Ashtabula County Fair

It wouldn't be summertime without a least one trip to a county fair.  This year, we opted to visit my home-town county fair on the same weekend as the family reunion.  We got to the fairgrounds after dinner, just as the ol' demolition derby was ramping up.  An upside was that admission included ride-passes.  The downside was that the lines for the "grown-up" rides were outrageously long.  Our little Ciearra and Tamlin are finally big enough to ride some of the scarier rides, but don't have the patience to wait their turns.  Maybe next year :-)


This was Baby Elizabeth's first time out to the A-town county fair...I'm not sure if the tractor ride through the parking lot was a hit or a miss with her.  Our boys LOVE riding the wagon behind the tractor.

Since we got there late in the day, we opted to just wander down the main drag, eat, and hit rides.  Unfortunately, no time to check out animals during this visit...but I still love to come out and check out the sea of humanity.

And the food...oh the greasy food goodness.  We opted to get a bucket of fries to share around, and cold lemonade, and yummy fried elephant ears.

 And then we turned around and caught Tamlin doing this....

Yep, licking the ketchup out of the container.  Ah, yuck. Tam, that's not ice cream!

Needless to say, Tamlin got that container of ketchup for his fries all to himself.

The rides the littles did ride on were fun.  Even Baby Elizabeth got to ride on the merry-go round with us all.

Tamlin, Ciearra, and Jude rode a spinning barrel ride, but couldn't figure out how to make theirs spin.  We persuaded Rick to get on there with them so he could spin them around until they threw up (they didn't thankfully).

The giant slide was one of Jude's favorites

The roller coaster was also a big hit!  The kiddos rode it over and over.  

I've taught them well...check out those hands thrown way up in the air!

Baby Elizabeth fought going to sleep...Duh...there was way too much to see!

 We tried to ride the Ferris wheel and the round up, but were out of luck with both rides...it seems both broke down and were being fixed.  (I know, makes you wonder how safe it really is).
 

With the drop of darkness, we had time for just a few more stops on the way back out to the cars.
This may be the last year that Ciearra and Tamlin will be small enough to ride the caterpillar ride and the swans.   Jude will still love them for a couple more years.

 And, we let them hit that great dragon coaster one last time.

Good times...and great memories shared.

A visit from Nana and Papa

 My mom and Dale came out to visit this Saturday.  They were able to stay for lunch, a bit of fun at the beach, and for ice cream.  The day was hot, but we had plenty of cold beverages to keep us all hydrated.   I know the boys love seeing their Nana and Papa Dale.  Jude loves to snuggle up with Nana for short cat naps and Tamlin was pleased to show off his improved reading skills.

It was great to see mom and how much better she is doing since her latest round with the doctors.  We were able to all go down to town beach to enjoy the sun and waves.  The boys had fun playing in the water...though I know it made mom anxious each time they went in a bit deep. 





 They had so much fun that both boys wanted to have a bit of a rest...

We had ice cream at Granny's afterward.   Big scoops of the treat for us all, though Jude opted for a rocket popsicle.  I love this photo of everyone looking in a different direction.  What a wonderful visit.

Harvesting from our garden

 The garden has become a jungle of potatoes, tomato plants, leeks, peppers, and beans.    




 The tomatoes are too tall and strong for our little bamboo poles and have toppled them over.  Brian has reinforced them with stick poles but we'll have to make our own tomato cages for next year.  The yellow pear varieties have begun to ripen, and we have fruit on all the others as well.

 The pepper plants have fruit ready to be plucked.

We have been eating green beans all week; I doubt I'll have any left to freeze since we have been enjoying them so much.  (Note: more bean plants for next year). 


The second round of radishes did better than the first batch.  The slugs didn't get to them as much and I was a little bit more rigorous with the thinning while they were young.  We'll have roasted radishes this week and next.

 

 We have four golf-ball sized watermelons growing.  The boys are thrilled to have watermelons soon.  We are keeping a watchful eye on them just to make sure the rabbits or squirrels don't get them.  Supposedly they are small watermelons and sweet.

Lots of plant =  lots of watering.  We've had a streak of little rain of late, so we have schlepped water from the rain barrels for the plants.  This morning, I had a mini bucket-brigade with the help of Tam, Jude, and neighbor Liam.  The boys helped immensely at keeping the empty buckets under open water spigots and bringing them via wheelbarrow to the garden.  Great job, little men!

Dress for Ciearra's Seventh Birthday

My niece requested a fairy dress for her birthday.  I told her that there are all sorts of fairies, so she would have do some research into what type of fairy she wished to emulate...woods fairy, tree fairy, fire fairy, snow fairy.

With a little bit of prodding, I got her to settle on a frozen sparkly fairy, with a short skirt with panels/petals and a corset-like bodice...all in blue and white and NOT puffy.

Okay...I've got this.  I only bought the snowflake material and JoAnn's, and the blue with sequins was a curtain from the thrift store.  The rest of the material was from my stash.   I mashed together a few patterns with a bit of creativity...circle skirt, bodice top, puff sleeves with drapery, velcro back, and "petals" of various material cut on angles. I had to burn nearly all the raw edges of this synthetic material since hems were out of the question, which took forever.  And the stretchy velvet of the bodice was a bit of a pain to sew with.  However, the end result looks great and is nearly exactly as I envisioned it.

And it twirls wonderfully.

 

Journals

I had the boys pick out journals this week.  I wanted them to have somewhere to write about their experiences and collect stamps / stickers from various places we visit.  Tamlin was all about this and couldn't wait to start one.

At the store, Jude found his choice of journal right away...a bright colorful one.
But Tamlin...was another story.
Sigh.
I see myself in him in many ways...one way is that we don't do well if there are too many choices in front of us.  Tamlin had too many journal choices.  He had three that he wanted, really wanted, really really really wanted all three.  He didn't get that he should only write in them one at a time an he worried that which ever ones he didn't choose would not be there later.
There were tears.
Tears!
After much debate, he choose a cool one with a magnetic clasp. 

Once home, both boys took to writing in them right away.


Update:
Well, Jude lost his journal at the campground on Kelly's Island.  Sigh.  He is only four. But, he was Quite disappointed that he couldn't get the Marblehead lighthouse stamp...so I ordered him another one off Amazon (thank you 2 day shipping); This one had little owls and birds peaking out of the pages.   So, once again both boys are writing in their journals about once a week...and we are collecting passport stamps ...just like I use to do.  (I had started writing in a diary at around 7 years old and more seriously around 7th grade through starting this on-line blog).

A journey to Kelly's Island

Since we had camped on South Bass Island last year and visited Put-in-Bay, this year we headed over to Kelly's Island.  We had heard that Kelly's Island was really family friendly and had some hiking trails.  We had put up the tent in the backyard earlier in the week to make sure all was in working order.  We had a split tent pole to replace, and a new air mattress to purchase.  The kids got excited for camping once the tent was up. We even let them sleep out there by themselves for a few nights. (They were fine).

We left for the island early in the morning once the car was packed up.  We stop to see the Marblehead lighthouse, but it wasn't open for tours at that time.  Eventually we got over to the ferry.  Both boys love riding the ferry...though Tamlin was nervous that Jude would go overboard (he kept a hold of him whenever Jude ventured over to the guardrail.

 

The Kelly's island campground was nice.  The campsite weren't nearly as small as the one on South Bass, but we still had a shore-side place that was quite nice.  Rock lined the water, so no private beach...but the beach was just a short walk away and MUCH nicer than South Bass.  And the bathhouse was really close.

It was very, very hot.  We actually hit the beach twice that day.  The water was warm and very calm since the beach was in a bit of a sheltered bay.  The sand was fine and stretched out into the water a long way, so the boys had fun wading far from shore and the water only being about chest deep.  Tam has been practicing his floating and loved it when I would toss him up into the water.  Jude has been practicing going deeper into the water and still loves to cling to me for rides around. 

We had a little fluttery visitor on the beach.  The butterfly flitted around Jude, much to his delight.

Back at camp, the boys had fun exploring around, climbing on the rocks, looking for snakes, and playing with our neighbors, who were awesomely friendly and talkative.

Of course, after dinner we had s'mores.   Jude likes his just slightly warm... meaning he waves his marshmallow stick in the vague vicinity of the fire before asking for the graham cracker and chocolate.  Tamlin likes his more burnt, but not on fire.  I think we all just really like this summer-time treat.

 At dusk, the boys tried some fishing...with no luck...though they all fun casting out into the calm water.  We did see several water snakes which sped away through the water.  After fishing, the boys were briefly washed up and set into their jammies.  We all relaxed around the fire as the sun set, and the stars came out...billions of stars.  I loved just sitting and listening and being at peace.

We did go hiking and saw the glacial grooves, supposedly some of the largest in North America.  They were cool to see, but the boy were quite disappointed that they couldn't go climbing all over them. (It was a bit sad to see that a fence was needed).  I love Tamlin's choice of hiking wear here...yep those are woof ears atop his hiking hat.

 The trail we went on was through the woods and through a mess of misquitos.  We went along fine until we hit a quagmire of mud...gobs of mud....mud mud mud.  And I, unsmartly, was in only sandals.    So, we turned back...and decided to a take an acess road through the shrub/prarie instead.  A cool choice because we then saw snakes (or the same snake twice), lots of butterflies and dragonflies, and the edge of the old quarry.

Back in "town", which consisted of only a handful of streets, we did stop for lunch and a round of mini-golf.  The boys are still horrible at this, but we all had fun.  Despite many demonstrations, Jude insists on holding his club in some odd fashion and push/dragging his ball down the green.  No holes-in-one were made, but no one beamed anyone with one of the clubs either.

When we got back over to the mainland, we again stopped at the lighthouse and were able to do the little tour to the top.  The kids liked looking out at everything, but going down the spiral narrow stairs made me nervous.  Jude especially would make me flinch since he kept trying to step down on the tiniest part of the stair...I eventually made him turn around and go down the steps like a ladder just to ease my fear of him falling. (No one did).  At the gift shop, Tam was able to get his first light-house stamp for in his journal :-)

 Here's Kelly's island off in the distance as we left via the Ferry.

 Here's the view of Cedar Point from the top of the lighthouse.

It was a fun camping trip, and I would certainly do it again.  I liked both islands and wouldn't mind alternating between the two each year...It would be easier to get around if we could ditch the car and all ride bikes, but I don't think that will happen for a few more years yet.

A good trip, the tent and new air mattress held up well, and we all had fun. (Even if Tam really wanted a wooden snake that I wouldn't buy for him).

Next year, we need to drag more friends along!