May 31

Happy 40th Clay! 

We celebrated Clay's birthday at the lake with his favorite: a Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge cake with dark chocolate fudge icing. 

 Gus loves to swim in the lake.

 

 

 

 Bapaw, Clay, Lucy, and Elliott went fishing for a couple of hours.

 Lucy was brave enough to pick up a fish for the first time. Can you tell she is proud!?!

 

Pooped!

May 30

Happy Birthday Grandpa Tim!

 

Julia has started a job. She is working for a graphic designer. Her job is to remove generic clothing labels and to add size tags and brand tags to them. She also cut these hoodies to make the crop top hoodies (apparently that's in style right now). She gets paid per label/alteration. It's tedious, but it's money for a 14 year-old and she gets to work at home.

May 29

 Lucy and I met Jessica and Abbie at McDonald's for dinner last night. These two little ladies are fun together. It was fun hanging out with Jessica while the girls played on the playground.

A friend shared some of her tadpoles with us so we can watch them go through metamorphosis.

May 28

 

 

I found these pictures on my phone, courtesy of Elliott.

May 27

We spent a couple of hours doing yardwork yesterday before we got too hot. We managed to get all the front bushes trimmed. Unfortunately, that is only a small dent in the yardwork we have left to do.

May 26

 

 

We went to Churchill Downs after church. We watched three races before storms rolled in.

May 25

 

Elliott attended a program about space this morning. The instructor was a former Kennedy Space Center educator. Several of our co-op friends also attended. 

We took Kat, Leanna, Elliott, and Lucy to Kentucky Kingdom for a few hours. It was sooo hot outside that the only way to be outside was in the water. I am not built for this heat.

May 24

Back to reality. Thank goodness for a super capacity washer and dryer!

May 23

 Tired kiddos. They sure are sweet - when they are asleep! 

 Since today was our last chance to visit the Columbus Zoo, we went, even though the weather wasn't quite what we planned for. The night before it said a 25% chance of rain at 9am, then just cloudy. When we woke up, the weather changed to 100% chance of light rain until noon. So... we bought ponchos before we went. I felt a little guilty walking around the zoo in plastic ponchos in a zoo that works really hard to educate you on conservation. Eek!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Columbus Zoo is beautiful. They have almost 10 times the animals as our zoo and almost 4 times the acreage. It would be ideal to break the trip up into a couple of days. We were tired at the end of our day (we spent nearly 7 hours there). But we all got to see alot of animals that we'd never seen before. 

May 22

 We drove about two hours from Cedar Point to Columbus, OH. We were whooped. Even Elliott, usually awake by 8am slept until 10am. Clay wanted me to bring him a feeding tube because he was so tired and sore from yesterday. And if you notice that he is slightly pink? Well, we got sunburned in the 50 degree cloudy/breezy weather yesterday. All except Elliott who got slightly browner. 

We had originally planned to go to the Columbus Zoo today, but we needed a day of rest after Cedar Point. So we decided to go to the zoo tomorrow and just check out the sites in Columbus instead.

By the time we got everyone up and moving, breakfast hours were long over. We found a restaurant on The University of Ohio's campus that was delicious.

We went to COSI for a few hours. It was mostly nice. There were several exhibits that were really awesome and several that needed updating due to things not working. Thankfully, we didn't have to pay for tickets. Free is always nice.

 Clay struggled to hang with us after a day at Cedar Point.

 

 

May 21

We are so glad we decided to change our plans and visit Cedar Point today (Tuesday) instead of Monday. Monday's crowds are larger (from people taking a long weekend) and the weather yesterday did have several rides closed. The weather was chilly all day (in the 50s with no sun). 

I spent most of my day with Lucy. She's not tall enough for the thrill rides and she isn't much of a thrill seeker, not unlike myself. She was my excuse to not ride the scary rides! Perfect! Most of the pictures are of Lucy because the others were too busy riding ride after scary ride to take pictures.

Because school is still in session, there weren't many kids in the small children area. Lucy never had to wait for a ride. She made a sweet friend and they rode several rides together.

 

 

 Elliott got to sit in a monster truck and we also got to ride in the back of one on a course. 

 

 

 Clay is on this ride near the back with a burgundy hoodie on. This ride - the Top Thrill Dragster shoots you off. In 3 seconds, you reach 120 mph. Clay rode it with Kat the first time. He finally talked Elliott into it. They rode it many many times. Julia wanted no part of it. Click HERE if you want to see what it's like to ride it.

Lucy and I walked quite a bit that day. When I checked Clay's app, he, Julia, Kat, and Elliott walked a total of 12 miles. We opened and closed the park. It lived up to Clay's very high expectations. Only go if you really love big coasters. Cedar Park doesn't mess around. It's not for the faint of heart - unless you are lucky enough, like me, to have an excuse (Lucy) to stay off the scary stuff.