Hocking Hills camping trip

We took at camping trip down to Hocking Hills. The weather was cool, but as usual the area was so beautiful! We hiked in all of the caves, and even explored a new one we hadn't been to yet.

(not sure why the pictures are showing up so odd, but I can't seem to move them to the right places!)

The kids had the most fun jumping across the rocks. Surprisingly, no one fell in!!

I think this is the area in which the campers used to drive over. They had rebuilt the entrance to the campground, but in the past you actually had to drive right over a little stream of water. Pretty cool!

The kids went "fishing" with sticks. What?, no bites yet? :)

Go Generals!

At Sydney's school they had a cheerleading "cheer clinic". It was a two night event where the kids learned cheers, and then they were going to join the cheerleaders at this weekend's football game. Unfortunately we won't be able to make the game, but Sydney had a great time learning the cheers - and later mentioned to me that she wouldn't want to cheer at the game because she would be nervous. She did a great job! That's her in the black pants and white t-shirt in the middle....


While she was at the cheer clinic, Zack and I played games at home. I find it interesting that a 4 year old has a such an interest in Battleship, but he really does a decent job at playing and gets a huge smile when he makes a HIT!

Zack's special day

Today the neighborhood playgroup met at Playground World. It's actually a store that sells playsets, but twice a week they invite people in to "try out the merchandise". I had never been there, so I decided to keep Zack home on my typical "Mommy Monday" and we went to playgroup. Not only did they have several of these cool playsets, they also had a train table which Zack spent a lot of time at.

After that, we went to our favorite library (which also has a train table) and I picked up some books for our upcoming camping trip to Hocking Hills.
For lunch, I had packed some sandwiches and snacks and we went to the 577 Foundation and ate in the garden.

It was a beautiful day for a "date" with Zack. He was having such a great time he did a little dance! See that big scratch on his nose? He tripped at Cedar Point a couple of days ago and did quite a face plant. ouch. We had such a good time we were late to pick up Sydney from school again this week. oooops. My record is not so good, I have to get better at being on time.

Pumpkin Patch

It's time to decorate for Halloween, and a trip to the pumpkin patch with Grandma & Grandpa was in order. We were remembering how last year it was almost 90 degrees when we visited, and this year it was probably about 55!




Here is a picture of the kids 3 years ago on their visit... they have really grown up in 3 years!





The little piggies were oh so cute, as always.


Zack demonstrated his super hero strength and had to carry his pumpkin over to the wagon. It's so cute that he tells us all of the time how strong he is.

In order to keep everyone happy, we had to take pictures of our pumpkins so no one fought over them when we got home!

The most interesting part of our visit was feeding the cows an apple! As soon was we walked over there with our apple, the cow stuck out his tongue - which was huge!! The instructions were to just roll it down his tongue, but the kids wanted no part of that. A big crowd gathered for the show. Alan was our brave feeder, and he did a great job.

Halloweekends!

It's become our annual tradition to make at least one trip to Cedar Point during the summer, and then another in the fall for Halloweekends. For some reason our whole summer, and now fall, has been packed full of some scheduled activity every weekend - and this weekend was the only time we had free for our trip to Cedar Point. Unfortunately the beautiful weather was last weekend, and this weekend was really fall with the temps dipping into the 40's at night and hitting only around 60 during the day. We were debating if Saturday or Sunday would be the better day for our trip (which was a sure thing since I had already bought the discounted tickets at the Credit Union!) and after a whole morning of debating, we decided at 1:30pm that Saturday was going to be our day of fun - and that way we could rest on Sunday :)

We made it to the park by 3pm, but that was no problem since it was open until midnight. As always we had a great time on the kiddie rides and went through a haunted house (also for the kids). The park is so fun when it's all decorated for Halloween. The kids even got to see the "big kid" scarers as we had to use the restrooms located in one of the "Fright Zones". Maybe in a few years they will want to wander around there too!

Oh - and I have to mention the story of Sydney having her first "diva fit" about something she was wearing. It was chilly during the day so we wore hooded sweatshirts, with long sleeve t-shirts underneath them. That was sufficient until evening hit, so then we went out the car to put our jackets on. Well, I had only brought along our light jackets, so I told everyone to put the jacket right on top of the hooded sweatshirt. At that point Sydney started going into hysterics about how "no one wears them that way!" and she was not going to wear "2 coats"!! We tried to explain how it was cold and she needed to layer up, and we didn't have anything else to wear. Eventually she settled down and did the right thing, but boy did she put on a show for another car that was nearby in the parking lot!! geez! I can't wait for those teenage years! ;)

Race for the Cure

I participated in the Race for the Cure this year, which is a huge fund raising event for breast cancer research and treatment. I mean it's super huge!!! There are participants walking and running the 5K. They raised $900,000 this year with this event. This was the event I have been training for all summer. So was Jennifer - and here we are, all ready to go!


Here is a shot of part of the runners waiting for the starting gun. We are the short little faces in the middle.


Almost to the end! It was such a beautiful morning, a crisp fall morning, which made for an easy run.

yeah!! we did a great job - finished at 29:20. Must have been those great signs and cheering team that made us run so fast :)

Fort Meigs

We took a trip over to Fort Meigs this afternoon. I have never been there before, so this was new to me too. We got to see the fort, museum and also talked to some people dressed in period costumes. One of them even fired off a musket, which cool to watch, even though it scared the kids a little with the bang :)

I think the kids had the most fun climbing around on top of the monument though!

Did you guess this one? yep, it's the statue of Liberty.

Camping at Pokagon

We decided to take another camping trip at Pokagon, even though every time we go something bad seems to happen. This time was different - our spell was broken. We got the campsite on time, didn't have any issues getting there or setting up, and had beautiful weather all weekend!


Note the big rock by the campsite - it was a great hit with the kids. And when they weren't climbing and jumping off of the rock, they were riding bikes around the little cul-de-sac we had were on. Very nice!


It was also nice that the kids are getting big enough to ride around the great trails they have at the park. Zack is getting so big he can make it up hills by standing up on his bike and pumping hard on the pedals.

The leaves haven't started turning colors yet, but the weather was a little chilly and you can tell Fall is right around the corner.

The kids were racing up and down the toboggan run. We made a vow that we will come back this winter and go for a ride.

We took a walk down to the springs and had a drink of the fresh cool water. It really was as good as bottled water!

Sydney only found one caterpillar the whole trip.

On Sunday there was an seaplane "fly-in". The lake behind the Inn was the perfect landing spot for these planes and about 25 of them arrived.

It was pretty cool to see them land in the water, cruise over and then pull onto land.

"Sharing the brain"

Alan and I have a phrase, it's "sharing the brain". It's what we say when we finish each other's thoughts or thinking the same thing. Well we must have been doing that when we shopped for anniversary cards. We had a good laugh when we opened our cards to each other, and found the same one!! I don't know how many other times that has happened, but I do know we picked out the same cards back on our 10th anniversary too (it was in my scrapbook)!

Just goes to show you that even after 17 years of marriage, we're still a great pair! xoxo

A trip to the Zoo

It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take a trip to the Zoo. We spent a lot of time over in the new kids area. It's so much fun. We had to giggle when we saw Zack walking around in the water with his shorts pulled up so they wouldn't get wet. His legs are so little and white, they just looked so cute!

Inside they had a table for face "painting'. It was more like crayons so it was very easy for the kids to decorate themselves.

Zack did a great job - so colorful! He even colored under his chin :)

Roar!!!

The butterfly exhibit was closed - but we did find this two headed species still buzzing around...


And no zoo trip would be complete without a pose on the animals.