So we've been pretty busy here lately. Here's a rundown on what's been going on. The week of 4th of July, Paul took some days off work so we could do some fun family stuff while Riley is off school. Our original plan back in the spring had been for him to take that entire week off but his work hired on an intern for the summer who was assigned to Paul. Even though this guy lives in Arizona, Paul has to pretty much monitor his work almost every day so he didn't feel like he could take off an entire week with that going on. (He hopes to be able to take a full week off in August once this guy goes back to college.) So instead of the whole week, Paul took off Thursday and Friday of that week and then the very next Monday and Tuesday. So he got 6 consecutive days off, but two of those were days he always has off so they don't count. :) Anyway, on Wednesday after Paul got off work, we loaded the kids up and took off for Cincinnati, OH and King's Island! Of course, we just went straight to our hotel when we got to the city since by then it was the kids' bed time. We stayed in a hotel by Marriott that is all suites so we had a fold out sofa bed for Riley and Jake, a queen bed for us, Tyler slept in his pack 'n play and then there was an entire kitchen as well so that was really nice, especially with having a baby taking bottles that have to be washed with us. That's always one of the things I hate about travelling and hotel stays when I have a baby who is still taking a bottle, but having a kitchen in our hotel room certainly makes that a lot easier. Tyler did an amazing job falling asleep while in the same room as the rest of us. Riley and Jake had a harder time since they aren't used to sharing a bed. And I'm sure the sofa bed wasn't the most comfortable but eventually they settled down. The next morning we headed for the amusement park. It was overcast all day but didn't rain except for a very short sprinkle right before we left. We had brought our big golf umbrella into the park just in case though. King's Island has a nice sized kids area so of course we spent most of our time over there. The theme of their kid's area is Nickelodeon so it was all characters from those shows and all the rides were based on those shows. Jake loves Nick Jr., particularly Go Diego Go which is a boy version spin off of Dora the Explorer (Diego is Dora's cousin) and King's Island has a ride based on the Diego show that is just a bunch of jeep like vehicles (kid-sized of course) that go in a circle with steering wheels for the kids to "steer" with. Well for my car crazy son, this ride is right up his alley. For all of his boyness and getting dirty and falling down, Jake is a pretty cautious kid so that ride was practically the only one we could get him on. Riley, on the other hand, wanted to ride everything. And when I say everything, I mean even the big rides that go upside down! Thankfully (for me) she is still too short to ride the upside down ones but the kid's area has a couple of roller coasters for kids that actually give a good thrill that she got to ride, plus she is tall enough to ride quite a few of the less intense big rides. Even some of the big roller coasters. On this trip she got to go on her first big coaster, the one called The Racers (or maybe Twin Racers - I only remember seeing a sign that said Racers on it). It's a ride that has two tracks side by side and the two sets of cars or whatever you call them leave at the same time and "race" through the ride. Paul said she was pretty freaked out on the first hill but when she got off she was excited and acted like she loved it. She also rode the ship ride where the ship rocks back and forth really big (but doesn't go upside down) and a ride called the Monster that is somewhat like a scrambler ride (I know every park has a different name for these rides but I think Six Flags in St. Louis called it the Scrambler) except that it was tilted so some of the time you were up in the air and then you'd come back around to ground level. I rode the Monster ride with her (the only real ride I got to go on there) and it was fun. We giggled together the whole time so that was fun. :) We also got to see an ice skating show which was really cool and crazy since the stage where the ice was was tiny but they were still doing jumps and stuff. Tyler did really well that day considering he is three months old. It helped that it was in the low 70s that day with a coolish breeze. If it had been hotter I'm sure he wouldn't have been as happy. That night the kids crashed much easier than even the previous night and the next morning we drove in to downtown Cincinnati and went to a park by the river down there that we had discovered last year when we did the same trip. The kids had a lot of fun running around there and later we went across the river into Kentucky to a mall that we could see from the park (that we also went to last year) and we took the kids to see Ice Age 3 at the theater in that mall (a funny movie). Once that was out we headed home.
My mom and dad got home the next day from Texas where they had been visiting my older sister and seeing her sweet new baby, Cooper. On Monday, since Paul was still off work, we headed over to the Children's Museum and took my mom with us. That was her first time there so it was fun showing it to her. After our last visit there when Paul's parents were here, we decided to get a membership to the museum since the kids loved it so much so now we can go there and not feel like we have to stay for hours and hours just to get our money's worth. On Tuesday, we just hung out and relaxed at home. So that was our "vacation" for the summer. :)
On Thursday, I sent the kids to my mom's and I painted the big wall in our kitchen/living room combo (it's just all one big room and one wall is continuously flat and had to all be painted one color). Before our little mini-vacation, we had painted two of the kitchen walls a deep red (the name of the color is Brick Fleck). The big connecting wall and the other walls of the living room have a softer neutral color called Pecanwood. That's the color I painted that day. Then on this past Saturday Paul and I painted the two remaining walls in the living room. He had already hung crown moulding in the kitchen and as far as he could on the wall I painted on Thursday so he spent the rest of Saturday after the painting was done measuring and cutting and then nailing up the rest of the crown moulding. Needless to say I'm thrilled to be done with all of that. Painting those two rooms was very disrupting to our normal lives and I was starting to feel like we were moving because everything was out of place and pictures were off the walls and things like that. It was starting to make me feel all twitchy. But now that it's done I LOVE how it all turned out. I'm finally starting to be able to go into my kitchen and not feel like I'm in someone else's nicer house. :) Now our goal is to paint the entry area and the dining room. Paul wants to do it soon just to get it over with and I agree that it will be great to get it all done. Then we'll move on to the upstairs. :)
