Weekend with Ambie

This past weekend, my wonderful friend Amber came to stay with us. Let's just say we had a wonderful time. We traveled all around Dayton and went places that I had been dying to go. We ate good food, saw the sites and even read a book or two. It was a blast!

Our first trip was to the Wegerzyn's Children's Discovery Gardens. I am super impressed with the parks system in Dayton - they are all incredibly well maintained (usually along the riverfront) and they are all FREE! This garden was partially laid out like an English formal garden (loved the cabbage roses) and the other section was a children's garden. It had fountains for the kids to play in, a corn field to get lost in, a musical maze, sand pits to dig in and just so much more. It was beautiful.

















There are a ton of locally owned farms out here and we visited the Young's Jersey Dairy on Saturday. They had a petting zoo, putt-putt (which I beat everyone at! HA!), a little train ride for the kids, playgrounds, and the most delicious ice cream evah! They said it contained 15% milk fat - yep, it was good.













On Amber's last day, we took a trip to the hippie village, Yellow Springs. All the shops are artsy or new age herbal stuff with it's very own tie-dye shop and tarot card reader. Welcome to granolaville. The shops were all these cute converted houses and Petey kept getting so excited with all the dogs and cats running around. Here's Ambie and Petey on a street corner - notice all the sign posts - each pole has its own thoughtfully knitted pole-warmer. I guess even hippies get bored.

















The last place we went was John Bryan State Park near Yellow Springs. It was GORGEOUS! We found this great little river running through it and even though there was a large "no swimming or wading" sign, we took advantage of the warm weather and played in the water. Petey loved it. He plopped down in the middle of the creek and splashed all around.

















Thanks again for coming out Ambie! We miss you already.

See, don't you want to come out and visit us too??

Next year I'm going Pro...

On Saturday, we went to the Troy Strawberry Festival - three long days full of entertainment, all kinds of sports, delicious food, and as many yummy strawberry concoctions you can imagine. Making our trip extra special was my first foray into the world of competitive eating. The men's category happened to already be full but I was able to convince our friends Shelly and Rachelle to compete with me. I don't know how excited they were (both are in their first trimester) but they gamely agreed to have at it.














Before photo: Me, Shelly, and Rachelle (we all live in the same complex - sometimes our names get a bit confusing)

And the actual event or where I try to eat an entire pie tin full of strawberries and whip cream. Let's just say I'm not as pro as I thought I was. Keep an eye out for Shelly on my left, she was this close to winning.













After photo: Too bad I already cleaned off my face but here is the legendary pie. Delish.













And here is Trav finishing off said pie for me. He made me promise I'd bring him my leftovers - which I thought was a little gross since my nose had been in it, but to each his own. You wouldn't think after this I'd be hungry but later I had the most delicious burger that was about 8 inches wide - and I competely polished it off. I think next year I'll be taking home that blue ribbon!

The Floating Trashcan

I live with an Engineer.
And I'm more than okay with that actually. I've noticed more and more of his habits brushing off on me and I don't really mind.
But then something like this happens and I'm reminded I'm not married to the average guy.
Why do you think our trash can is mysteriously floating next to the refrigerator?

Children's Museum and the Wright Brothers

Last week, I took Petey to the Boonshoft Children's museum in Dayton with a couple other moms and we had a wonderful time. It rained all day (perfect choice) and the museum was HUGE. It has this huge three story junglegym & slide, a mini zoo, bird observatory, a little person land, and a tidal pool where you can touch starfish and sea cucumbers. It was great and Petey had a blast. Even with two other kids in the backseat, he fell asleep even before I got the car started to go home.

Petey loved this tunnel. We actually sent him in first to convince the other kids to go through. We just gauged his progress by how loud or soft his giggles were.











There was this huge room filled with all kinds of fossils and dinosaur bones the kids could play with and Petey thought it might be fun to sit on this one. Did I mention our kid has turned into a climber?








Me and the boy.





















This weekend, Trav and I went to the Wright Brothers Cycle shop and got our dose of aviation history for the week. This kid doesn't have a chance - he's going to think it's perfectly natural to spend weekends and vacation talking about science and educational things...