Crazy June - Warning: Long Post with Vacation Pictures

So our crazy June is just about over.  Brian enjoyed going back to the Goodman and helping to finish up The Jungle Book and I enjoyed the OHUG conference, especially since my friend Janet from Alberto was there.  It was really great to catch up. 

I also got to see the Grassy Knoll and ride a mechanical bull, for a very short time.

In the middle of all that, Mackenzie had her first ballet recital.  She did very well and now thinks that she wants to continue ballet.

We spent the last week of June on vacation.  Butch and Linda drove the kids and I over to Chicago last Saturday.  Saturday night we went over to the George's for dinner and to catch up.  Abigail has gotten so big and the kids really had a great time playing together.  We stayed out way past bedtime, but it was totally worth it to see the kids playing together again!  The George's are heading through our neck of the woods in August on their way to the East Coast.  It will be a lot of fun to show them  our new home.

 

On Sunday we met up with a lot of old friends in Millenium Park and then went to Greektown for lunch.  Mackenzie was so excited to see Sophie.  I had emailed her parents earlier in the week to see if they may be available during the weekend, but I hadn't mentioned anything to Mackenzie about it.  On Friday she asked me if we could see Sophie when we were in Chicago.  I asked her why she asked to see Sophie and she said, "Because when I think of Chicago, I think of Sophie."  She didn't even have to think about it.  Fortunately they were available on Sunday morning, along with our Pastor from Chicago and my friend Jie and her daughter Anwen. 

 

Mackenzie and Sophie

Pastor Joann

 

Mackenzie and Anwen

 

Sunday afternoon we saw The Jungle Book at the Goodman.  It was very good and since then Isaac has been singing "Bear Accessories".  It is pretty hilarious and he has even taught his new song to Mackenzie. 

 

After the show we headed down to Indianapolis.  Once again we were up way past bedtime.  Isaac figured out how to order a $4 Dinosaur Train video after we got into the hotel room with the game controller, so we did a movie night and then crashed.  Monday morning we headed to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  It was fantastic.  It was truly a full day.  Isaac was super excited because at the end of the day he got to see a real transformer.  (They had a Bumble Bee show at the end of the day.)  

Mackenzie had a great time as well, I honestly think the sand table was her favorite part of the whole museum, despite the fact that she now has a sand box at home.  Though she truly enjoyed all of the museum. Here is a great shot of her in the Dow Science Center area of the museum:

 

She pushed her baby stroller through the entire museum.  She also decided while we were there that she liked taking pictures.  She took this lovely shot of the rest of us in front of the train:

  Both kids posed with Spiderman as well:

We were there pretty much from the time they opened to the time they closed.  Before the Bumblebee show at the end of the day the kids got about 20 minutes to go back to their favorite thing, but other than that it took us the whole day to get through the museum.

 

On Tuesday we did a "Mom" stop at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  I really wanted to walk through their outdoor exhibit, which we did.  The kids complained a bit at the beginning, but they really liked it once we got to the sculptures.  They especially liked the bones.  I didn't get any really good shots there.  Most of the art work was really large and it is hard to tell in the pictures that they are playing on bones.  By the time we finished up outside it was lunch time and we were all very sweaty.  We decided not to go into the museum building.  Instead we got lunch and headed to our hotel in Louisville. 

 

We had decided to try out the Horseshoe Casino north of Louisville for the night.  When we checked in there was a very angry woman at the front desk in her bathing suit, with two kids in their bathing suits.  She was upset because the pool had been shut down.  It was explained to us that they had to shock the pool and it should be opened up the next morning.  It was definitely inconvenient, since we planned to swim that afternoon.  To be honest though I am guessing that they had to shock it becuase something disgusting happened in it, so I am glad they were doing it.  So instead we went to downtown Louisville, where they had a splash park.  The kids had fun getting very wet (it was really hot), but they enjoyed the playground area more.  There was a pyramid shaped area attached to one of the jungle gyms that they really liked climbing to the top of. 

 

The Horseshoe Casino hotel was quite nice and the next morning we really enjoyed the huge pool.  Mackenzie made a friend and they played nicely together.  Isaac enjoyed jumping in the pool and sitting in the hot tub.  We headed back into Louisville after swimming to go to the Kentucky Science Museum.  Once again, the kids really had a great time.  They especially liked the area where they could pull a bubble around themselves:

I thought that the dish of mirrors at the entrance was really cool: 

After lunch at the Old Spaghetti Warehouse we tried to go to the Kentucky Arts and Crafts Museum, another "Mom" stop, but unfortunately they were changing exhibits around and it was closed.  We did go into the store and Isaac found some pottery that he really liked.  He wanted to use it in the bath : )  I decided to buy a bud vase from the collection for my souvenir.  Maybe one day Isaac will appreciate it enough to take it with him to his own home.

 

After that we headed to Mammoth Park. 

 

We rented a cabin at the park and were pleasantly surprised when we got there.  We actually rented 2 cabins that were connected.  The bathroom was inbetween the two and we could leave the doors open to make it one big cabin.  The kids thought it was awesome that they got their own cabin with a sink, refrigerator and coffee pot.  They had a ball playing house in their cabin and washed their faces in the sick, pretended to make coffee, etc.  It was really quite humorous and gave Brian and I some time to lay down and relax.  When I rented the cabin I thought that there would be a double bed in each room.  They actually each had a double bed and a twin bed.  Mackenzie exclaimed, "We all get our own bed!"  In the end she slept in their double bed and Isaac in the twin.  She didn't understand why I didn't want to sleep in the twin bed in the adult room rather than sharing the double bed.  That night there were some really strong thunderstorms in the middle of the night.  Luckily they didn't wake the kids, but Brian and I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. 

 

We had tickets for the 9 am cave tour on Thursday.  As they had highlighted everywhere in the park, they are on Central Time, so that was 8 am our time.  This was great for us as our kids have the most energy in the morning.  We weren't sure about the kids doing a 2 hour cave tour and in the beginning it looked like we shouldn't have booked the long tour.  Once we got going though the kids really enjoyed it. 

 

We had decided that morning that although we had only planned on staying at Mammoth Park for Wednesday night, the kids loved the cabin so much we would stay another.  When we finished the 2 hour tour, Mackenzie informed me that we had lied to her, since we told them they would see stalactites and stalagmites.  So when we got back in the visitors center we asked about that.  The stalactites and stalagmites were part of another tour and, luckily, a shorter one.  So we booked that tour for later in the afternoon and headed to lunch.  Later the kids got to see the stalactites and stalagmites (since I now know how to spell those words, I am going to use them as many times as I can):

Isaac was exhausted by this point, having missed a nap that day and having been up late so much.  So afterward we got dinner and headed to the cabin for bedtime.  In the morning we checked out and headed to Cincinnati.

 

We went to a famous grocery store there called Jungle Jim's to get food for a picnic and then headed to Loveland Castle.  This was a stop that I had picked especially for Isaac, since he had a castle themed birthday and I figured Mackenzie would enjoy it as well.  We had a really nice time there:

Once again it was really hot and we were quite sweaty by the time we left and headed to the final hotel.  This was the "fancy" hotel of our trip, I figured for our last night we would live it up a bit, so fancy hotel, a little swimming and Skyline Chili for Dad : )  On our way back from Skyline we saw a horse drawn carriage and decided to take a ride and check out the neighborhood.  This was the only time the rain got in our way.  After we had been riding for about 10 minutes it started raining quite hard.  The driver put up the cover for us, but it wasn't quite the same.  Other than that we were really lucky and all of the rain came at times that were actually convenient for us. 

 

On our final day of vacation we went to the Newport Aquarium.  I think the kids were quite worn out, but we gave each of them a camera and they enjoyed taking pictures of the fish, penguins, crocodiles, birds and frogs at the aquarium.

 Isaac tried toucing a shark.  Mackenzie posed for the picture, but didn't really want to touch a shark.

 

 The scale is definitely off!



The kids really liked that the scuba divers in the tank would do fist bumps with them, Isaac even got exploding fist bumps! 

After lunch we headed home and Isaac slept for basically the whole trip.  It is really nice to be home.  Mackenzie was exhausted, but Isaac seems to have gotten used to the late nights and is still upstairs playing.  Hopefully he, and I, will be snoozing soon.







 

Behind

I am very behind in posts.  It has been a hectic weekend here.  We have been trying to get a lot of work done in the yard prior to our insane June.  Brian leaves tomorrow to go to Chicago and work for the Goodman for a week, then I head to Dallas for a week for the Oracle HR User Group conference, and then Brian goes back to Chicago and the Goodman for another week.  So needless to say, not much is going to get done around here for a while :)

Last weekend, however, we took one day to have some fun family time.  We went to a safari in Port Clinton, OH.  I have actually bought the passes quite a while ago on Groupon.  So we drove over and bought some food to feed the animals.  We got to feed them out of cups, grain and carrots.  We went around once and fed all of the aminals and learned that most of them did not like the grain much, except for the small deer like animals (I can't remember what all of the animals are called).  We also learned that the bison are very big and try to get their whole heads in the car.  Actually all of the animals tried to put their whole heads in the car, except for the giraffes and the zebras.  The problem was that the bisons' heads would take up pretty much the whole car if they got their head in.  Mackenzie decided that she did not like the bisons. 

When we finished the car ride we got out to see more animals in a walk-through section.  We couldn't feed any of them and the only cat (an ocelot) was in its house under the heat lamp.  However at the end of the trail there was a small park with swings, a slide, and a jungle gym shaped like a whale.  The kids enjoyed the park a lot, while we waited for the camel ride. 

 

This isn't a great shot, but I can't find the second camera to download the other pictures, so this is the best I have right now.  Mackenzie rode the camel alone first, and then Isaac was scared to get on.  There was another little boy that was scared and the people in charge told him he could ride with his brother.  After that Isaac decided that he would ride if Mackenzie rode with him, so Mackenzie got a second ride.

 

After the safari we went to a restaurant on the water where a lot of people were putting their (large) boats in the water. It was pretty cool to see them lifting the boats out of storage with a fork lift and then hauling them over to the water and setting them in.  Here is a shot of us waiting for our lunch as we enjoy the harbor:

 

I had to add this update.  Mackenzie and Isaac have both decided that they don't need naps on the weekends.  They tend to do okay without them, but they were extremely tired tonight after a very active weekend with no naps.  So we had some obstinence at bed time tonight and when Brian and I headed downstairs tonight, Isaac had his pillow and his quilt in his hands and insisted he was going to the chair.  I have (finally) learned that when my kids are that tired and stubborn just to go, so we went downstairs.  This is what I just found when I went upstairs to give the kids their final kiss and tuck tonight:

He had managed to put his bookmark in his Bible Stories before he fell asleep with the book on him :)