Charles Edward Cheese

My Aunt S had a birthday approximately two months ago.  To celebrate, we went to Charles Edward Cheese's House of Fun approximately two months ago.  In related news, never get your photographs developed at the CVS on Main.  The problem, of course, is how to get to Virginia to help celebrate?
First, I tried the gigantic lego man who lived down the street.  He refused.

So I used some horsepower, instead! 

Made it!  Here is a picture of the birthday girl looking wistfully into the distance as the three cheese mixture inspires mental poetry.  Little JC thinks she took more than her fair share!

JC quickly got over the slight and Summer and him threw some footballs...

We soon grew tired of all the pizza and fun.  So we strapped ourselves into something that required little to no effort!

Thanks for the party!

Tap Class

Hi there. Many moons ago, my beautiful momma signed me up for a summer tap class. You can see I'm focused on my steps!

I wore a different outfit everyday including the one great-grandma sent me....

My brother, JC, was very jealous. He was so frustrated that he watched all of my classes in this pose.

You can hear how much my brother wanted to join in from this clip....

Thanks for the tap shoes, Grandma L!

Independence Weekend

Look who came to visit M and JC! S really can't believe it's not butter!

With the boys here, we did lots of fun things. We went and saw the life size replica of the Santa Maria...

For those who didn't believe my story about "Recorder Guy", I have posted proof. Look in the man's pocket. He had just finished a rendition of the Backstreet Boys.

We went to Pei Wei for lunch/dinner. Pei Wei is chinese for Pee Wee and it's really a Pee Wee PF Changs! M used chopsticks so what was lunch became dinner in the time it took her!

Then we went to Upper Arlington for a fireworks show and to listen to three different cover bands in a row. Before the show we lit some snakes. We hear the words flaming dog poop for the next three days...

By the time the show rolled around, it was well past our bed time. Good thing that all we had to do was look up...
Thanks for coming to visit boys!

The Strawberry Festival

The word "straub ery" in Slovenian refers to their national horse breed. With the largest population of Slovenians outside of Slovenia, itself, Ohio made the perfect place to hold the Straub ery or Strawberry Festival. Instead of the national horse of Slovenia, however, this festival celebrates the American version, and especially, the Mustang car! Just to satiate the ignorant Americans who came looking for actual strawberries, the town of London included this display.

The show was all about the cars, however. Here, Gram, Aunt K, JC, and I are pictured among a row of 'Stangs.



Here is a picture of me after someone told me what the festival was all about. "Oh I get it," I said. JC was not as understanding and really wanted the festival to be about the berries!

My brother soon got into it, though, after we fed him a snow cone...

My dad left for New Mexico!

With my dad gone in New Mexico, we traveled to VA to visit with many of our relatives. The first stop was the C-M clan in the southern part of VA. We got to run through the sprinkler...


And do the water slide too....



My brother slipped...
and wiped out... but was none the worse for wear.
We had a fun visit with Grandma L too and her banana pops. Not pictured is our trip to Chuck E. Cheese World....
After wearing out our welcome we drove north to the the C family's compound. We did some water games there too. Whoops! JC had one too many burritos!

We went and sat out by the lake at Aunt JKC's house. Doesn't M look delightfully southern?

We then went to Gram's house. Oh no! Pops is watching Merlin on SyFy again?!?







Not wanting to watch the goblin-wife episode again, we decided to go to a park. Looks like JC has found his calling....





And I, M, have found my calling, too!




Thank you to all who hosted us. My dad going to New Mexico led to the best summer vacation ever!

The Name of the Rose

Hello there! Columbus has one of the top ten rose gardens in the country. It's a garden with real roses and not a basketball arena where the Trailblazers play. One sunny day we decided to go and visit. Here we are all smiling because a bird the size of a small airplane just missed us with it's "fuel dump" and hit the sign instead! Can you imagine how much good luck we would have received if we were Italian?

Before attacking the fields of roses we had a picnic dinner. Here we are munching away on a variety of Italian pastas, ironically.

With our bellies full (is that a theme of our blog?) we went into the park.

My sister, M, enjoyed smelling the roses.

I, JC, being of shorter stature wanted to climb the wrought iron tower to look at the garden in full.

After so many pictures, I was getting tired of smiling. Here my dad promised us dessert if we smiled big for our sole picture with my beautiful momma. I was so sun-tired I didn't care, but you can see M was very interested in dessert.

Finally, the answer to the riddle in the title of this post? Why it's....

Visitors from the frozen north

Hi there! Not too long ago, my friends B and S moved to Minnesota. Disgusted with the lack of sun to the north, they decided to fly south to Ohio. It turns out that they did not fly far enough south. We did many things with our friends despite the poor weather, but there was one thing we did where we ALSO remembered the camera -- the Bunny Fountains! Here we are taking in a pregame snack!

Now fully fueled, B and I and ran through the fountains!

I guess JC didn't eat enough because he didn't get too wet...

Why are they named the bunny fountains? The gigantic statues up at the top of this hill is one clue (and the only clue)...

After a long day (~2 hrs) of running up and down the hill and through the fountains, JC and I were pooped. We found a comfortable rock and slept until the next rain storm hit!

Thanks for visiting us B and S! We had a great time and wish our camera had been with us more often!