Category: travel

I am going to try to make a long story a short-ish story: so here goes. Ever since I went on a little blog trip to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands area about 18 months ago, I’ve wanted to go back with my family. Finally, at the very end of summer (and even after school had started), we were able to get up there for a weekend for a hosted trip. That’s right, all our accommodations and event tickets were provided, but we paid for our wheels & meals.  All the opinions about our experiences are my own. I was super-excited to see Lake Erie (it was winter when I visited) and Bobby and I decided to be “fun parents” for a weekend and take our kids to Cedar Point! That’s right, an amusement park. With rides. And lines. And other people. We waited until the day before to tell the kids and they were SO EXCITED! The whole weekend was a blast, and we loved every minute of our trip. Here are some of the great family fun attractions we saw when we were there.

Friday night we headed to Ghostly Manor Thrill Center, a family entertainment center. I had visited here on my previous trip and really wanted to take the kids. They have a super-scary haunted house which we skipped, but they also have skating, glow-in-the-dark mini-golf, a huge bouncy house area, and a suuuuuper-fun XD theater!

On the skating rink, you could do either scooters, roller blades, or skates! Fun to have options for the little ones.

Jonah had an awesome time at the bouncy area, but I could not get any pics because he was a crazy animal running and bouncing everywhere! It was great fun and really wore him out! My favorite part was the XD theater. Sophie and I looooooved it and I could’ve spent way more time there. It was a blast!

If you are going to be in Sandusky, I highly recommend Ghostly Manor. It’s a whole lot of reasonably-priced family fun in one place.

When we were funned-out, we went to our lovely hotel accommodations at the Sawmill Creek Resort. This place is huge and beautiful! It has a golf course, a nature preserve, and beach access to Lake Erie. We loved our room – it even had a cozy fireplace and YES we did use it even in the summer! It was wonderful.

As cozy as our room was, the kids were dying to get in the indoor pool! We had a lot of fun – and Sophie and I had some hot tub time, too! The facilities were super nice!

Of course Sawmill Creek has a gorgeous outdoor pool, too. We were just busy alll day when we were there, so we did our swimming at night both nights! Here’s a peek though.

My very favorite part of the Sawmill Creek Resort was the gorgeous beach at Lake Erie. We had so much fun – it was VERY windy but still a great afternoon at the beach. The wind did spoil our planned evening shoreline cruise though. 🙁 Too many whitecaps, said the captain!

It was really ever so beautiful. I was definitely struck with #LakeErieLove.

We traded the lake for the jungle…sort of…out next stop was the African Safari Wildlife Park. This is a park where you can drive thru and feed all kinds of wild animals from your car window. We’ve done something like this before in Virginia and the kids were so excited to experience it again. This park also had a great little zoo you could walk through, too! We were a little overwhelmed by how many animals there were to feed…we were literally stuck in an animal traffic jam a couple of times! Here are some scenes from our drive-thru feed-a-thon:

Our children kept getting scared and just GIVING the animals our feed cups…so we ran out of food pretty fast. OOPS! It was a really fun experience though!

Finally, the BIG, EXCITING, grande finale of our trip was the legendary amusement park, Cedar Point. Believe it or not, even though we are both lifelong Ohioans, neither Bobby nor I had EVER been! The kids were super-excited, although Joshua is a bit, ummm…timid, so we knew we probably weren’t going to be riding any of the big coasters. Kind of a bummer for mom and dad, but we will just have to make a return trip sans kids!

We had a lot of fun in the areas geared just for smaller kids. Jonah was not afraid to ride ANYTHING. He did awesome! He loved the Scrambler, the Matterhorn, and the bumper cars! We rode them all many, many times!

This was the “biggest” ride we could get Joshua on – the Pipescream. It was a BLAST! But he was too nervous to enjoy it, party pooper. His three-year-old brother and seven-ear-old sister, however, LOVED it. 🙂

We really had an awesome day at Cedar Point. The weather was awesome, the lines were short, and the rides were FUN! The kids did great and we will definitely be back.

We will also definitely be back to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands area. We really want to get out on the lake, and Bobby and I would like to take a grown-up trip there and explore the islands, too.

Thanks to Sawmill Creek Resort, Ghostly Manor, African Safari Wildlife Park, Cedar Point, and Lake Erie Shores and Islands for hosting us. We can’t wait to go back!

Last week we packed up the family truckster and headed off on vacation.

Our first stop was Jenny’s parents’ house in Virginia.

After a slightly harrowing arrival (we got lost in their “neighborhood”, which is on top of a mountain with only very scary looking roads and very little cell service. Fortunately Aunt Diane got my SOS text and sent Uncle Charlie to find us!) we had a lovely visit.

Uncle Charlie took Andy and the kids on a hike, where they had the very educational experience of finding a rattle snake (!!). Later, Aunt Diane and I took the kids to a children’s museum while Andy and Uncle Charlie stayed back to play mountain men and drive around on the four wheeler. That evening, Andy and I left the kids on the mountain and went out to dinner in Lexington, VA. Nothing like a date on vacation!

From there to the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, VA. We went there because one day I randomly googled “best family vacations” or something, and this resort came up. It had great reviews and a lazy river – I was sold. And I was not disappointed – it was incredible. I wish I could go back right now.

We also took about a day and a half to do some of the historic sites – Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown Settlement. Andy, Kate and I enjoyed both – Sam was a bit young for the experience. He pretty much just wanted to get back to the resort and hit the water slide.

Who am I kidding, I couldn’t wait to get back to the pool either.

Before we knew it it was Thursday and it was time to pack up and head back to Ohio. We got home about 11:00 that night, but we weren’t home for long. The next day we headed to Friendship, Indiana for the Whispering Beard Folk Festival.

Let me say – I was skeptical about this adventure from the start, but Andy was super excited about it and – well – it seemed less painful than some of the other music-related “experiences” he’s suggested over the years.

A Friday afternoon to Sunday morning camping trip required WAY more crap than our previous Friday-Thursday trip did.

That was the first sign things were going downhill.

Here was the second.

And the third.

This place was out in the middle of nowhere.

The day before, I had texted Jenny in a panic not knowing how I was going to charge my phone battery all weekend. As it turned out, it didn’t matter, because there was no cell service.

I felt like it was 2002 or something.

But, we pitched our tents, got everything set up, grilled hot dogs, and listened to some folk music. Everything was peachy until it was time for bed.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but Kate is very, very sensitive to sound when she sleeps. As in, she can’t stand the noise of bugs outside the house when we are inside the house with the windows closed. We’ve had problems with this for years – at home, at hotels, you name it.

Why we thought camping was a good idea is beyond me.

So, Friday night when she was hot and dirty and exhausted and just wanted to sleep, there was still a concert going on. After the music ended, there was the cacophony of 30 college kids in the campsite behind us. (Kate learned some new vocabulary words that night, yay!) Then, after those kids went to the after party at some barn, there was the sound of bugs and frogs.

Kate just about lost her damn mind. And so did I.

She was quite literally hysterical for probably a solid two hours.

Eventually, she went to sleep – only to be awakened by the joyous noise of her father snoring in the next tent.

This led to another, I don’t know, hour of hysterics. She was finally able to sleep after she crafted herself a sound barrier.

It was an awesome night.

The next day was better, though. It was super hot, but we stayed in the shade and played cards, Blokus, and Fibber (omg a dumber game I have never played). We played washers and football and baseball, and we had a fun day as a family.

By late that afternoon, though, I was already dreading the coming night. Around 6pm, I looked at Andy and said “What’s more painful, spending another night here or driving home through the night?”

We both took one look at Sam…

…and decided to get the hell out of dodge.

After we packed up all of our belongings, our neighbors (not the rowdy kids, a nice couple who had a brain left their son at home) came back to their tent and asked why we were leaving. I explained the situation with Kate and noise

And this is where a hippie changed my life.

(They probably weren’t hippies at all. He is probably an IT guy who threw an old t-shirt and an ironic trucker hat on for the weekend. And I heard her say she bought her hippie dress on “one of those flash sale sites.” I don’t think hippies shop on gilt.com. But I digress.)

He said, “That’s why I bring earplugs everywhere I go. We couldn’t even hear each other talking last night, and we didn’t wake up until 10 am!”

Earplugs. Are you fishing kidding me?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Do you know how many hours of my life could have been saved – or slept through – by having purchased some freaking 99 cent EARPLUGS???? It had never, ever occurred to us.

The rest of the night, Andy and I kept looking at each other saying “we are idiots.”

However, we were idiots who were not stupid enough to spend another night at a loud campground, so after the music ended for the night, we hit the road.

And as soon as we were back in the land of 3G wireless? I made an immediate purchase from amazon.

Thank you, psuedo-hippie guy. You will never know the impact our brief encounter had on my sanity.

Andy, the kids and I spent a week in Northern Michigan earlier this month. We were with some of our closest friends. Nine kids. Six adults. Seven days. A million incredible memories.

We relaxed, we read books. We went tubing and jet skiing, we took walks and went shopping. We ate, we drank. We laughed. Oh, how we laughed!

We celebrated Andy’s 40th birthday with a day as close to perfect as any I can imagine.

I’m having a hard time putting into words what a great trip it was… I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves.