"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.

Fulton County Fair

It's a sure sign that summer is coming to an end when the Fulton County Fair starts. It was a beautiful day though - not super hot, but definately not chilly yet either. This year we decided to let the kids go on some rides. Since we'll be going to Cedar Point soon we said that they could only pick a few rides to go on.

The both liked going on the race cars, but after that they had different favorite rides. Zack still likes the little kids rides.

Sydney liked the giant slide.

One of the best parts of the fair for me is getting those delicious milk shakes!! Sydney loved hers so much that she didn't want to share (we were supposed to share, we only bought two of them). She even started crying when she thought I was drinking too much! geez

The burgers are excellent too!

Probably the highlight for the kids was to go on the bungee bouncer. They had really wanted to do this in Cancun but we thought it was too expensive. Thanks Grandma for the extra spending money!!


Sydney bounced pretty high but wasn't able to do a flip. I bet next year she will!


We tried out all of the farm equipment.

After our long day at the Fair we went home for dinner and then went out to see our friends Ethan and Annette at their campground in Grand Rapids. A long, fun day :)

Date Night!

We shipped the kids off to Grandma & Grandpa's house and headed out for date night. We went to see the Mud Hens play. I got some tickets in the Buckeye Telesystems box suite - which happens to be the best seats in the house! They were right next to the announcers box. Free food, drinks and a great view. Couldn't ask for anything more! well, except for the Mud Hen's to win. This was their last game of the season and they Mud Hens lost by one point 11 to 12.

Dawn and Henry had a good time too.

Put in Bay

It was time for our annual trip to Put-in-Bay since the summer is almost over. Today was surprisingly chilly for August (high of 70 predicted today) so that got me all confused as to what to wear. I like to be "prepared" so of course we wore shorts, and took along pants and jackets. I'm glad I did because Zack and I wore our coats for most of the time. Especially on that chilly trip back the Ferry!

After our journey over to the island, we had lunch at our favorite place, Frosty's! Their pizza was especially cheesy today. Yum!!

Just think - only a couple of weeks ago we were on a tropical island looking at dolphins - but today on our Ohio island we visited a fish hatchery run by Ohio State. It was pretty cool! The best part was that we got to hold a snake, and go fishing!

The kids have been asking about fishing for awhile now when we go camping so we took advantage of the "free fishing for kids" program. Alan caught 3 fish and I caught one! The kids didn't quite get the hang of it yet, and we didn't want to spend too much of our time there, as we had rented a golf cart, so we "helped" them out by fishing for them :) The fish we caught were actually "bad" fish that are taking over the Ohio waters so we did our good deed for the day.

Another cool part was that we got to feed our little fishes to some big fish! When we dropped our fish into the tanks they were gobbled up immediately!!

We took a trip around the island on our golf cart. Although our cart wasn't as pathetically slow as last year, it still wasn't a speed demon. We decided that it's in the cart company's interest to give people slow carts to extend their rental time! Anyhow, we stopped at Perry's Cave and took a tour of the cave.

The kids had a lot of fun playing on the playground as usual too.

and finally it was time to head home after a ride on the Merry-go-round. It was a great day!

What's for lunch??

Now that Sydney is in 1st grade we have the option of packing lunch or buying. As a "treat" we thought we'd let her buy lunch once a week. So I reviewed the choices with her this morning. Tuesday hamburger, Weds wraps, oh, and Friday pizza! After hearing the choices she asked "is there anything like a peanut butter and jelly??". Guess the $50 we loaded on her lunch card is going to last us a looooong time.

First Day of School!

Today was Sydney's first day of school at the elementary building. This will be her first year in public school, so that means a lot of firsts for her - riding the bus, packing a lunch, and being co-mingled with a lot of other older kids! It was supposed to rain this morning, but luckily we had a beautiful day.


Zack didn't want to miss getting his picture taken (or more likely he just didn't want to miss out on any of the special attention Sydney was getting!!)

We all headed down to the bus stop together.


She's all ready to go to school!


and off she goes. She sat in the front seat on the other side of the bus, and never even looked back or waved. She had total confidence this morning!!

Friday in Cancun

Well it was our last full day in Cancun. I can't believe the time has flown by so fast. We will all be sad to head back to Ohio tomorrow. It was pretty bad waking the kids up this morning. Since we were up late last night, they were still sleeping at 8:45 when we woke them up. Normally I would not wake the kids up unless it was a school day, but they were going to sleep the morning away! They were visiblly tired- having crying melt downs over everything. Sydney didn't want to put on a damp swimsuit (it takes days to dry stuff out here since it's so humid) and Zack didn't want to put on sunscreen because it was "cold"! Then at breakfast Sydney found out the ice cream was not available, and Alan had promised ice cream for breakfast one day.



We spent the moring swimming in the pool and had our last lunch by the pool.









For our last day we decided to go on a submarine - well actually a special boat with large windows for viewing sea life in the bottom. Our sub trip started at AquaWorld. We took a boat out to the reef where they "subs" were at. It was a beautiful boat ride out to the reef - much faster than the one that took us to Isla Mujeres. It was even better because we got to ride on the top of the boat!













When we arrived at the reef we rode in the sub for about a half hour. We saw a lot of fish, a stingray and 2 sea turtles! Big bummer - on the boat ride back I lost my lens cap for my camera.















It was a hot trip back to our hotel in the mid-day heat. Zack found a way to keep cool though...



Our day wound down with a dinner at the hotel following another dip in the pool. Oh, and did I mention I had an issue to deal with where Zack "waited too long" to go to the bathroom? ugghh We took yet another shopping trip to the the mall at finally found some souviners - t-shirts, bracelets and maracas. Time to pack up the suitcases and say goodbye to Mexico. See you again soon we hope!!

Thursday in Cancun

After talking it up to the kids all week, we finally took the kids to the "straw market" in downtown Cancun. Much to our surprise, the place was more than half empty!! Unfortunately that put a damper on the big morning of shopping. We did wander around the stall that were there and bought a cool t-shirt for Zack. We did venture into the supermarket downtown, which was quite an adventure, especially since it was one of those places where you weren't supposed to flush the toilet paper - ewwww, that was a nasty smelling restroom!! I think that was the fastest we've ever made it in and out of the bathroom. The also had a "people mover" kinda escalator that was flat to take shopping carts up to the 2nd floor.

After shopping we headed back to our hotel for some more swimming and sliding. For dinner we decided to do something new and ordered room service. The food was good, even thought I had to steal a fork from the room across the hall!

Next we dragged the kids out shopping again since we were still in search of some items. We found quite a few treasures and headed back to the hotel for some night swimming. We had promised the kids we would swim at night, so we slipped into the kids pool area. Surprisingly we were the only ones in the pool. We soon found out why, when we were asked to get out!! oops

Wednesday in Cancun

Alan continued his marathon training with great dedication today. He woke up early (6:45 am) and ran intervals (5 miles). He saw lots of workers going to hotels and stores. After running we all went out for breakfast and then played again for a long time in the pirate boat and slides.





After lunch by the pool we went down to the beach. The water was beautiful but still a little rough so the kids couldn't wade out very far. After the beach we headed upstairs to our room. On the way to our room Sydney slipped at spilled her kiddie drink all over herself (right in her face!) and the hall. Since it was strawberry the scene looked quite horrific since it was bright red and looked like blood - it frightened a person who was following us in the hall! I snapped a picture and had a good laugh about it - after we cleaned it up.




We went over to La Isla mall for a little escape from the sun, then out for dinner at the hotel again. I'm ready for another night out - the food choices are getting pretty repetitive. In the evening there was a pirate show put on by the kids club at the hotel. The kids had fun running around and the end of the show they got to break open a pinata.