming for-he made it... barley)

BFF 4-ever

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of the three of us. (and little dave) I think this is Halloween 1987?
These are my real BFF's. They came out to visit me in little ol' Ohio. They have been so good to me ever since were were in 2nd grade at Cypress Elementary School. It has been 2 years since we have seen each other but it felt like yesterday we were singing Happy Birthday to Quinn.

I don't know how I managed to NOT get a picture of the three of us together. Maybe juggling 2 kids between 3 women was too much for me??? They were such a great help! I miss you guys already!

Ben was out of town for the week-end so we came up with the girliest thing we could think of: butterflies at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

We had so much fun together and my girls will never forget the fun they had with their new friends!
K. I. T.
Have a great summer!
Love,
Your Best Friend
Danielle

(p.s. bec, I hope we can be better friends next year)

Leap for the Ligars

We did it. We (maybe just I) relived my high school cross country years. My best friend Quinn was ALWAYS way faster than me. I always wished I could beat her. I invited her to a friendly 5k fundraiser for our Boy Scouts 12 years after our last cross country meet. Little did she know that all I wanted was to run her into the ground. I had been training for over 3 months just so I could smoke her at the race. It would have helped me if I have told her all these years I was holding a competitive grudge. Quinn didn't even train. In fact she has a slight stress fracture from her NYC Marathon from last year.

Here she is beating my home teacher. Go Quinn!

All I could do was maybe tie with her at the end of the race.
(Someone had already finished and decided to finish the race again with one of her best friends)

Someone here is a little too into this race!
Thanks for the good times!

Happy 4th on the 23rd

Ben's oldest brother Chad brought his family for the 4th of July! Coleman (who is Ben's 14 year old twin) really wanted fireworks. They live in Colorado where fireworks are illegal. So here in Ohio there were sure to be crazy amazing fireworks at Wal-mart. Here are just a few of the miracles we call "Ohio fireworks from Wal-mart."

Watch out, here come the sparklers! This just got us ready for the HUGE bomb, the biggest one in the package.

Brave Heart Coleman lit the massive box and stood way, way back. First we saw gray smoke. Then yellow... then more yellow. We then began to choke. There was soooo much SMOKE.

We then realized, the title on the box is....
"Double Eagle Smoke"
We had tons of smoke bombs. And they smelled GREAT!
Happy 4th! Thanks for visiting, we had tons of fun. We can't wait to live close to you guys.

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