Birthday

What a weird birthday! My day started out with a funeral and we didn't get back until around 5pm. The kids gave me the awesome cards they made and Pat gave me some awesome gifts. He had picked out a chair hammock (is that the right name for it?) and new earbuds. The hammock is so relaxing, I love it! The kids love it too! I've caught them both using it the last couple of days and I'm happy to share:) Then we went for a walk and Paige got a little injured playing on the rocks near the river but we still had a pretty good time!

Love these kids!

Paige was still a little sad about being injured and you can see it in her face here!

Love this guy too!

I think it's supposed to be for one person but I'm happy to make a couple exceptions

Split One

One down, two to go!!

School Visits

Sigh. When this post is published it will be the day before school starts!! We've done so much this summer and had so much fun that I think the kids are going to have a pretty hard time transitioning back to routine and schoolwork. Maybe next year we'll try not to have such a good time;)
We visited both of the kids schools last week to meet teachers, drop off supplies, and make sure Owen knew how to open his locker and get to his classes. I think they're as ready as they can get!!

Paige's locker!

Paige and her teacher

Owen and his locker!

Skyzone

We met up with some friends on a day that was supposed to be rainy for some end-of-the-summer fun! Owen, predictably, spent his whole time playing dodgeball but I think Paige tried everything! Afterward we let them try out that crazy wind/tornado machine and they loved it. Bonus-it helped them cool off really quickly! We even stopped for ice cream after and I did a poor job of overseeing the ice cream distribution so they both had massive bowls!

Monday/Tuesday

I'm just throwing all these pictures together even though they're from two days because they're mostly all the same people!

Owen and Paige bother wandered out of their rooms at 10am and immediately began stretching on couches:)

Owen tried to have his own lemonade stand...

...but he ended up with some help!

Playground!

This is what happens when you take dancers to a playground. They find a stage and start doing stuff.

Owen can do it too! Sort of;)

Pool time again! This time the weather was perfect!

And the girls!

Celebration!

We went to the Hall's house to celebrate August birthdays over the weekend! Owen and Paige had both gone to sleepovers the night before but Owen had gone to bed at 5am and was a bit of a mess that day:) We hung out, some people played basketball, ate pizza from the grill, had cake, opened presents, and went to the park so we stayed pretty busy. Owen even found some time for a short nap! And when we got home he asked why I had presents because he had no idea we had just celebrated my birthday!! :)

Checking on a sleepy Owen

Birthday girls!

See Owen staring directly at the cake that includes my name? He still didn't know I was part of the celebration!

Most of the group

Go Paige!

Paige and Laney 

I had an awesome see-saw partner!

Owen spent a lot of time on this couch with this cat

Pool!

We had plans to meet some friends at the pool last week but when the weather turned out to be not so nice they canceled! Owen and Paige still wanted to go swimming because this place also has an indoor pool so we went anyway and one of the families ended up coming halfway through our stay. I swam with the kids inside but when they wanted to go out into the cold I opted to stay on the side. You can see they almost had the pool completely to themselves and had such a good time! Owen and Paige have been fighting a lot as the summer has been nearing an end so it was heartwarming to see them finally playing so well together!

Cartwheeling

Everywhere we go:)

Downtown!

At the beginning of the summer my friend Erica asked if I wanted to plan a day to take the kids downtown on the Rapid and it took us almost the entire summer to finally do it! It got pushed back a couple times but we really wanted to make sure it happened so we got it on the calendar and finally got to go!

I was a little intimidated by what the process for riding the Rapid would be but it ended up being super easy. We purchased one-ride tickets each time and I think only had to wait about 10 minutes before it arrived. The kids thought it was fun to ride backwards and even though we did a bunch of new stuff while we were out, I think the ride on the Rapid was their favorite part!

We stopped at East 4th for some pictures...

Paige took this one. Pretty good!

I wanted the kids to see the Arcade so we decided to cut through on our way to our next stop. We had brought lunch with us and the kids were hungry so we decided to stop and eat here.

After lunch, we finished making our way through the Arcade and the Cleveland Public Library was right across the street. They had a Superman exhibit on display so we all agreed we should push back our original destination to stop there first. It was a really cool exhibit with a lot on display and we didn't even see it all because it extended to other parts of the library and we thought we should keep moving.

One of the policemen that was guarding the exhibit had fun showing the kids this "magic box." It was a display case for the original issue of Superman but also the front was a screen where you could explore some early issues.

We finally made it to the Federal Reserve! It was no joke getting in there, the security guard took everyone's names and adults had to show ID. Then we all went through a metal detector and had to wait for someone to unlock a door to let us in. The Federal Reserve has a Money Museum that I've been trying to get the kids to for a few years so I was excited to finally see it. I'm not sure if they learned much but they did get to explore and had fun playing with their friends:)

Exploring counterfeit money

Money tree

There's a new face on the $1 bill

We needed a snack after all of our stops so we went to Colossal Cupcakes and got...colossal cupcakes. I thought they would be too big to finish but nobody had any problem eating the whole thing:) Paige got confetti, Owen got strawberry and cream and I got strawberry shortcake.

One more stop before we went home...the fountains!