Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour

 For the second year in a row, Dan managed to have vacation in May. He hasn't managed a visit to Ohio since 2009, so we figured this would be a nice time to try. I don't know that I'd recommend traveling with three kids five and younger to anyone because it involves so much gear. Stowed in the back here, you can see a portable crib, a booster seat and a bed rail, among other things. Unseen, 50 containers of baby food, 50 diapers each for two kids, two packs of wipes, enough snacks for an army, 3 nanna blankies, stuffed friends a-plenty, Paul's roller suitcase of cars, and tons of car activities.  Thank goodness it was summer and not winter! If we had poofy winter clothes to pack, we wouldn't have managed to fit into a MERE two giant suitcases. With the car packed and some cranky kids in tow, we set off at afternoon nap time for our two-week excursion to Ohio.

We made our first stop just outside of State College, PA. Penny and Dan enjoyed the hotel pool while I tried to get the stir crazy young ones ready for bed. We had booked too late to get the suite with a separate bedroom that we aim for, so bedtime was a bit of a nightmare, but we got there eventually. The next day, we made our way to the state line. We danced the line for the next few days at Pymatuning State Park - an awesome fishing spot based on the residents of the adjacent cabins where we stayed. The kids enjoyed that our cabin was right next to a playground. I enjoyed that our cabin with linens and a full kitchen was essentially the same floor plan as our NYC apartment, only uncluttered by all our junk we usually live with.

Our first excursion after settling in was to see Uncle Dave and Aunt Pam (Mom's sister). Uncle Dave kindly took Penny and Dan on an off-road golf carting expedition to explore the farm. Having read up on the various states we'd be visiting, Penny was excited to see Pennsylvania and Ohio's state mammal up close and personal. When spooked, the white-tailed deer were kind enough to demonstrate how they got their name. Paul didn't want to go on the golf cart, but he was pretty excited that Uncle Dave had his very own bulldozer and a spiffy collection of Hot Wheels. All the kids thoroughly enjoyed the patio, with it's slide for a quick escape down to a swing set and open area for kicking around a ball. Zoe played hard to get, though, resisting multiple attempts for cuddles from her grand-aunt and uncle.


That night, Penny stayed up a little later to see the stars. It was a lovely night - no milky way visible, but she did spot a shooting star. A clap of thunder made her nervous and when we glanced in the direction from whence it came a great blackness was creeping across the sky like the Nothing in the Neverending Story. "Maybe we should go in now?" "No, no...count between the flash and the thunder. One, two, three...fifteen" BOOM!! "See, it's still three miles away." "Maybe we should go in now, Mommy." "All right."

The kids went to bed and we stayed up a bit watching the snowy TV signal. Suddenly, one of us muted the TV.
Dan: Is that an air raid siren?
Me: Yep. Probably a tornado warning.
Dan: Oh.
Me: Let's find the weather somewhere so we can see where the tornado is.
Dan: That means there's a tornado? I thought a "watch" meant you had to watch for a tornado. Is there someplace we're supposed to go or do?
Me: No. You do not go outside and drive in a tornado. John went out for a run in a tornado when we were kids. That's not good. We are in a cabin in the woods someplace we don't know. The whole place is swampy to start and there's a flood warning as well.
Dan: What should we do, then?
Sandy: If the tornado comes, we close all the doors in the hallway and hide in the hallway. That's pretty much the best we can do. Let's see if the news says where the tornado is so we know if we should wake the kids.

None of the channels was local, so no news was covering the tornado. The weather-ish channel we can found seems way more concerned with the flash flood warning, going so far as to interrupt the tornado warning as it described where it was. With our intermittent cell signal, we were able to get a doppler map of the area and it seemed that the worst of the storm was to our South and East, so we just stayed awake until the warning expired. Uncle Dave told us later that he was pretty worried about us because he knew where we were and where the warning was. Thankfully, we escaped unscathed. The only major results seemed to be a bounty of new kindling available for our planned s'more roast the next day.

The next morning, we headed over to the fishery to see some of the Pymatuning Lake residents more closely. They had some nice big specimens of a variety of fish on display in trophy mountings and swimming around in tanks. Penny enjoyed a series of matching games to identify species of local turtles and fish. Sometimes even the low-tech museum exhibits can be fun. We had the place to ourselves thanks to a steady lingering drizzle. The drizzle also meant we were alone at the spillway when we went to feed the fish. The fishery end of the lake prohibits fishing, but has a spillway that feeds into the part of the lake where fishing is ok. It seems that for generations, people have gone to the spillway to fatten up the fish before they get sucked over the small waterfall into the area where they can become someone's dinner. Uncle Glenn had clued us in to this wonderful spot. The giant carp churned the water as they fought for our bits of graham cracker (the kids had already eaten our Goldfish and I hadn't packed our precious sandwich bread for the occasion). The ducks vying for a bit of the bounty didn't like how crunchy our snacks were. It seemed the carp might accidentally inhale a duckling in their eagerness for the crumbs, though. The parent ducks planted a few good pecks, but eventually herded their progeny away from the feeding frenzy. I got a lot of scolding from the kids for not bringing more things to feed the fish, but we had to head over to our next stop anyway.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Uncle Glenn and Aunt Barbara's (mom's eldest sister). She had been under the weather when we last visited Northern Ohio, so we were glad to see her this time around. Here the kids enjoyed some fun tracks for cars and chalk drawing out in the driveway. I enjoyed seeing some of Aunt Barbara's paintings of family members. She's been doing quite a bit more since she did the portrait of my mom. Uncle Glenn showed off their awesome tiered patio, leading down to a creek. Apparently, Paul thought it infinitely fun to throw the ball all the way down the hill when playing "catch" with people. Uncle Glenn assured us he wasn't the only one to pull such a move.

Zoe spent the day of her birthday at Aunt Barbara's as well. Aunt Jayne got some awesome Minnie Mouse-themed gear, right down to some ears for Zoe to wear. She joined Aunt Pam and came over to visit for a bit. She was kind enough to also bring some lovely chocolate chip cookies (with coconut oil instead of butter - yum!). Paul was thrilled about that contribution. Paul helped me make some rainbow sprinkle cupcakes, which Penny then iced with strawberry cream cheese icing. Zoe actually ate some of the cupcake and icing, so everyone must have done good jobs.

After a wonderful party, we had to drag the kids away from Aunt Barbara's. They were pretty sacked out and went to sleep easily. Thank goodness, because there was plenty of packing up to do before heading to our next big destination on Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour: Dayton.