That which does not kill us will only make us stronger

Sophie was so wiped out yesterday after getting home we found her up in her room like this! HAHAHHA!!

Here's Taylor's pencil dive at the hotel pool. We spent a couple hours there each day.

Ice cream was the only reasonable choice for lunch on a day that hot. Down below you can see Katie and Sophie in front of the frog and Taylor is in the navy blue swim shirt under the green mushroom.

This past week we accompanied Craig down to Cincinnati. He had to go down for a week of work stuff (the headquareters of his division is located in Evendale, OH, a suburb of Cincinnati). It was hotter than all get-out this week (pretty much everywhere or I would have gone somewhere else). The kids love to stay at hotels so we decided to go altogether. It fell to me to try to occupy the kids during the day and also be on call to drive Craig to and from his work obligations. Understandbly, I was less excited about the prospect of the trip than the rest of the family (also I'm in charge of packing and unpacking).

Anyhow, I did some online research and found some things for us to do that would allow us to stay relatively cool (the kids would have been happy staying in the hotel the entire week) and also not lose our minds completely.

On Monday we went to the Cincinnati Museum Center. It is pretty impressive. I forgot to bring the camera so we don't have any pix, but it's housed in an amazing art deco train depo. We paid for our tix to the children's musuem and spent a wonderfully cool 2 hours playing there, then we had a snack and visited the Cincinnati History Museum (it was free with our pass to the Grand Rapids Public Museum). We spent an hour playing there and loved the gigantic train display of Cincinnati in the early 20th century. Also they had a riverboat we could get on and a flatboat to explore and tear apart and turn into a house and even an accordian player. It was certainly worth a visit!

On Wednesday we visited Winton Woods park. This is huge park with walking trails and hiking trails and a harbor where you can rent boats. Thankfully, we were there for the splash park. Unfortunately, we showed up at 10:15am and the splash park didn't open until 11am. We almost had heat exhaustion by the time we hit the water park, but it was fun and only $5 for all three kids to play as long as they wanted. After playing for a bit we took a break and had ice cream for lunch.

Thursday we had to stick close to where Craig was working because he needed to go to another location mid-day. We explored the play area of a nearby mall. After Craig finished that day we went up to Dayton and he dropped us off at Leisy and Kent's house. We got to spend the night there and go to the YMCA on Friday morning together and make a fun care package for cousin Tanner, all before Craig came back on Friday around 3pm.

After our visit with the Millers we trekked up to Ashland and got to spend Friday and Saturday nights visiting with Craig's parents and brothers. It was so fun to get the cousins together, (eat lots of Yaya's great food, especially the ice cream) and visit with the Webbs.

We are all happy to be home and I'm excited to start hanging things on the walls again (inspired by the gorgeous house that Donna Starkey has redone for her daughter).