Day 22 - Putt putt at Putt It

Now I know why I don't do this more often.  Really, Putt It in Meadville across from Walmart would be a really fun place for a family who is not us.  It is really cheap to play - 3.00 for adults and 2.50 for kids.  Or 5.00 for two people, or there are always buy one get one free coupons in the paper.  We happened to have free passes.   Well, let's just say that my children have no idea about mini-golf etiquette, nor do they really care to learn.  Translated, that means our kids were all over the place and would not listen to us.

There are also batting cages and actually two putt putt courses.  When we were finished with the first, the kids wanted to play the second.  Nope, I had had enough fun for one day. *sigh*

Day 22 - still beating the heat - Chuck E Cheese

heh heh...so last week it was Jordan's birthday, and he told me he wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese.  I had been holding onto coupons, so I figured why not?  AND...since it was Jordan's birthday, we received an email coupon for 20 free tokens.  AND...it was pretty hot and humid, so doing something indoors seemed like a good idea.   Unfortunately, it took a while to get moving, so it was 7 PM by the time we even left the house for Erie.  The good news is that by the time we got there, all the sane parents had taken their children home.  It was not crowded at all. 

So, here are my tips for an enjoyable trip to Chuck E Cheese.  Save the coupons from the Sunday paper.  Also, go their web site and register for email offers.  And go late.  Your kids will be nuts by the time you leave, but at least you won't have to wait in ridiculous lines to trade in your tickets for ridiculously cheap prizes.

Day 21 (sort of) - Beating the Heat

Okay, so it's been a week since I've written anything.  I suppose when I wrote the title of the blog (30 days or so), I already knew that writing every day would be a bit much for me.  Look for the title to change soon.

With the weather last week, it was all about beating the heat.  One day last week, Jim took the kids to Lakeside Lanes bowling alley, which is on Route 18 about three minutes from my house.  Santa brought Ben a bowling ball, and I just found one at a garage sale for Jordan.  Jordan had yet to use his.  I love this little bowling alley.  It is certainly nothing fancy.  There are only about eight lanes, and the six pound balls get stuck at the bottom of the lane all the time.  However, my boys bowl in a league there every Saturday during the school year, and they love it.  The people who work there are wonderful.  They give the kids instruction at times to help them learn the proper way to bowl.  They have parties for the holidays and the boys get to bowl with the cosmic bowling lights on.  I esp. like it cause it gives them something to do in the dead of winter.  They have this gumball machine there that my boys feed quarters to.  The nice thing about it, though, is that pretty often they will get a "winner" gumball that earns them a coupon for a free game.  So by the end of bowling league, we had quite a collection of free game coupons!

So Jim took the boys bowling.  They had a great time, beat the heat, and probably only had to pay to rent those great-looking shoes.

Day 20 - Gems, geocaching, and a giant rocking chair

Who would have thought Austinburg, OH held such treasures?  My boys love rocks.  They pick them up all the time and can tell me pretty much where each one is from.  Each rock holds memories for my kids.  (On a side note, if you think that's neat, read Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass)  So when I saw the brochure for Noema Gems, I knew I wanted to check it out.  http://www.noemagems.com/


Noema Gems is just this little building in a teeny town in Ohio just below I90, though the back roads are way more scenic.  The place is a store and mini-museum; you can buy gems of all kinds and look at some interesting displays.  But the attraction is the mining for minerals and gems.  So you pay $4 and get a bucket of stones to sift through.  They give you this little display to help identify what you find, and of course, you can keep anything you want.  The boys had a blast - they found some quartz, fool's gold, flint, amber, and many other things.  Ben even found two shark teeth!  Eventually, though, they started to complain cause it was too hot.  Really?  This kind of weather is what we've been waiting for.  And there's no whining on adventure day, so a little cold water and we were off.

The rock store.

Ben found a shark tooth.

I had printed a few sets of coordinates for geocaches at what sounded like fun locations, so our next stop was  the world's largest rocking chair.  Well, there are probably bigger ones, but we've never seen 'em.

I love it!

Hehehe...isn't it great?  I am all for cheesy attractions.  Look how little the boys are on the sides!  It amazes me sometimes how popular geocaching is.  While we were sorting through the treasures of the geocache, another family stopped to find it.  And we weren't the first ones to find it today.

Our next stop was less than a mile away.  The name of the geocache was "Cool Treat on a Hot Day."  Perfect.  Even more perfect was that Ben had nabbed a coupon out of the rocking chair geocache for that very ice cream store.  See, the universe is on my side lately.  The cool thing about this particular geocache was its container.  Many geocaches are ammo containers.  This one was too, only it was probably an ammo container for GI Joe.  Teeny tiny.  And our new friends from the rocking chair - that was their next stop, too.

Just what we needed on a 90 degree day.

Teeny tiny.  Clever.

On the way home, we saw a sign for a covered bridge, so of course, we couldn't pass it up.  The Doyle Road bridge is beautiful, and predictably, Jordan found a geocache.  Apparently there is one at every bridge.  We didn't even have the coordinates for this one; he just found it.  Yep...we're that good.  hehe.  And also predictably, the kids had to check out the creek.

So Austinburg is about 50 minutes from our house in Conneaut Lake, so our adventure took about four hours total.  I didn't disclose exactly where we were going after the rock shop, and the boys at first wanted to come straight home.  When are they going to learn to trust me? :-)

Doyle Road covered bridge.

Ben's treasures

Jordan's treasures.

Day 19 - Postcrossing

I was stupid.  Did I really think that I could do something worthy of writing about every day for thirty days in a row in the middle of summer?  Somehow every year I think I am going to have all this free time to do things - then we end up overscheduled.  So since things have been so busy over the past couple of days, I am going to take a few minutes to tell you about something the boys and I do from home.  It's called Postcrossing.  Basically, you send postcards to and receive postcards from all over the world.  First, you go to www.postcrossing.com.  Take a few minutes to register and you're on your way.   To send a postcard, you click on "send a postcard" and then "request address."  You're then given an address and a postcard ID to write on the card.  Once the recipient gets the postcard, he or she registers the postcard using the ID.  Once that is done, your address will be given to a random person in the world.  You can have up to five postcards traveling at once. 

Once you've sent and received postcards, you can look at your stats.  You can see how many miles your postcards have traveled (ours have gone over 25,000 miles so far), view a map showing sent and received cards, and view charts of your activity.  You can upload digital images of the postcards you receive and view your "wall" of cards.  

In this digital age, when email and facebook and texting have replaced snail mail, it is so exciting to go to the mailbox and get a personal note from some random person from halfway around the world.  Originally, I signed up because I thought that Ben and Jordan would really have fun with it.  We went to the spillway and purchased postcards, and that was fun.  As a side note, do you have any idea how hard it is to actually find postcards these days?  But initially, they were not real involved with sending the first postcards.  There I was, spending time writing these notes while my kids played.  But as I suspected, they are way more into it now that we have actually gotten a few cards.  Jordan was amazed to see that we sent postcards across the ocean.

Oh, who am I kidding...I didn't really do this just for my kids.  I am hooked!

Day 18 - Zelienople Horse Trading Days

If you are looking for a nice summer festival, this is one to consider.  My sister and I have a Tastefully Simple booth there, but I always love walking around to see what is there.  Of course there are lots of crafters.  And festival food - wow - anything you want is there.  I recommend the white pizza.  Really, white pizza, at a craft show!  And for dessert, you MUST get the Amish doughnuts.  Oh. my. goodness.  Giant, warm doughnuts, dipped in glaze flavored with a hint of maple.  It's not unusual to see the line twenty people deep.

The festival seems to take over the entire town.  Not only are there booths at the crossroads in town, but if you walk down the main street, every store has a booth set up outside.  About two blocks down from the main part of the festival, there is a children's area with a blow-up jumper, a rock-climbing wall, pony rides, and a petting zoo, where kids can bottle-feed baby goats.

The day to go would be Saturday if you have kids.  There are a ton on fun things happening - frog jumping competitions, baby races, rodent races, a tractor pull, and more.  Check the website for other events, such as a karaoke competition and free concerts.  http://www.horsetradingdays.info/home

Fun stuff!

Day 17 - Vacation Bible School

All the cool kids go to VBS at Trinity.  So a few years ago, I had to make sure my kids were a part of it, too.  No, seriously, a few friends of mine at bunco one day were talking about how much fun it is for their kids.  How cool - kids excited about singing and learning about God.   Well, Jordan just gets excited about game time.  "Yes, it is awesome that you got from first base to home in kickball."  But hopefully he gets more out of it.  :)

The people who run it are amazing.  The decorations are always awesome.  The adults show enthusiasm 100 percent of the time - like they really love what they are doing.  Not only do they run VBS from 6 - 8:30, they also hold dinner beforehand, starting at 5:30.   And I love to see my students volunteering their time to help - how wonderful to see teens spending their time this way.

I am sure every VBS is great.  But there is something about this one that feels special.  It has something to do with community.  I look around sometimes at all the parents and kids there, and I know so many from different aspects of my life, work friends, neighbors, students, bunco buddies, etc.  It's a highlight of my day to sit and chat with people when I drop off or pick up the kids.  It's good to reconnect, even for a just a little bit.  And the two and a half hours of kid-free time is not bad either.