So it's July 23rd. Summer is nearing an end (once we hit August I may as well be in school!), vacation is over, and Audrey is officially 2 1/2. What have we been doing to make the last 6 weeks go so quickly?!

We've kept pretty busy. The kids and I just got home from a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo with our friends Amber, Brendan (3), and Emery (4 mos.). Both are sleeping right now! Actually, I take that back - I don't think Audrey's sleeping, but she's upstairs in her room and is supposed to be taking a nap! I can hear her on the monitor. Conner's sacked out on the couch - I usually just leave him in the car when he falls asleep in there, but I took pity on him today and brought him in. These are some pictures from our last trip to the zoo with Amber, Brendan, and Emery (on the 30th of June).

The weather's been crazy this summer! Today's high was supposed to be in the 70s... I'm not sure it reached the 70s yesterday and rained all day. I'm afraid that this cool weather means the hot weather is waiting until we go back to school.

We've had some big moments in the past few weeks...
1. Conner is officially training wheel-less on his bike! He'd made some comments about wanting them off, so a couple of weeks ago (it was the 7th, I think) I took them off and away he went! He had no problems at all! It was crazy.

2. Audrey is officially pull-up-less! She's been wearing panties during the day with only one problem (and that was at a restaurant in Myrtle Beach, which was lovely). She's still doing diapers during naptime and bedtime, but often wakes up dry.

We went on our big vacation to Myrtle Beach last week and had a great time. I think Aud's going to grow up and be a beach bum - she absolutely loved the sand and the ocean! Conner seemed to prefer the pool, but that was because they had a lazy river that he could play in (and pester everyone around him). We didn't do too much activity-wise. Our mornings and afternoons were spent at the ocean/pool (with a break for lunch - then we left the little ones inside to nap). We went out to dinner several times all together (with Doug, Marge, Andy, Erica, Levi, and Ezra), but there was one night that Eric and I went by ourselves to dinner and a movie, too. The four of us also spent one evening putt-putting... I won't tell you who won (cough, cough).

I have lots and lots of pictures of our trip - I posted them to my shutterfly site (click here) if you'd like to check them out!

Off we go!

We've been keeping pretty busy lately - Coney Island, the Zoo, King's Island, a local waterpark, etc. (Doesn't it make you tired just to think about it?! That's the goal :) )

I'm actually going to take the kids to Coney here in a little bit. We normally go from 10 to 12:30 or so (and it's after 2:00 right now), but we're leaving in the middle of the night for our week-long vacation to Myrtle Beach. Eric and I thought it might help to have the kids be extra tired... maybe they'll sleep a little more in the car! Aud's taking her nap; we'll probably get ready to go after she wakes up.

The car's all packed. I wonder what we're going to forget?!

Our Journey

We loaded in the (newly cleaned up!) Jeep yesterday afternoon and took off for a ride! This is a map of where we traveled (approximately, of course... Eric tends to like back roads).

The stops:
1. From our house, we headed down towards the river. We stopped at U.S. Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant (but they charged $ to go in, so we kept going).

2. Our next destination was the Chilo dam. Eric had been there Thursday night with a guy from work (they were fishing) and said we should go back. There was a (free) museum, a neat-looking playground for the kids (but it was too hot to go on, to Audrey's chagrin... "play! play!"), some docks down to the river, and a telescope so you could see boats/stuff on the Kentucky side of the river. We spent quite a bit of time in the museum - there were some surprisingly interesting things to read/interact with/see. A girl working in the museum told us about a blueberry festival across the river, so our next stop was. . .

3. Augusta, Kentucky. We drove a bit down 52 to get to the Augusta Ferry. Conner was certain he'd never been on a ferry before (I guess he doesn't remember going to Kelley's Island/Put-in-Bay when we was 6 months old!) and loved it. We didn't find the festival, so we went to the Augusta Pub (and played a little bit of indoor cornhole!) for dinner.

4. Because it cost $5 to ride the ferry, we decided to work our way back across the river a different way. We drove down Rt 8 until we got to Maysville, KY and crossed a pretty neat new bridge.

5. Back on 52, we went west (north?) until we came back to Chilo. (By this time the kids were getting tired - Conner'd conked out earlier and Audrey was enjoying her paci but wanting her blankie.) We stopped at the Chilo Dairy Bar, where Conner woke up for a messy messy ice cream cone.
6. Home! Approximately 5 hours after we left and about 90 miles, we made it. It was a fun trip and definitely bedtime when we got here.