Last Week of Summer

Earlier in the week, I packed up a picnic lunch and the kids and I headed up to Cleveland to the Great Lakes Science Center. We had a blast!!! It’s right on Lake Erie between the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Flame and the Cleveland Browns Stadium. We enjoyed a BubbleMania show and lots of exhibits, but the favorite part of the day was Polymer’s Play Area. It’s inside and outside on the 3rd level of the museum overlooking the lake. The kids had the time of their lives. I had fun following them around testing out our new camera. They also enjoyed feeding the seagulls and watching Ellie scream from her stroller when 25-30 birds landed at her feet. In fact, there was a Japanese tourist who had his kid join in on the fun and made a home video of the whole thing. After the seagull fun, the kids and I took a walk along the shore and snapped some pictures of the Cleveland Browns Stadium. Once the little legs were too tired to walk any farther, we headed back to the car and stopped at Handel’s on the way home. Handel’s is a local ice cream joint here and was rated in National Geographic as the World’s Best Ice Cream a couple of years ago. It even beat out a couple a gelato places in Italy. Anyway, let’s just say it’s pretty yummy. For the first time, I let Emma and Brady get their own regular size ice cream cone. Strawberry and Cotton Candy were the flavors of choice. Emma has the eating an ice cream cone technique down, while Brady…well not so much. Most of it ended up on the ground, but what managed to find it’s way into his mouth he seemed to enjoy. Our crazy little Ellie turned up her nose at ice cream – sometimes we wonder where she came from.

P.S. They all to wear socks in the play area. No, I didn’t let my kids wear nerdy socks with their shorts/capris.

We headed over to our new place today to take some measurement and thought I’d share a kitchen pic with you. I’m so excited to have cupboards and a skylight!!! Now all my YW can actually fit into my kitchen! It’s by far the biggest room in our house. We get the keys this Wednesday.

Okay now I know you’re all wondering why I’m posting a pictures of my shower. For the last 2 years of living in our duplex, I’ve scrubbed, bleached and tried every cleaner on the market to make our shower look remotely clean. I finally had to settle for just smelling clean and trusting that the bleach disinfected everything. Anyway, a CLEAN shower to me gives me that little kid on Christmas morning kind of excitement.

We've been living it up during our last week of Summer. We decided to check out the Towpath on the Erie Canal with some of our friends. We had a great humid time, but the kids heads were just soaking with sweat under their helmets….at 8PM! So, to cool off we head over to McDonalds (we pulled up and Ellie started singing "Old McDonald") for an ice cream cone.

Last night we had a family movie night. All of us really enjoyed Nim’s Island. Tomorrow we’ll have a fun Sunday Dinner with our friends and then on Monday we’ll go to Meet the Teacher Day at Emma’s school. I volunteered to be on the Hospitality Committee at Fort Island (the Elementary School) and so we’ll be popping up popcorn and stirring lemonade for the 400+ students and their parents during the 2 hour event. I’ll post some first day of school pictures on Tuesday when we officially (tear) have a first grader.