Hurricane hits Cincinnati

The day after Melanie's party we had the remnants of Hurricane Ike come through Cincinnati. We had winds gusting around 70 miles per hour. We were out in Indiana at a church dinner when it started and by the time we were on our way home it was really getting bad. We had to hold on Melanie because she couldn't walk to the car the winds were so strong. There were tree branches down on the entrance ramp to the highway and debris flying everywhere. As we got closer to home, we saw a lot of damage. Trees split or just plain fallen over. It was pretty scary. We have 3 big oak trees in our yard and thankfully we didn't lose any of them. The only damage we suffered was our back door tried to blow off. We did lose our electricity for about 36 hours. We were some of the lucky ones other people had their power of for most of the week. We know that God protected us during this time. Here are some pictures Ron took of the some of the damage he saw.

Melanie's 4th Birthday party

We thank God everyday that He allowed this special little girl from Guangchang, China to be our daughter. We can't believe that she is already 4 yrs. old.

This year for her birthday, Melanie wanted to have a princess party. We found the perfect cake that had Aerial, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Belle on it. She was so excited when we ordered it.

We had a wonderful birthday party for Melanie. We played princess games (which is really hard to do when most of your guests are boys), we had pizza, mac and cheese, salad and of course birthday cake and ice cream. We even had a pinata. We did though think it was a little strange that the kids were "beating up" on Cinderella just to get some candy, but everyone had a wonderful time. Melanie got lots of great presents, I think her favorites were the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Mermaid dolls. Here (hopefully) is the link for the movie I created. Hope you enjoy it. "http://www.onetruemedia.com/share_view_player?p=7098bb2ee399b85bdc7be3

Mini golf with Melanie rules

The other night we went to mini golf. We quickly learned that a four year old has her own rules about how to play. Melanie would hit the ball as hard as she could, then once it stopped rolling she would pick it up, walk to the hole, place it by the hole and then hit it in. She had a great time playing this way, but we did try to get her to hit the ball instead of carrying it all the way down. In one of the pictures above she is sitting on the purple steps. She called this her house and would yell at us if we hit it.

disney video

I just tried to create a video montage of our trip to Disney. I have never done this before, so hopefully this works. Here is the link. "http://www.onetruemedia.com/share_view_player?p=6f8007557410cd5a6c7062"

Parade time

Here on the westside of Cincinnati there is a tradition of going to the Harvest Home Parade and fair. We went to the parade and had a great time. The highlight for Melanie was seeing Daddy in the Citizens on Patrol car.

We then spent a couple of days going to the fair, where Melanie and I entered a cake that won 2nd place.

Labor Day Weekend

Hi all, obviously I need to get a little better at updating this site.

We spent Labor Day weekend at Natural Bridge State Park in Kentucky. We did a lot of hiking (well mostly Ron and Melanie) I did some. Melanie had a great time hiking in the woods. Ron led all of the hikes for our group. Melanie even got into some poison ivy, but she didn't really have a reaction to it. We even rode the chair lift on our last day there.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.