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Our days in Ohio just seemed to fly by with 8 kids and 6-7 adults, something was always happening.

DAY 3:  I love seeing the cousins play together.  Ila and Michael are pretending to sleep in this empty pool.  Ila was pretending to be the mom.

Krista helped the big kids (Isaac, Charlotte, and Paul) on their projects.  They were trying to build a fort and roller coaster with random odd things they found around the property. Charlotte decorated some of the things before they used them to build. This is Isaac working on his roller coaster.  Krista and I both built roller coasters in the yard as kids as well. We signed the older kids up for a “Pop tasting” event at the library.  It was for ages 8-12 (we fudged Paul’s age a little).  They were given samples of Coke, Pepsi, and Sam’s Choice and they had to guess which was which.  I don’t think my kids had ever tasted any of them, so they really had no idea. The also gave the kids POPcorn, POPtarts, POPs cereal, and homemade Pop as refreshments. They had the kids make their own sodas with seltzer water and flavorings:

They also made bracelets with soda tops and ribbons, but I didn’t take any pictures of that activity.  That evening I invited my friend Katie over for S’mores in Grandpa Bird’s forest, but the S’mores activity didn’t go so well and we ended up just visiting while the kids played. DAY 4:  Day 4 was Independence day.  We wanted to take our kids across the street to explore the forest and stream that we explored as kids, but it was severely overgrown and we were unable to take them along our usual route. We attempted to go through an old cow pasture to get back into the forest, but it was impossible.  There was poison ivy all over and the trail became too rough.  We had the bag the whole adventure (Charlotte was especially disappointed). Nicole preferred playing inside to most of our adventures.  I was sad that she missed so much, but she seemed much happier playing at home then out adventuring among other people and in unfamiliar places. Krista spent some time in the forest building a lean-to fort with the big kids.  Isaac was very proud of it and took me out to take some pictures. Did you notice the machete Isaac was carrying?  It was funny, when we got to the entrance of the forest he pulled it out of a pile of wood chips and carried it with him through the forest.  He demonstrated to me how he liked to use it to cut down the dead branches from the trees and clear any brush that he might find. Here is part of the fort they were building.  Unfortunately, it collapsed and they gave up on the project. After dinner, we drove to Hedges Boyer Park for fireworks.  We took all the kids except for Nicole and Asher.   We had some sparklers for the kids: They loved the fireworks show.  Ila kept saying “Oh my gosh!  Good job, guys!”  The nice thing about small town fireworks is that we didn’t get stuck in heavy traffic leaving.  I think it only took us 5-10 minutes to get out of the park.When we arrived at my parent’s house, we were only about 20 miles from the 100,000 mile mark on our van.  Zach didn’t want to miss it, but we completely forgot about it when we went out to run errands and to see fireworks.  We went out to check after putting the kids to bed and miraculously our odometer read 99,999.We took a loop in the driveway and in the “circle” across the street and hit the 100,000 mile mark in the driveway of my parent’s home.DAY FIVE:  I met up with my friend Katie at the park.  Krista also met up with a friend at the same time in the same park.
Nicole stayed home again.  She didn’t want to go, but she did find some things to dress up in. Krista had an idea for a prank while our brother Bryan was at work.  We filled his bedroom with balloons.We had AJ’s Pizza for dinner, but a little mishap left the pizza all piled up in the box.  I took this picture after we started separating out the pieces. I’ll probably write more about this later, but I have many childhood memories of getting AJ’s Jumbo pizzas. They’re distinctive because of the size of the pizza and the fact that they put scriptures from the Bible on the box.Ila sure loves that baby cousin. Bryan discovered our surprise. I introduced Krista to some new hair curlers: