Day 23- Great, Now We're All Getting Pink Eye.

Some days at the end of the day when I sit down to blog, I think 'wait. Did that happen today- was that only this morning?' It has gotten worse as the days have gone on. I've cringed a bit when I hit Day 20 and since then- it just sounds like such a long time to be away from home.

This morning the boys were up around 9:15 so I think we're back to Eastern Standard Time, which only took most of a week. I had promised them we could go out to the festival at the church across town to play a couple of games this morning. Unfortunately, the stellar News Messenger had reported they opened at 11. Well, they didn't. But, one nice lady let them play the one open game over and over again until they had won all the prizes from that one game. They also both made some sand art things, so they were happy with that. Peyton even won a prize for Max and Henry to take to them.

When we left the festival, we typed into the gps Maumee Bay State Park, and yet again Mom questioned it. Peyton has even caught on and was like 'Grandma, I think we should listen to the gps'. She later admitted it was a shorter more direct route. Shocking, a gps getting us to the destination in a timely and efficient manner, I didn't know they did such things.

When we got to Maumee Bay we had to wait a little bit for everyone to get there. We were meeting up with my grandma, Great Aunt Ruthie, Aunt Bonnie, Aunt Judy, Uncle Warren, my cousin Joanne, and her twin boys Max and Henry. It is my Aunt Judy's birthday, and it was just Uncle Warrens, plus my moms so we celebrated all of their birthdays. Peyton even had a candle to blow out, and I thought 'has it seriously only been two weeks since his birthday'. Hey, you know, if time wants to slow down for me in the next month I'm not going to complain. Drag out all that time of still being young and 29. We had a nice Sunday brunch buffet. It was no Windjammer, but it was still a good meal. Hayden mostly just had bacon for breakfast. He is his father's son, after all.

Peyton told the dad in the bathroom 'soon' being a relative term joke. He got some consolation laughs. I tried to tell vacation stories, but as I'm pretty sure I noted before, the downside of a blog is that everyone has already read my vacation stories, so I don't get to tell them in person. Joanne and I then took all the kids out to play with their toys from the festival. Now, keep in mind these were 50 cent games so the prizes were not too elaborate, but I thought these were pretty cool. Theres these disks that you get to flip up a small hand held pole and they go spinning into the air. The 5 year olds were not getting them to spin very far, but Peyton was getting them really high. I kept warning him that one was going to get stuck on the roof of the resort. I think you can guess where this is going. I told him this should be a lesson to him, especially when he becomes a teenager.

Max and Henry are funny kids. First of all, who doesn't love twins whose names you can sing to the tune of the theme song for 'Max and Ruby'. Those of you who don't have kids, google it. Plus, Peyton kept asking them what the difference was between the two of them, and screwing up their names. Then Henry said "Whats the difference between you and Peyton". I couldn't tell if he didn't know which was Peyton and which was Hayden or if he was just giving Peyton a taste of his own medicine. Either way, props to him.

We then took the kids down to water. It was SO much cooler down by the water. It was super hot out today, like Florida hot. But down by the water it was much better, pleasant even. The kids kept going in deeper and deeper until it really didn't matter we had rolled up their shorts. They had fun in the water, skipping rocks, and cooling off. But eventually it was time to head back up to the resort. You know it's time to stop swimming in lake Erie when the dead fish float by.

After lunch we headed out to Toledo, where my mom called my Aunt Sharon to talk about plans for the evening. Both of them apparently agreed when the gps told us our estimated time of arrival that it was inaccurate, because as we previously discussed gps devices are good for nothing. (FYI, I think we arrived a minute after the original time said). My grandpa moved from Venice, Florida back up to Toledo in early June, so I hadn't seen him in his new digs yet. He has a nice set up, a balcony even, and seems to be settled in quite nicely. I helped him with packing things up, and proudly noticed everything I packed seemed to have made it alright. He said it made it just fine, but there was a lot of choice words being said when other people had to unwrap my packing job. Well, you know, it all made it there- that was my job.

My Aunt Sharon, Uncle Grant, and cousins Jake and Nate came over to visit too. They were running a bit late too though, something about a driving instructor skipping out and soccer game. We left grandpa's to go out to dinner, and it was nice to visit with them a little longer. Peyton told his dad in the bathroom/'soon' being a relative term story. This got a much bigger laugh out of Uncle Grant, but then he would totally appreciate that more than my grandma and aunt. He's also a trouble maker. We don't need to talk about the quarter funnel thing. It was nice that Peyton and Hayden sat next to Nate too, because then they had someone else to bug and poke besides me, plus Nate seemed to have a much higher tolerance for these things than I do at day 23. Talked to Jake a bit about colleges he's looking into. I told him I would disown him if he went to OSU, he could babysit if he went to USF and in return I would let him do his laundry (minus socks and underwear) at my house, or he could always go to Southeastern Alaska University for a whopping 500 bucks a year.

After dinner, we said our goodbye's (I'll see them Friday- I'm taking Jake and Nate to the zoo with us), and headed back to grandmas. We had a rousing game of red light green light in the back yard until we were a bit too hot (it was 100 degrees at 7pm, gross), and got to visit with everyone a little more. Joanne enjoyed the fact that I could get the kids to think anything was exciting with my tone of voice. I had a very enthusiastic "Let's go inside and get some WATER! WHOOO!' Her kids went running like they were on their way to Disney world. My kids however, have caught on to that. It doesn't work for anything these days. I probably pushed it a little too far when I yelled about going to see pipes back when we were seeing the Alaska pipeline. I also tried to convince Joanne and/or Mom to tie Uncle Warren's shoe laces together while he was sleeping, but neither of them would do it. I told them I would make them famous and put them in my blog if they did, instead their prudishness gets published. That and Joanne's pink eye. Man, I really hope I didn't catch it. Totally kidding.....I think......unless she's the one thinking 'jokes on them' when we all actually end up with pink eye-- otherwise she may be telling the truth with the elaborate 'it's an allergic reaction' story she concocted. Joanne is also the one who thinks I should keep my blog going after vacation is over. She may have just rethought that.

The trip home was pretty uneventful which was nice because today was an awfully grumpy boys day. They are just sick of each other. I did threaten Hayden with having to sleep in a room by himself if he didn't straighten up, which freaked him out enough to help his attitude to improve. I did have to call Asa twice for help, and that's never a good sign. I did stop to get them smoothies at McDonalds since they were good, and we totally forgot we were going to go to the igloo in Toledo (here's hoping we can still get there sometime)

My self taken picture today is me with the fan-- holy moly it's a scorcher out there (or in my case in here-- in Mom's house with no AC).

Homesick meter: 8- There was no mention of being homesick all day today. I think they were too busy to notice. But, at bedtime tonight there was a lot of talk about home, and the things that they miss there. Here's what the boys said they missed most:

Hayden: 'I miss magical ice from the freezer door, and word world when you press those buttons on the remote and it just comes on, no matter what time it is"
Peyton: 'I miss going in another room away from Hayden, and my bed, but mostly right now, I just miss air conditioning" (which is funny- because they share a bedroom.)

Up Next: Day 1 kids college for Peyton, Going out on Lake Erie (because I haven't been a boat in one whole day!)