The 'Burgh

We're out of order here, but we started out on our Michigan trip on Tuesday afternoon and drove for hours and hours and hours across Pennsylvania.  We ended up spending the night just East of Pittsburgh.

In the morning, we went to downtown Pittsburgh to see what we could see, including Pittsburgh's rush-hour traffic and this mult-lingual elevator:

It's not a Sooy vacation unless we see a funicular!

We let the kids run around Ft. Pitt while we snapped pictures of the city.

The kids really liked the fountain - the morning was already getting hot so it offered a refreshing mist.

We also got a nice view of PNC Park and Heinz Field:

After a loooooong walk back to the car, we drove over one of the many bridges in Pittsburgh and headed Northwest towards our next stop - Cleveland!

First day of school

Sean's had a good week of First Grade and Clare is loving Pre-K!

Cleveland Rocks

For Labor Day this year, we took the kids on a looooooong road trip up to Michigan but we made a few stops along the way and on the way back.  One of our stops was in Cleveland.  First, we saw the house from "A Christmas Story".  The house offers tours but both kids were sleeping and I just really wanted to see the outside of the house...

and the LEG LAMP!

Afterwards, we moved on to downtown Cleveland:

We stopped for a couple of hours at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame:

Chrissy Hynde's Porsche:

The kids look at this "little TV" at an exhibit about the origins of Rock:

A special section about Pink Floyd:

There were plenty of stations to stop and sample music - Sean found he really likes Michael Jackson' "Thriller"...

And Clare found a new favorite, too:

 Cars from the U2 Zoo TV Tour:

Phish's Flying Hot Dog Car:

Walking back to the car, Clare and Sean started holding hands while watching a stunt plane practice over Lake Erie...

Crafting and a new snack

When picking up our CSA box last Saturday, the farm had out samples of red, orange, and yellow watermelon.  Clare decided she liked yellow the best and Sean wasn't really a fan of any of them - he's more of a cantaloupe kind of guy...

After we get our "farm box" and whatever else (e.g., extra tomatoes and white sweet corn), we got ice cream!

We went home with a yellow watermelon, btw - it tastes just like a regular watermelon but it's yellow. Strange.  But tasty.

The kids got to work putting together a birdhouse kit and painting it - they we so nice to each other despite sitting in the same chair (which could have gone very badly)

We also did this melted crayon canvas craft - we hot glued crayons to a canvas and then melted the crayons with a hair dryer.  Once the desired level and pattern of melty-ness was achieved, the canvases were done.  Note - the crayon will SPLATTER everywhere.  This is an outdoor/garage craft for sure.

Queen of the Pool

While Sean had swimming lessons everyday at camp this summer, Clare kept up with swimming lessons with her teacher.  She showed us her progress at the beach these past two weeks, bravely boogie boarding, body surfing, and ducking under the water!  Tonight was her first lesson back after two weeks at the beach and she really took things up a notch!  Check out her new "trick"!

Tall tower!

I found this post hanging out in my drafts folder - I think it's from about April 2012...

Sean was so excited when he built this "big tall tower!" of trucks and cars:

With his dinosaur, "Baby Dinah" on top:

New Trail

We found a new network of nature trails near our house - we spent a (HOT) afternoon exploring one of the trails and we can't wait to go back!

Did I mention that it was a hot afternoon?  We made sure to take a lot of water breaks:

One of the trails took us to a makeshift bridge over a muddy patch:

Another took us to this bog:

Sean helped Clare over/under a fallen tree branch:

Flashback

Our town held its celebration for National Night Out last night but the kids were with their grandparents so we didn't go... but we went last year!  It was a fun event - free pizza and water ice plus chances to sit in fire trucks and police vehicles.

We got to watch some exciting demonstrations by the K-9 Unit:

We took a tour of the police station and learned that the officers in our town carry around trading cards - kind of like baseball cards for police officers.

The kids were really happy about the amount of trading cards they'd collected: