King's Island

Living within 20 minutes of King's Island, we take a day once a year and get our fill of the amusement park... and today was that day! It was HOT, but it was such great fun. And to be honest, with all the rain and chilly temperatures we've had in recent months, the hot sun sure felt good.

(above) Big boy bumper cars in the main park. (below) Anna's first bumper car ride, in the "Snoopy's Driving School" in Snoopy Land. Our family spends A LOT of time in Snoopy Land. It's my favorite part of the park.

(below) Anna and Christopher were a team in the Snoopy 500.

We had to take the obligatory trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was a beautiful day, and you could see forever. I kept asking the kids, "Can you see our house from here???" I have a little issue with heights, but after a few minutes I wasn't quite so jittery. Below, you can see some of the rides, including to the left, the The Wind Seeker, which is new this year: that's the tall "stick" that simply takes people this ridiculous height of 30 stories into the sky and spins them around. Craziness. To the right are the Vortex and the Beast.

Below is King's Island's newest roller coaster, the Diamondback, which I believe is the longest rollercoaster in the world. The Diamondback is insanely high (this picture doesn't do it justice) and goes insanely fast. Here's the descripton of it from KI's website: The tallest, fastest and meanest roller coaster to ever strike Kings Island! The ride stands 230 feet at its highest point with a first drop of 215 feet at a 74-degree angle. Riders slither their way around 5,282 feet of track at speeds up to 80 miles per hour!

Let me just explain to you how miniscule the odds are that I would ever ride this rollercoaster.

Ever since Anna Jean was born, she has been mesmerized by carousels. She can't get enough of carousels, and this day was no exception. We took 3 different carousel rides on this afternoon, and even then she cried for more.

It was a bittersweet day for Mommy in Snoopy Land today. Christopher is as tall as you can be to ride the kiddie rides at the park: next year, he will be too tall. Sniff, sniff.

I had to laugh at the beetle ride, below. Since it's still May, and most schools are still in session (ours was out last Friday), we pretty much had the park to ourselves all day: no lines, few people. But even though the beetle ride was completely empty, my 3 babies decided that they all had to ride together, squished together in the same little car. Warms a mommy's heart. Our favorite ride of the day wasn't photographed, because it was one of the few rides that we could all do together: the log flune. Remember the classic log ride that has been around since....ever??? Well, all 5 of us were able to cram into this log thing, meander around a track, and then splash down into a big, wet pool. I got tickled at how the kids were much more impressed with the log flune, which is probably the oldest ride at King's Island (or any amusement park, for that matter), than they were with the $50 million roller coasters. "Do it again, Mommy!" the boys yelled. Perhaps you just can't beat a good log ride on a 97 degree day, huh?

Can anyone identify this thing we saw in the sky?

Last Friday, the clouds parted and the sky turned this odd shade of.....blue, and there was this crazy-looking shiny thing up in the sky. I vaguely have a recognition of seeing it before, but I can't quite remember it. After having the rainiest month in Cincinnati's history (April), and having an almost equally as wet May, I was amazed by this funny-looking object, so I took a picture of it to see if any of you could ID it for me. Whatever it was, it made the rain stop and warmed-up the temperatures. So we headed OUT OF THE HOUSE for the evening: yee-ha! We went to one of our very favorite parks, Miami Meadows, which is near the boys' school.

(above) John has lost one of his 2 front teeth, and the other is just hanging on.

(below) Anna LOVES to feed the ducks!

Zoo Field Trip

I also had the pleasure of chaperoning Christopher's 3rd grade trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. Although we had been there many times, it had an entirely new vibe when Christopher's friends were all there. A few of his classmates got together for a joint pic, above. That would be my son, Joe Cool, in the center.

Castle Field Trip

John's 1st grade class took a field trip to the Lebanon Castle, which was pretty cool. This life-size, 20th Century, replica Medieval castle was the life-long project of a man who not only built the structure by himself, by hand, but also made every single one of the bricks by himself, by hand. The man who built the castle was extremely intelligent: his IQ was higher than that of Albert Einstein. He started working on his castle in his 20's, when he asked the love of his life to marry him, but she said 'no' and married another man. The man never dated again, and never married, only greived for the woman he had lost. I guess he needed something to get his mind off his sorrows, so he set-out on the project of building this castle....

When the man was jilted, his love didn't cut him off; infact, she stayed in touch with him all her life. They remained good friends. When they were in their 80's, the woman's husband died. The castle builder asked his true love....again...if she would marry him. She turned him down once again, claiming she had 'had enough of married life.' Tragic.

Now that the man is dead, his castle is owned and kept-up by a group of "knights" who use it for tours, teaching people about medieval life. The kids learned that castles were not made for comfort, but for defense. For example, the narrow, circular staircases that wind up and down through the castle are an attempt to foil would-be attackers who break in. The skinny, narrow windows that you see were perfect for shooting arrows out of, but were hard to shoot arrows into.

(Below) John and his friend Aryan pose infront of a real-life metal coat suit of armor. Those were all over the castle.

Laney Sharp (below) was absolutely terrified in the dungeon. She was braver than some of the girls, though, who wouldn't even come down the stairs to see it!

After the tour of the castle, we went outside and were given a lesson in sword fighting. Miss Richardson, John's teacher, did a knock-out job! Then the kids were given "swords" made of pvc pipe and pool noodles, and were paired-up to joust.

Besides visiting the castle, the children also traveled to the Clermont Nursing Home that day to sing to the residents. They sang over 20 songs by heart, including motions, and did a SUPER job!

 

Celebrating Christopher

We had a blast celebrating Christopher's 9th birthday Sunday! He brought his best buddy Jake home from church with him and we spent the day doing whatever Christopher wanted. I teased Christopher that I was going to make his birthday theme "My Little Pony." In the end, though, he was thrilled with our house looking like a shrine to Spiderman!

Jake, Christopher, John, and Anna had NEVER been bowling. Christopher had wanted to try it, so we headed to Cherry Grove Lanes, pulled down the bumpers, and had a ball (literally!).