Cincinnati

Terry and I, Porter and Terry's niece, Kelcy, headed to Cincinnati last weekend to visit my dear brother Bret. His birthday was last Tuesday and we thought we might drive down and surprise him for his birthday, but then decided to make a weekend visit of it instead. We had so much fun just being with him.We didn't know what we would do while we were there, so Terry looked online and found the Cincinnati museum. It has 3 different museums in one. The Children's museum, the History Museum, and the Natural History and Science. One of the neatest parts of the museum was the building it was set in. This building in the picture used to be the old train station. It was huge.

The first museum we went to was the Natural History and Science. It was probably our least favorite. There just weren't that many neat things on display. One fun thing was the cave that you walked through. They made it feel like you were in a real cave with water, cool air, and different exhibits of animals and formations that you might see in a cave.

The next stop was the Children's museum. Of course there was a lot of neat things. It is a child's playplace paradise.

Porter loved the water exhibit. He didn't care much about the neat things you could do with water, just splashing made him happy. We sure missed Tania, Miller and Dallin. We thought of you often and kept finding ourselves saying, "if they were here they would love this or this or this!" We can't wait to come back with them there.

Kelcy and I played a little dress up with these sari's. It was fun for us. They were big enough for us so I have to believe they were intended for the young and old alike. I would have loved to stay a minute and play with the "play store" station or the kitchen set. Those were my favorite things as a little girl.

The next museum was the History Museum. It had the biggest World War II exhibit. What I liked about this museum was that it gave the stages of history around the theme of Cincinnati. My favorite part in this museum was the huge miniature diarama of the whole city of Cincinnati. It filled this whole room and was broken into sections so you could walk through it and see all the different buildings and parts of town.

All the fun wore us out, but we were hungry. Bret had a good idea of a place to go where there are a few restaurants along the river by the aquarium. We headed through town to get there and got to go by his building were he works. It is a huge skyscraper. I always imagined him working in a huge city like this. We even got to see where he pays to park. We couldn't believe he had to pay, but I guess we aren't used to the big city way of life. As we drove through town we recognized some of the buildings we saw in the diarama. It was really neat.

We ate at this nice Italian Restaurant. Then we had to go get some famous "Greater's" ice cream. It is an ice cream place that is well known in Cincinnati. It was really good and we then headed home.

When we got home we were all ready for a nap after the long day of walking. It was so much fun though.

We played a few games with Bret and then headed home. The drive there and back only took about 2 and half hours. Not bad at all. We really enjoyed the ride. We will definitely be going there often!

Family Outings

These past few weeks the weather has been wonderful so we have headed out on nightly bike rides. We have usually gone just around town and to the nearest park. A few days ago we decided to go to a nearby state park and have a picnic. It was kind of a last minute thing, but we loaded up our bikes and headed out. It turned out to be wonderful. The weather was perfect. Porter loves to ride the bike so he was perfect and Terry and I just enjoyed spending time together. We found a neat bike trail that led us along a stream and we followed it until it got to rough to go any further. I love to be outside deep in the heart of natures beauties and to smell the crisp air. I also have found a new thing I love to look out for here in Indiana and that is fireflies.
I think I've always loved to ride bikes and I hope we can see many more neat things together as a family on them.
Porter got this bike seat for his birthday and he loves to go outside. He doesn't like the helmet, but once I get it on he doesn't mind it.

Events in Idaho

I have spent the last two weeks in Idaho. It is always a wonderful break to go and see family even though I am trying to cram in 4 months of fun into such little time. The main event this time was of course to see our dear little scraggles graduate from High School. I never thought I'd see the day when she would reach this mile stone and seem so grown up.

They had a little slide show of all the graduates. Marianna was so cute and is so beautiful now.

She was Valedictorian of her class and gave a wonderful speech. She just did a little unique highlight of each year from elementary school through high school.

I am so proud of her and enjoyed spending a day of shopping and going to lunch with her while I was there.

We all went to support her. I took Porter to the graduation, but he was so fussy that I ended up taking him to the babysitter that Mary had set up for her kids. The babysitter was also tending Amanda's kids so she ended up watching 5 kids. I was so grateful because if not I wouldn't have been able to see Marianna's speech. That is the reason for no kids in the picture.

That weekend Bret and Tania were traveling through Burley on their way to move to Cincinnati. We all decided to go and meet them there for some fun. We went and visited grandma Zollinger and she was so glad to see all of us.

I have to keep taking pictures of Porter with the animals that he loves because he acts so cute around them. He loved Grandma Clark's cats. Thank goodness there was a tame one that was really pretty nice.

He did eat some cat food before I could stop him.

Porter had his first hair cut. We went to Grandma Clark's beauty parlor. He did good for about 10 seconds while I took the picture. Then he was a wiggle worm and cried a little bit just because he wanted to see what was going on and grab the scissors.

We didn't cut off much, but he looks more like a little boy.

Porter was sick for most of our trip and needed a little distraction sometimes. Grandma Clark thought of some cute things to do. Porter loved to listen to her play the piano and she was coordinated enough to play with him on her lap. She had great patience and would just hold him in one arm all the while doing her regular jobs with the other. She said she used to do it all the time with us when we were young. She said, "that's how I would get my work done."

Thanks to Olivia for the great idea and planning we were able to get a little camping at warm river into our vacation. It wasn't the best weather, but we always seem to make memories and have fun.

On the way home we fed the fish bread and marshmallows. There were a ton of fish and were jumping for the bread like crazy.