we've returned, quite tired, from a whirlwind trip to the family-friendly Cedar Point where we stayed at the even more family-friendly Castaway Bay. the trip was chock full of twists and turns from our original plans, but it wasn't void of fun, activities and thrills for the boys. it was their favorite vacation yet.

Cedar Point was a popular park when i was a teenager, and that is the last time i was there. the park was fortunately full of activities and rides for the little kids to ride...except for kids adam's age/size. he was stuck with the space ship round-about and the merry-go-round.

the hotel we stayed in had an indoor water park attached to it which was perfect for our kids' ages. they all found a favorite part of the park and eventually got over some small fears of deeper water, or waterfalls and just had fun. our hotel had a private balcony that was completely screened in (with a gate to support the screen), so it was a great place for the boys to eat snacks or lunches (pictured below). it was also nice to have a place to drink our coffee when we woke up earlier than the boys did both mornings.

Pros and Cons of the Trip.
Cedar Point is definitely a great place to take a family for a short vacation. Even for kids ages 5 and under. I think it will be the perfect location in 5-10 years for boys who can swim on their own. I was mildly neurotic about all the water and way too many people at the outdoor water park attached to Cedar Point we visited the second day. If our kids were older, couldn't wander away, and could swim on their own, I'd have been able to let my guard down a little.

Pros

• the boys were never bored.
• the boys had a BLAST.
• they loved the rides and the lines were relatively short inside Camp Snoopy.
• TGI Fridays (attached to our hotel) was really good. Their menu has improved and their prices weren't high like the rest of the hotel.
• the awesome indoor water park

Cons

• even though it was a family-friendly resort, it was more expensive than it should have been.
• we love the beach, and the beach at Cedar Point wasn't all that great. We spent only 15 minutes there.
• we lost Rowan for 10 minutes inside the outdoor water park at Cedar Point. I have bad memories of that outdoor waterpark because of it. it was horrifying.
• no family picture on the beach coast during a gorgeous sunset.
  

Lessons Learned

• always take more cash than you originally planned to take.
• if a public pool looks and feels too crowded, it's not a good place for a family with three young kids.
• Snoopy is so much less frightening than Charlie Brown. It must be that big, round, bald head.
• apply your own sunscreen in the hotel room and not in the parking lot or near the outdoor pool/gate to the amusement park where the kids can wander and you have no time to apply it properly. kenny and i both got burned because we were slapping it on while the kids were way too excited to sit still until we were done!
  

we have amazing tales of thrills rides from the wild state of Ohio to share. but first...we celebrate rowan's fifth birthday!

five years of amazing fun! our firstborn is a loving and caring big brother, a great example to his siblings, and a joy for us to parent.

happy birthday, rowan tucker smith! may we have manymanymany more years of you to come!

FIVE!!!

yesterday, we made homemade pizza. BBQ chicken pizza to be exact. it was delicious. kenny grilled the chicken to perfection with my favorite BBQ sauce (i love making my own sauce, but i love this flavor in the summer months, despite all the prefab ingredients!) and it had just the amount of mozarella and BBQ sauce on the crust.

we enjoyed yesterday's pizza with a local white wine and a bag of potato chips (a compromise between our favorite ways to eat pizza).

let's talk about making our own pizza crust now, shall we? i love sending out requests to you all for your best recipes. (i am holding onto all of your salsa recipes for as soon as our tomatoes and peppers are ripe.) we love to make our own crusts, and kenny's been pretty pleased with the crusts that we've tried so far. but i'm picky. and there's just this little flavor thing in the doughs that we make that doesn't taste right to me. i read this morning that the secret is to use bread flour instead of all purpose flour. i'm trying that next. but i thought i'd send out a request for your favorite homemade pizza crust recipes. i've got all the ingredients for some more pizza (more BBQ chicken and some pepperoni for the less adventurous pizza eaters, namely everyone under 5 in our house).

so, email or leave a comment with your favorite dough recipe as soon as possible. or your computer will blow up.

just kidding.

i've linked to jennifer's blog, "Et Tu?" before, but i absolutely must point you to her article in America Magazine, found here.

it's brilliant and lovely. she takes a controversial, yet important subject and wraps it in grace.

we are keeping very busy being outside. depsite the recent raindrops, we've had some great weather days and have been enjoying some play and outside yardwork. we're FINALLY getting to the front door area that i can't stand. i hope to have before and after pictures eventually, but the work we're doing is minimal since i have big plans to add a big country front porch eventually.

i've been doing a bit of sewing. remember how i got into sewing just a year ago with these fun pants (that's three diffferent links) for our trip to the beach? i found a great tutorial online (thanks to polka dot creations) for bandana pants and i just had to try them out for rowan and sawyer. here is the finished product:

this is what we fight every spring, summer, and fall. the deer tick:

rowan and sawyer had their first, ever outside-the-home-without-mom-or-dad-hovering (well, sort of) learning experience last week in the form of a local Vacation Bible School program.

our church is too small and, well, let's just keep it at that...too small to have a VBS and the older two are finally old enough to attend, so i signed them up at the local church and i can't tell you how much they (and we!) enjoyed it.

i don't remember much about VBS, but i attended it as a student and a helper in my (Orthodox Presbyterian) church growing up. i feel as though i liked it because i couldn't wait for our boys to get involved in one. and i think VBS has changed quite a bit since i was a kid. the church used a VBS package curriculum that really (REALLY!) resonated with the kids. the church was packed with nearly 100 kids every day, and roughly 25-30 adult helpers. the church was barely bigger than our house, but it was doing big things for the families of our little town. i nearly choked up when i saw rowan and sawyer doing all the motions to all the songs the first few times i dropped them off. i think i was the only parent who didn't really drop off my kids: i walked them in and stayed for every opening, and got there early enough to attend the closing "ceremony" each day (like the geek that i am!). I couldn't wait for bible school. and the boys were giddy each morning as we drove the country road to the church. we have a cd of all the songs they sang throughout the week and it's playing nonstop in the house and in the car.

even though we plan to start homeschooling in the fall (with curriculum...a lot of homeschoolers say that they homeschool from the child's day of birth, so i feel the need to clarify), i love how much they loved this experience.  i loved how it changed their "God conversations" just slightly. the theme of the week was God's power, so they were all about how much power and strength God had. i have their daily papers hung up in the kitchen and i plan to go over their daily lessons from last week. am i a homeschooler or what??? :)

one thing i didn't groove on was how much i actually missed them! no doubt the first day was nice as adam and i had lots of quality time together, but by the second day we were both bored. next year, all three boys will attend. if adam ever decides he's not a baby. :)

a week ago, the boys and i met a friend and her kids for a hike in the woods. it was a lovely day and we were shaded by big trees so we weren't too hot. unfortunately, my left shin met a not-so-nice tree stump sticking up out of the ground and i got one nasty looking scratch. i was afraid to look at it for two days, but when i finally did, it looked yucky. and by that second day, my lower leg began to hurt. of course i was freaked out that i had a blood clot, or an infection, or my leg was going to fall off from gangrene. all from that nasty little tree stump.

so i made an appointment with a doctor and i was there this morning. of course, the leg pain subsided and the scratch looks much better, and the doctor said it was healing quite nicely and said i had no blood clots (ha!), but asked if my tetnus was up-to-date. i had no idea, but i so wanted to tell him that "yes! i just got a tetnus shot last week. thanks doc, i'll be on my way." but honestly i have no idea when my last tetnus was, and i'm a horrible liar.

so when the nurse returned with the shot, i took a big breath and let him have my arm for the shot. everyone knows that tetnus shots are fairly painful. but i never even felt it. whew. piece of cake!

but now? i can barely lift my left arm. so that's what they mean by tetnus shots aching and hurting and oh my lord can i take an advil for this?

i missed week one because i couldn't pull together a meal with strawberries and asparagus - the only two things in season right now! week two will be published at farm to philly. stay tuned for more delicious meal ideas!

so i did more searching and purchasing this week. i splurged and went with local meat sold at a local family farm. i'm also leaning on their strawberries this week as we'll probably be picking and freezing some from another local u-pick farm later in the week for our fall and winter months.

i'm turning this meal into a lunch as this is so up the boys' alley for lunchtime goodness.

here's a fun little project that rowan, sawyer, and i did over the past week. homemade (washable!) placemats!

i found this project idea in amanda soule's the creative family and it turned out to be ideal for rainy summer days (of which we've had plenty over the past few weeks, along with those few days in the 90s). we were goign to do it when ramona was visiting, but were having too much fun outside! instead we made one for her after she left and we'll send it to her.

our friends just bought a new house, so to help make it a home for their 1- and 2-year-old boys, we made them their own placemats for their kitchen table. the material is canvas and i just bought a cheap canvas drop cloth from lowes for $9. i'll probably get several placemats out of the amount of canvas the drop cloth provides. it's inexpensive (much more so than buying it by the yard at a fabric store) and i love the feel of the canvas for the finished placemat.

you need a sewing machine to finish, but if your kids like to color or paint, this is an ideal proejct. we used fabric markers, but you can use fabric or acrylic paint as well. i'll venture into that when i have the patience and energy for a big clean up! :)

happy birthday, little adam!

you are the first smith boy to have a second birthday and NOT have a younger brother in the house. your big brothers adore you, look after you, include you, and can't remember life in the house without you. even if sawyer wasn't so sure about you at first: