Our Ohio Visit

We've just come back from our trip to Ohio. Traveling with two kids wasn't as hard as we thought it would be. Rachel would get antsy at times (like any 3 year old would) but overall they did great.

While there Lauren had a lot of firsts. Her first two teeth, first time clicking her tongue (a fun new trick for her), and she started to *really* crawl. First thing she did when we came home was crawl over to the play kitchen and clear the shelves. She's so much more mobile than she was when we left just a week earlier.

Thursday, August 9: We had lunch with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Bent and then headed over to Acres of Fun (similar to Chuck E. Cheese). That was cut short when a storm passed over us. Later, we saw on the news that a tornado had touched down just north of us. Fun start to our vacation! At dinner that night Lauren bit down on my finger....her first tooth!


Friday, August 10: Children's Museum of Cleveland. The exhibits were all aimed at children Rachel's age but everyone had a bit of fun.

Saturday, August 11: Cleveland Zoo and dinner in Little Italy. Rachel walked most of the zoo and ended up crashing in the van on the way to dinner. We ate under a tent covered patio in the Little Italy district of Cleveland. Our servers' names.....Rachel and Lauren!

Sunday, August 12: Cookout with the entire Ott family. Most of the family hadn't met Lauren yet and we got to meet two new babies, Madeline and Lily. Lauren and Madeline are closer in age and got to have a mini playdate.

Monday, August 13: Cedar Point in Sandusky. We started Rachel off with the tame rides. The Kiddy Kingdom wasn't very exciting. She liked the little carousel rides at first but was more interested in the larger rides...like the "fast trains" (her way of saying roller coasters). So then we moved on to Camp Snoopy. Still kiddy rides, but a little more exciting. The first one she wanted to try was a roller coaster. I thought for sure she's be scared. She kept calling it a train and I wanted to make sure she understood it would go much higher and faster than the trains she's been on. But she insisted, so we got on. I'm not a roller coaster person at all so even I was bracing myself when we were climbing up that first drop. So we get to the top and I start to loose my stomach and clench my teeth and next to me is Rachel yelling "wooooohooooo" while putting her fists in the air. WHAT?! She's definitely Jason's daughter. But seeing her have so much fun made the ride easier on me. I would have gone again and again just to see her having that much fun. But on to more rides... I think she could have gone on for hours, but the park was closing. Jason's already talked about planning a trip to Worlds of Fun.

I think it's going to take a few days for us to settle back into our routine.