Cedar Point

We had waited so long for the new water ride to open.  Shoot the Rapids looked pretty cool, but due to some technical difficulties they had to wait to open it until long after the park opened for the year.

  Unfortunately we found out that they put a new height restriction on it and it was taller than Zack.  He was bummed, he really wanted to ride on it.  We did go with Sydney and she liked it a lot.

 Zack got the consolation prize of cotton candy.

The kids had a great time playing the old fashioned football game!

Teach a man to fish...

I often wonder what the kids can do to help out more around the house.  Today I started thinking that maybe they can make their own sandwiches!  When offered the opportunity they were pretty excited about it - Zack even jumped without excess nagging (I mean "encouragement").

In the end they had made a couple of pretty good PB&J's.  It took a bit of supervision and instruction, but it's a start!

Zack's 5th birthday

Zack requested a Monster Truck cake for his birthday, and this is what I came up with (oops, forgot to cover the board before I put the cake on it...). That is Grave Digger, pretty awesome!

We had the grandparents over for some cake, ice cream and presents. Zack was thrilled to be getting this Lego set that he wanted.

That is one happy birthday boy!!

Zack waits in anticipation of blowing out the candles...

Sydney is being quite motivational! He did a great job blowing the candles all out. It was a great birthday :)

Bowl-a-rama!

Today the Summer Camp program went bowling. The kids had a lot of fun. It was funny to watch them hurl the balls down the lane, and then the balls barely even rolled at all! Sydney won on her lane, with a score of 91!

Hey, pay attention - maybe you're getting a spare!

Sydney and her best bud Gabriella. :)

Swimming party day

Appropriately, we spent the first official day of summer in the pool! I thought it was a supposed to be a sunny day, but it ended up being quite overcast. The kids didn't mind a bit. They had some water gun battles, and played with all of our pool toys and rafts. They are all turning into accomplished swimmers, how nice to see them improve!

Sydney is Jacob's target...

Zack appears to be plotting his revenge on both Sydney and Jacob!

Everyone enjoying a snack after swimming. Good times!

Zack's b-day party at Heros

Heros is *the* place for birthday parties.  Or at least the kids think so  :)  Since Sydney has had a couple of big parties with friends, Zack had his there this year.  The party began with decorating a t-shirt, with his best bud Chase.

Next they got on the bouncer and slides.  Fun for everyone, even for big sis!

 It was a good group of friends.

 After the inflatables, the kids went to the "sandlot" and had a "food fight".  They hurled all sorts of stuff back and forth and the team with the least amount of items on their side in the end won.  Too bad Chase got hit in the head with a rubber chicken :(

 They also did a race on wheeled boards.  It proved to be a bit more difficult that it looks!

 Next the kids moved over to the carnival games.  This are is always a big hit and they get to pick out a prize.

 Of course the birthday boy gets the biggest prize!  No surprise, he picked out a jet.

Finally the gang headed over to the dining area, which was decorated like it was back in the 70's.  Pizza and juice was served.

After blowing out the candles on a his cupcake, the kids each got to decorate their own cupcake with yummy treats like jellybeans and gummy bears.  Those cupcakes are delicious!!



Finally it was time to open the presents.  He got a ton of toys.  Such nice friends!  Zack had a blast and it was a very special day for him :)

Safety Township

Zachary had the great opportunity to go to Safety Township this year.  The program was around back when Sydney was entering in to Kindergarten also, but I could not figure out how to make arrangements to get her there so she did not attend.  Zack got to carpool with Elle, who lives in our neighborhood and also goes to Childrens Discovery Center.  I am very thankful to have great neighbors and friends who can help us out like that.  That arrangement worked our very well.

The kids got to ride around a little town in these cool cars and learn all about safety rules - in cars, on bikes, stranger danger, and much much more.  He has been telling us all about it all week! 

 At the end of the week there was a graduation program to share all the information they had learned.

577 Foundation day

While we were out running errands on our day together, I remembered that Sydney was going to be at the 577 Foundation right when we were nearby.

So we went from the library over there to "spy" on her! I didn't get to take any pictures of her - (didn't want to really look like a stalker!) - but Zack and I enjoyed the park while we walked around. The pond was beautiful!

We discovered some really cool tadpoles (with legs!!) in the pond.

Zack still mentions the time we had a picnic lunch at the 577. We'll have to do that again soon ;)

Camping at Maumee Bay

We arrived at Maumee Bay for our first camping trip of the season. We were all pleasantly surprised to see that Friday was movie night - and they were showing Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs! I was the only one who hadn't seen it yet.



The movie didn't start until the sun went down, so it was going to be a late night. The popcorn was only 50 cents a bag, what a deal.

Zack is smiling now, but just wait a few minutes until we got swarmed by Mayflies!! ewww! There were millions of them flying around in the sky. Luckily they didn't all land on us or anything like that. They just flew away after it got dark.

The next day we headed over to the beach. It wasn't super warm, but we had promised the kids they could get the unlimited ride arm band for the big slide at the beach.

They had a blast going on it and I think they were on it for at least an hour.

When we got back to the campsite Sydney challenged me to a scooter race. We had to go around 10 times (!!!). I was surprised how fast she was on her scooter. I didn't have a chance!

Later we went fishing. Technically those are the kids fishing poles, but their idea of fishing is watching us fish. Them seem to have no interest in actually holding the poles. So here is a picture of me with my 3rd fish of the season. It's 5 1/2 inches long. No idea what kind of fish it was, it just jumped off of the hook - it was really hard to hold!


The park was also having an ice cream social, so even though we were also having s'mores by the campfire later, we indulged in some ice cream too!

After we had a campfire and ate our s'mores it started to sprinkle a little, so it was bedtime. Around 11pm while Alan and I were watching a movie, we heard sirens going off. Shortly after the park ranger drove through the park warning us that there was Tornado Warning and we needed to go seek shelter in the shower house. So we woke the kids up and carried them over there.

It was quite interesting seeing all of our camper neighbors hanging out in the restroom! As you can tell, the kids were tired and less than thrilled to be there. We stayed there until almost midnight, when the storm was leaving.

Around 2am the sirens went off again and we were woke up by thunder and the park ranger driving around again telling everyone about another Tornado Warning. This time we decided to stay in the camper just because we didn't want to wake up the kids again and take them out in the bad weather. The storm was pretty windy and lasted until 3:30am. Surprisingly the kids slept right through it all. I was glad for that because they probably would have been scared, it was pretty intense. The wind shook the camper from one end to another, shaking it was it went.

Little did we know that only 9 miles away an actual tornado had touched down. Sadly we found out on Sunday that someone we knew had their house leveled by that tornado, and she and her son were killed in the storm. So very sad and tragic. Her husband and daughter are in the hospital and will probably have a very long road to recovery ahead of them. Mary and Hayden will be missed very much by our family, they were both such happy and loving people. I still can't believe it happened.