Our weekend away where we didn't have to travel!

Waiting outside the Circus.

I have been trying to figure out the best way to spend time as a family without having to travel all over the country. My first thought was to go camping. I was pretty jazzed about it, because you can't have more quality time than that. Then if any of you remember the weather the last few weeks, or should I say RAIN! As we were approaching the camping date, I was stressing out because Eldon was traveling and I had to get everything ready by myself and it was cold outside. The day before we were supposed to go, a co-worker asked me if I was high trying to camp with little kids in the terrible weather. I told her of course that I don't get high, just high on life and she offered a different suggestion. So our plans changed last minute. We had always planned on going to the Circus on Thursday night, stay downtown in a hotel and then head out the next morning to the next place. Instead of camping, we went to the Cherry Valley Lodge/ WATERPARK just outside of Columbus. Now this is true love. Eldon and I are not bathing suit people. I am a fish in the water, I just prefer to be alone. So this was a step outside the box for us, but we knew the kids would love it.

It was time for the circus and we drove down and met Eldon at the Nationwide arena. He wanted to eat dinner there, I had suggested going somewhere else, but I also wasn't very hungry so I didn't care. We got there and there were many vendors outside selling cool light up toys. There were these swords that Max saw from the street when driving up and he had to have one. It was $8 and I thought that was extreme, but Eldon and I said we were going to make this a magical night for the kids. HUGE WARNING TO ANY FUTURE CIRCUS GOERS. DO NOT GO HUNGRY AND DO NOT WAIT TO BUY TOYS INSIDE! We bought the sword and then went inside to get oriented. The very similar light up sword inside was $20!!!!! OH MY GOODNESS! A lemonade was $9!!!! Popcorn was $8 and Cotton Candy was $12! The only redeeming quality to the cotton candy is that it came with a clown hat. Oh and they were quick to point out that the $20 toys had a 2 year warranty on them if you called the 1-800 number on the back. Very comforting. Besides all of this though, we had great seats. We went and sat down and watched the pre-show. The kids were a little stressed out with all the people and not really understanding what they were getting into. Eldon found a $4 hotdog and some Nachos to tie him over and I managed a 32 ounce soda. As we sat down and everything got started I swear it was five times louder than the legal limit. Max had his hands over his ears the whole time. We put kleenex in his ears to help. Jackson of course pooped his pants right before the show. I didn't have a diaper and you couldn't go out and come back in. So what was mom's job the whole night? Watching and smelling Jackson all night. He also drank about 3/4 of my 32 ounce drink, so you can only imagine what his diaper was up against. After it had been going for awhile, he got tired and sat on my lap trying to sleep. My jeans started soaking up what his diaper wouldn't and it was quite the mother/son bonding experience. I just tried to ignore it and have fun. The circus is amazing. Max loved it. Jackson just loved being with us. When it was over, we ran out to the car in the pouring rain that we would have been sleeping in the next night and we were happy to be doing something different.

Eldon had arranged for us to stay at the Marriot Residence INN downtown. It was just newly remodeled and fantastic! The boys thought there was nothing more cool than a pull out couch. Since Jackson had napped the last hour of the circus, he was ready to play and had an infectious attraction to flushing the toilet. It gets annoying after awhile but he wasn't breaking anything. I had to finish up a work project and finally got to bed at midnight.

We went down for breakfast the next morning and then headed out to the Water park. I will write part two later as I am late and need to get going.

Max with the ever so valuable Cotton Candy Hat and light up sword.