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.

Last Day Blast!

Today is the last day of school for Sydney. I can't believe the year has flown by already, and Sydney has completed 1st grade. Here is a comparison of the first and last day of school. I just LOVE the kids summer blond hair in the first pic - fresh back from our vacation to Cancun. ahhhh.... memories.

There was excitement at the bus stop and all of the kids got ready for their last trip on the bus for a long time (well, I guess only 3 months. Summer is so short!!)

For the last day of school they had a "Last Day Blast" which was basically a bunch of carnival games and fun stuff for the kids to do all day. They had games like ring toss...

... tattoos...

... and lots of fun with their friends. This was supposed to be an outdoors event, but a storm rolled in and we were all set up in the school instead.

I'm sure Sydney will miss Mrs Turner. She is a great teacher!

Zhu Zhu pets...

Meet the newest, cleanest pet in our house!  Those Zhu Zhu pets are multiplying around here!  At least they are quiet and night and don't require a litter box!!

Sydney's family b-day party

It was a beautiful day. We spent the whole day laying by the pool and playing in the water. I'm so excited because the pool is clean! Let's hope I can keep it that way...

We invited over Grandma & Grandpa and also Uncle Brian, Aunt Andrea, Ian and Brandon for a cookout and birthday celebration.

Sydney was very excited to get another accessory for her Zhu Zhu pets.

She also got a pair of earrings, now that she isn't afraid to change them anymore ;)

I am usually one to make an elaborate birthday cake, but quite frankly I was all "birthday-ed" out by the time this party came along. I had made her cupcakes last weekend (which I still think are pretty darn hard to make - mine always look terrible!!) and some Puppy Chow to take to school. So we decided to get a cookie cake instead. I was thrilled when she was actually really excited about getting a cookie cake.

After the festivities it was time to head out for some more fun in the pool. This time the big kids got in too, and a pool noodle ensued.

It got pretty rough out there, but Zack and Sydney held their own with a water gun to defend themselves. They got pretty good at shooting water in peoples faces!

I don't think we could have asked for a nicer start to our summer. I'm sure Zack will be a more confident (or maybe just crazy) swimmer this year.

Sydney quickly picked up right where she left off in her swimming skills.

Sydney's b-day party

For Sydney's 7th birthday party we ended up with a beach party kind of theme, mostly because we were decorating flip flops, so the rest just kind of fell into place. We picked out several games around that theme - here she is with the "pin the flower on the hula girl".

She was so excited, couldn't wait for her guest to arrive. The count down started earlier in the week and on the day of the party, it was "how many hours?..." "how many minutes?..".

As an ice breaker we played a game where we passed a hula hoop between two teams of girls - and the winning team got to pick a prize. They were all very excited to be picking out prizes.

Here is the hula game in action. One girl did especially well (no, not Sydney). A little too well - very suspicious! haha

After a few games inside everyone decided to hit the playset. That was, until they got too hot - then it was back inside for some more fun.

I think the most fun was when they were playing "freeze dance". We were playing the Hampster Dance song. I'm having a hard time getting that tune out of my head - the music was cranked! The girls had a blast just jumping around being crazy.

We finally settled down for the craft - fabric covered flip flops. They did really well and were almost all able to tie the fabric on by themselves.

Here they are displaying the end results. Oh, and Zack wanted to get in the picture too - he was feeling a tiny bit left out with all of the girls here :)

Instead of a cake, we let everyone decorate their own cupcake. Yum!!

Sydney had hers with the "works"!

It was a great way to celebrate - Sydney has so many nice friends.

Crazy Saturday

The kids went over to Grandma's house to spend the night on Friday, so we had most of Saturday to ourselves. We started out our day running the Dart Frog Dash at the Toledo Zoo. It was our first time running it here - and Alan's first 5K in years! We both kicked some butt :) I placed 5th in my age division, coming in at 26:37 (8:35 pace)- a mere 10 seconds from being in 2nd place!! Alan did even better - he placed 3rd in his division with a time of 20:30 (6:37 pace). He even got a cool trophy. It was a great day for a run.



Then we went home to do some body-breaking landscaping. We put mulch down in the yard, Alan split wood, put out the fountain - getting ready for the upcoming summer months.

While we were busy doing that, the kids were with Grandma & Grandpa at a festival. They had been waiting for this event all year because they got to dig for money! Zack got $31 and Sydney got $46. A pretty good sack of money!


They also got to compete in a tractor pull. Zack even pulled 2 pounds more than he weighed!


Sydney pulled a little less than she weighed, but she pulled farther - she got 3rd place. She got this cool trophy!


They had a lot of fun.

Around dinner time we went to get the kids. The Mustang had actually broken down the night before when Alan was dropping the kids off - so Alan had a replacement belt and he was going to replace the belt and be heading out dinner around 5:30pm... or so we thought. Turns out the belt was actually just slightly smaller than his original belt and he spent hours with Grandpa trying to put the belt on. Around 7pm he gave up and we decided to tow the car back to our house. That took an hour to tow it back, and I had to drive the truck! Luckily that turned out to be a pretty easy task since we were in contact almost the whole time with our cell phones. Even though I had a low battery warning on my phone, it held out until the last turn into our neighborhood. Then we had the challenge of putting it in the garage. Luckily as we were trying to push it in there a police car was driving down our road and he stopped to help us. Thank god for that!!

Since we were beat, and had promised the kids we would take them out for ice cream, we hopped back in the car and headed to Max & Ermas... at 9pm!! It was a great dinner (much needed relaxation). What a crazy Saturday.

How sweet!

Sydney got a "create a plate" kit for Christmas. Even though it was on her wish list to Santa, not much interest was paid to it as she got quite a few other crafts. She tried once to make a picture, but it wasn't really "plate worthy". We took it out this weekend to give it another try. The first pictures weren't anything really special either - but then I suggested she draw our family and she came up with this... it's simply perfect! We had to ship the picture off to get created into a plate - I can't wait to see it.

Happy Mother's Day!

It was a really great day today! First I got the luxury of being served breakfast in bed - and we didn't even spill anything! Yes, that is my Suicidal Tendancies t-shirt... it's the most soft and comfy t-shirt I own. That's some fancy sleepwear :)


Zack made this beautiful card for me.


Sydney made this "fill in the blank" card. She was quite complimentary!



But I have to say, the best was this "open the flap" card I got from Sydney. It made me laugh!!

Alan got me this beautiful flower arrangement. I sure hope I can keep it alive - that will be my challenge this summer. He also bought a nice bottle of wine for later ;)

Walk With Dinosaurs show

We went back to the new Huntington Area to see the show Walk With Dinosaurs.  It was a really cool show!!  Some of the smaller animals had actors actually inside the dinosaur like a very large puppet costume.  The large one are remote controlled.

The dinosaurs are made out of a very realistic looking fabric of some sort which made the creatures look very lifelike.

There were a couple of dinosaur fights, but luckily they didn't scare the kids too much :)