It Was the Best of Times...It was the Worst of Times

Last weekend, B and I headed south to check out a park that many had lauded as the best kids park in the area. We hit the road around five-ish, planning on eating a picnic at the park. I had heard that this particular park had quite the concession stand with reasonable prices. Looking back, this was the one part of the plan that I would change. Once that little bugger caught sight of all of the raging fun rides and jungle gyms he didn't want anything to do with standing in line to get food let alone sitting still long enough to eat it. At that point I knew there was going to be a storm brewing in the distance, I just didn't know how long it would take to get there. Hurricane "B" had been spotted off the coast of the swing set. When we were walking up to the jungle gym, we passed a family who was leaving and they stopped and asked if I wanted the their ride ticket which still had one punch left on it. I of course said yes, since I was planning on letting him go on some rides while we were there. BTW, this particular park had little kids amusement park rides. Pretty cool, huh? Anyways, once he spotted those rides he was off. I whipped out the ticket and he happily climbed into a little airplane to ride around.



Mistake number two for Mommio. I should have went and bought more tickets before we even started with the rides. I found out pretty quick this kid does not like lines...one bit, or looking at the camera...




Needless to say, I ended up dragging a screaming kid to buy more tickets, stand in a couple of more lines and then eventually out to the car. Should of ate that dinner....

Reunion Time

Last weekend we met a couple of friends from our old college days at ONU in Ft. Wayne, IN. We hung out at the hotel pool, ate dinner, caught up on what's going on and had a blast at the Ft. Wayne Children's Zoo. If you have kids, are ever in Ft. Wayne and have time to stop please do. This zoo is AWESOME for kids.

Play Ball!

Last Christmas, we gave Papa fake tickets to the Cubs game of his choice with B and Jeff. He finally redeemed them a couple of weeks ago and we celebrated Christmas in July at PNC park in Pittsburgh. This was B's first ballgame and who knows what team he will be rooting for in the future but I think he enjoyed it. It was a night game with a 7 pm start and fireworks and a band playing afterwards. I made sure we got seats on the aisle, right on the main level for easy get-a-ways for an antsy toddler. He walked up and down the steps a couple of times and my MIL followed him around for a little bit. When we first got to our seats, he saw the field and immediately said "Play?". He was ready to go out on the grass. After some mid-game Dippin' Dots, he sat still for a little bit but then had to take another stroll. Overall, I think he did pretty good with only a few minor melt-downs. Maybe we'll catch a minor league game before the end of summer as well.

Big Shoes To Fill

B takes every opportunity to try different shoes on. He pulled my running shoes on the other day and decided to take a stroll around the house...

We went to the 4th largest [in the WORLD] Amish community today!

...and all we did was play in the park! Middlefield, Oh has a great splash pad/playground in one of their parks (Eagle Park). We thought it would be a nice day trip since it was a little over an hour away. We spent a good hour and a half playing in the motion-activated fountains and on the playground right next to them. They also had shaded picnic areas but we decided to stop by this Amish restaurant for some home cookin'. Yummy pie! The town also has a lot of your usual Amish community touristy places to stop in but we headed home for naps after lunch. We will definitely keep that park in mind for those hot days ahead of us!

Workin'...On The Weekend...?

We started our sunroom transformation on Memorial Day Weekend. You can see what we started with below....but you will have to wait for the job to be completed before we reveal it! Thanks to some wonderful helpers, we are moving along quicker than I thought. But, we have a couple more steps before I will be satisfied with it. :-)

Italian Wedding Soup

Another soup I made a lot of this past winter was the following recipe. We live just down the street from a wonderful Italian grocery store/market and they have wonderful, homemade meatballs that are perfect in this soup.

16.5 oz mini meatballs
8 cups chicken broth
1 cup cooked chicken, chopped
1/2 cup carrot, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
2 oz frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
garlic salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
1/4 cup romano or parmesan cheese
1/2 cup acini de pepe pasta

Directions:
1) combine all ingredients except pasta and cheese in crock pot and cook all day on low. (6-8 hours)
2) Add the pasta during the last hour to hour and a half of cooking.
3) Serve with the cheese sprinkled on top

This soup also freezes really well.