My husband fell ill over the weekend, and he had to leave a show early that we went to see together on Sunday.  By Monday night, my two littlest kids were throwing up, and Hubby and I stayed up late cleaning them up and comforting them.  Monday night, I had a dream that we were on a trip, and we were scheduled to leave our vacation, but I was sick and worried about the 3-4 hour car ride.  When I awoke, I was really sick – so this thing has struck down 4 of us, and my 2 oldest daughters remain unaffected as of yet.

We are busy people!  I already rescheduled the dentist appointment we won’t make, but I don’t know what to do about our church’s Kidstuf play Hubby and I are directing – rehearsal is tonight.  I don’t see how I’ll be able to make it, but I also don’t understand how to summon the energy to stay home with sick little ones when I’m feeling so incredibly lousy.  Complicating things is the fact that my two oldest girls are also in Kidstuf, and they had to miss the first rehearsal because they were at their Grandma’s.  There is a waiting list for kids who want to be in Kidstuf, and so the kids who are chosen to be in it are not supposed to miss even one rehearsal.  If my kids get sick, they will have to miss another rehearsal, and I’m so worried for them that they won’t get to do the show!

So today, I have to find a way to navigate around the thumping in my head and the visits to the bathroom (sorry, but here we are) to care for my 4 kids so Hubby can work.  And I  have to do things in a way that won’t spread this super-contagious illness (it says something when I get an illness – I don’t usually get sick ever!) to the remaining healthy ones in my family.

Anyone want to babysit?  😉

My son is newly 2 years old, and he has a favorite movie:  Monster House.  He asks for it by name, and he just loves it – even if some parts are so scary that he has to watch it from behind his hands:

Every year, my husband and I are very lucky to get a week-long break from being busy parents of 4 kids when Grandma takes the kids to her house for a week.  For the past two years during this vacation, we traveled downstate to King’s Island, an amusement park near Cincinnati.  King’s Island offers a VIP Tour, which means that for 9 hours, you get your own personal park employee to lead you around the park and to the front of all the park rides of your choosing, even holding your stuff if you really want him to!  In case you’re interested, a VIP Tour at King’s Island also includes an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, unlimited fountain drinks all day, a ride photo, an ice cream cone, a behind-the-scenes tour of The Beast, and $25 in park souvenir money – which can be spent on carnival style games, buying more food (if you need it after the buffet!), or in the park’s gift shops.  While it may seem expensive up front, if you do the math, the VIP Tour ends up being a great deal all things considered, and we highly recommend it; especially if you’re a coaster enthusiast!

Being able to walk to the front of any ride line of one’s choosing is really cool – it’s hard to imagine, until  you ride coaster after coaster without pause!

We began our day on The Beast (only because the Diamondback was not functioning, but luckily our fears of it being broken for the entire day were dispelled and they were able to fix it before long).  The Beast is an almost 5-minute long journey into the desolate forests of southern Ohio on a wooden roller coaster!  As we learned from our behind the scenes tour (included with the VIP Tour as I said), prior to its unveiling in 1979, The Beast was built on-site and follows closely the terrain upon which it is built.  It was not pre-ordered and shipped to the park in segments like many modern roller coasters.

After riding The Beast twice in a row (almost 10 minutes worth of roller coasters right there!!), we moved on to the Vortex, an old-school steel roller coaster with more than a few high speed inversions.  I had printed out my blog post I had written about the VIP Tour a year before, and it served as a helpful guide for this year.  And I have to say, everything was much more enjoyable this year – last year I had written in my blog that I didn’t like the Vortex much and that the Backlot Stunt Coaster was lame, but this year both rides were much more fun than I had remembered – perhaps because I knew what to expect from the park, and so the element of surprise was minimized.  I’m a person who likes to know what to expect rather than to be completely taken by surprise – I have 4 little kids, so I have enough surprises throughout my average day, thank you 😉

But whatever the case, whichever the reason, this year’s VIP Tour was even more fun than last year’s!  All of the rides we rode were better than I had remembered they were, and the Whitewater Canyon water ride was even more fun when riding with friends!  Of course, I think it helped that this year’s temperature was almost 90º instead of the unseasonal 70º we had during last year’s tour – getting soaked last year left us near frozen!  And I learned a little bit from last year’s tour – no blisters from walking around in wet shoes for me!  I brought a little bag and put a change of shoes in it.  As much as it may have annoyed my co-VIPs (but then again, I was the only gal in a group of men), I changed into my flip-flops every time we got on a water ride.  Not only did I save my feet from blistering, but I got to order our guide to carry my shoes around the park!  Ok, so I actually felt pretty badly making the poor guy carry my shoes around, but it was kind of like being a queen for a day, and –  carrying our stuff was his job after all…

Being led around the park by a guide all day, slipping in front of the ‘regular guests’ to get to the front of the lines (and picking whatever spot you choose on all the rides!  Note to self for next year:  front car on The Beast rocks, back row on the Diamondback is sweet, and the back is ideal and technically the front for Firehawk…) gave us plenty of time for ‘extras’ in the park: things we don’t normally do in theme parks, usually for lack of time like souvenir shopping, playing games and seeing shows.  The show we chose to see this year – and it’s strange, I know, that I keep promising myself a theater break but still I continue to find myself in a theater audience – was called ‘Too Much TV’, and it was actually pretty fun!  It began with a ‘host’ who went around the audience asking for them to ‘name that tune’ as different tv show theme songs were played.  I thought I would be good at this kind of thing, but apparently my brain had been scrambled upon one (ok, a dozen) too many roller coasters earlier in the day because I couldn’t get any of the answers correct.  But it’s ok, I didn’t raise my hand too high- unlike a fellow VIP who was called upon, but he answered correctly and won himself a Too Much TV button – way to  go!  Despite a fleeting regret in the beginning of the show (am I really watching yet another stage show?!?), I did enjoy myself.  I recognized 100% of the show titles and about 80% of the lyrics since I used to be a huge tv fan and had watched many of the shows when I was a kid (many in reruns; I’m not THAT old!)  The show included 6 dancer-singers, and it began with TV shows from the 50’s – 60’s (a few of these I watched like Patty Duke and Mary Tyler Moore – um, in reruns of course 😉 while the rest I just knew the themes since they were very famous like the Andy Griffith Show) and continued to shows from the 70s (3’s Company, Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, etc), 80’s-90’s (Full House, Perfect Strangers,  Growing Pains, Friends, etc).  LOTS of fun, especially for a former TV junkie like myself.  The singers / dancers were pretty good, and I have to say that one of the highlights of the show  was that during the Brady Bunch theme, they showed clips from the episode where the Brady’s actually visit King’s Island!!  I had totally forgotten that episode (I used to be a huge Brady Bunch fan; I watched it every day in syndication after school, and I had the book / episode guide written by Mr. Greg Brady (Barry Williams) himself – I used to check off the episodes I had seen – ahem, NERD!!), but anyway, I will have to dig it up on youtube.com or somewhere and watch it again now!!

Miraculously, the rain held off until minutes after our guide was dismissed for the day –  we had been watching the storms move in all day the day before our tour, hoping it wouldn’t affect our trip.  We had promised our guide an email depicting our thoughts on what riding The Beast was like in the dark, but as I said, it began to rain, and we were forced to take a break.  That’s when we realized just how tired we really were – too tired to wait for the rain to stop and the rides to re-open, so we’ll have to experience The Beast at night next year.  And I could not be looking forward to it more!!

On the way home, we found a White Castle (don’t have them way up here in the bufu northwestern corner of Ohio), or at least that’s what the sign said.  But the White Castle location was connected to a gas station, and the sliders did not taste quite the same…  I thought they were just old until I brought some home and re-heated them, and they STILL were a bit off…  hmmm….  Normally these things reheat really well, and I’m sorry to tell the White Castle newbie in our group that he still hasn’t really tried an authentic slider.  They hit the spot at the time and had we taken the time to stop anywhere else, we would have gotten home even later than the 1 am-ish that we did and would have been even more exhausted.  My bodily soreness from being beat up by various coasters all day was less than last year, but it also lasted a day or two longer than I remember.  Oh well, more to tweak for next year!  Maybe I will bring TWO pairs of shoes for Mr. Guide to carry around for me, haha!

And one final note…  We have a running joke with a member of our group – we went to Disney World with him almost two years ago, and it seemed that every ride which he rode stalled; including rides that didn’t usually stall.  At King’s Island, only one ride stalled while we were on it, but we got stuck in what I am sure is the most precarious position in which a person can get stuck at that park – flat on our backs, under the great blue sky on the Firehawk.  Here is a picture of how we were stuck; note that these people are in the station, which would have been better since there were people around to help.  We were stuck flat on our backs outside of the station for about 10-15 minutes, and I couldn’t help but notice how sympathetic the ride operator seemed during her announcements directing us to stay calm.

Also noticeable were the extremely red faces and disoriented nature of our fellow riders who were finally returned to an upright position and allowed to leave the ride with us.  For the record, our park guide happened to be on the Firehawk with us (on the VIP Tour, you can also make your guide go on rides!) and said that he had never seen it stuck like that before.  So yeah, while we were only stuck on a ride once during our day, what a place to be stuck!!!

And surely I don’t want to leave you with a bad impression of the Firehawk, nor of King’s Island, so here are some fun youtube videos from other riders:

Firehawk (you lie on your back and then are flipped after the lift onto your stomach.  Like Superman, you fly thru a series of loops, inversions, and open track):

Next, not one of my favorite rides at King’s Island, though still fun, the joy in Invertigo is watching the person’s face who is sitting across from you.  Ride with a friend sitting across from you, and experience the g-forces backwards first.  Then watch your friend’s face as they experience the same thing backwards you just did – It’s priceless!!

And now for my favorites, The Beast (start watching at a minute and ten seconds into the video for the real action):

And the Diamondback:

All this watching the POV cams on the coasters makes me want to do it all over again…   But unfortunately I have to wait…
So until next year…

If you are a tangents.org fan, then you’ve already read two riveting accounts of a little tangents field trip of sorts to Cincinnati Ohio.  I don’t mean to be redundant, but I’m going to post my take on the excursion for my friends and remote members of my family to read my take on the trip.

We began our journey bright and early Monday morning, July 19, and I like how the other tangenteers failed to mention that the keys were accidentally locked in the trunk.  Someone, I forget who (and I’m not going to mention who it was that locked the keys in the trunk except that it wasn’t me), but someone had the brilliant revelation that the back seat could pull down, thus saving us a 30-mile round-trip drive to get the spare set of keys.  Us 4 adults (3 of my kids were with Grandma, and my little boy stayed with a family friend since he couldn’t have gone on roller coasters at King’s Island the following day) crammed into a little Sunfire, and somehow I got the privileged front seat for the whole trip – hey no complaints here, I was so much less sore than I was after last year’s trip – I don’t think I could say that if I had been crammed in the back of the Sunfire for two days.  But taking the little car was necessary because we estimate that we saved around $70 in gas by not taking our gas-guzzling mini-van, so thanks to the owner of the Sunfire for letting us put the miles on his car.

We arrived at our first tourist destination, the wonderful Cincinnati Zoo with more than enough time (or so we thought) to explore the entire humongous zoo complex.  I just love the Cincinnati Zoo – we visited years ago, and I don’t really remember much about that visit, other than accidentally driving our car into the zoo…  But they seemed to have fixed that entry problem by now.  Hubby and I visited this zoo last year, but we didn’t leave early enough, and after some delays and the 4-hour drive, we really didn’t see much of the zoo.  But this year, we had left bright and early and were prepared to stay all day, despite the 90º+ weather.  I was appointed tour guide (why?  I don’t know  – I’m a pretty big zoo enthusiast, I guess, and I’m a pretty good navigator until you throw hills or mountains into the equation.  And the Cincinnati Zoo has more than a few large hills and low valleys to navigate around, but we did well – Hubby and being especially thankful that we didn’t happen to have kids to carry or a double-stroller to push up all those hills in  that heat!!!)

Cincinnati has a WIDE array of species to see!  Some I had scarcely heard of, some I had NEVER heard of; I just wish I had taken better notes and written down which species I saw that I wanted to do more research on when I got home.  Oh well, I will be back – Ohio is the only state to exhibit my favorite animal, the manatee, outside of its native Florida, and we are blessed to have not one, but TWO zoos (Cincinnati and Columbus) that exhibit this beautiful creature – so yeah, I will be back downstate to get my manatee fix.  Cincinnati has two manatees that arrived from  Florida just a few months ago, and they are relatively young creatures – just 3 and 4-years old.  Manatees can live to be 60-70 years old, so the manatees at the Cincinnati Zoo were relatively small compared to the others I’ve seen in captivity.  No less breathtaking, the little guys did move a little bit faster and seemed more playful than their adult counterparts.  I knew about the ‘Sleep With the Manatees’ program that Cincinnati offers before this visit, but I was reminded again – that is of course something I would love to do.  But “Sleep with the Manatees’?  I think I’d probably have to call it something different since I wouldn’t be doing much sleeping if I got to spend the night in the manatee exhibit!  Someday…

Another remarkable, highly endangered creature housed by the Cincinnati Zoo is the Sumatran Rhino.  There are five rhino sub-species left on this planet, and the Sumatran is the most rare –  estimated at less than 275 individuals left in the wild.  A Sumatran Rhino successfully gave birth at the Calcutta Zoo in 1889, but as decades passed without any further successful reproduction in captivity, people grew concerned and developed a program designed to save the Sumatran Rhino.  Widely considered a failure, the program ran from 1984-1996 and consisted of capturing 40 wild Sumatran Rhinos and trying to reproduce them in captivity.  By the late ’90s, no rhinos had been born of the program, and half of the captured rhinos had died.  In 1997, the United States was down to only 3 captive Sumatran Rhinos: two females (in the Los Angeles Zoo and Bronx Zoo) and one male (Cincinnati Zoo).  It was decided that the animals be united for one last breeding attempt in Cincinnati.  In September 2001, the first captive-born Sumatran Rhino calf in 112 years was born (this was the 6th pregnancy for the mother; the previous 5 pregnancies were not successful)!  Another calf followed in 2004, but sadly that same year a disease outbreak killed all of the Sumatran Rhinos in captivity in Malysia, reducing the number of captive Sumatran Rhinos in the world to only eight.  Another calf was born in 2007, and that same year the calf who was born in 2001 was returned to Sumatra to try to breed him there.  If you are not an animal lover like I am, then you might find my little rant about the Sumatran Rhino boring, and I apologize.  But there aren’t words for how fascinating it was to see an live animal walking around and making noise who is so rare in our world.  Although this particular rhino species is the smallest of the 5 currently in existence, it is fascinating in other ways; such as its light coat of reddish-brown hair, its almost constant vocalizations (which we were able to witness), and its ability to twist saplings into patterns to communicate with other rhinos in the wild.  A truly fascinating creature; if you are going to be in the Cincinnati area, I highly recommend stopping by the zoo and glimpsing this historic animal specimen.  Here is a video of Emi’s 3rd and final calf who was born in 2007:

We stopped for lunch and took in one of those 4D shows; which was alright – being in the air-conditioned theater for 30 minutes was worth the admission fee alone.  The 4D consisted of a 3D movie of animals with some additional effects –  water spraying, high-powered fans blowing (Ahhh…), things to poke your back, etc.  The air blasters on my seat were not working, and neither were my feet ticklers, but no matter, for the air blasting sound in my ears is not one of my favorite things anyway.

By the time we got around to the other side of the zoo, I was so hot and tired that I was becoming willing to skip certain parts of the zoo.  We did stop in the petting zoo, another one of my usual favorites (I know a secret spot on goats where they tend to feel sore, and my patented ‘goat rubs’ are usually very much appreciated…  not as much in the heat though).

Two exhibit buildings of note: I really enjoyed the nocturnal house and the cat house (which housed more than just cats, and many species of animals with which I was not familiar – maybe they should change the name – ‘Cat House And Friends’?  ‘Cats and More’?  ‘Cats, Etc.’?  That sounds like the work of the zoo’s marketing department; clearly my talents do not lie in that area).  The nocturnal house had plenty of species outside of the usual fruit bats you see in the nocturnal houses of many zoos.  Along with its share of nocturnal marsupials (a few species of gliders and something called a potto), Cincinnati also has vampire bats (complete with ones feeding out of little dishes of blood – delightfully and creepily fascinating!) as well as flying foxes – bats the size of my large parrot at home with faces resembling foxes or small bears.

Overall, a wonderful day with some great friends, even if it was super hot!  Up next, my run-down of the following day spent at King’s Island!

I check out the headlines on Chicago’s suburban newspaper’s website, The Daily Herald, partly because that’s where I’m from (so I know of the locations of the news stories) and partly because my own small town daily paper is kind of boring because we’re… well, crime-less.  No news is good news, so they say, and I agree with that assessment for my little corner of the world.  But far removed am I, and so reading about the disasters in the Chicago area can be quite entertaining; especially the recent stories concerning this woman, Lisa Stone, a trustee from a place called Buffalo Grove, which is an upscale suburb of Chicago.

There have been numerous news stories about Ms. Stone, and I didn’t really pay attention until I saw this headline:

Buffalo Grove village president tells trustee to ‘shut up’

If you want to envision grown-up politicians behaving like children, read the article, for it’s like a play-by-play of a school yard bickering session.  If you would like to see the trustees in action, here is a link to video of the actual meeting.  It goes a bit long (a whopping 3+ hours – these poor people were at their meeting until 10:30pm!), but most of the action involving Ms. Stone is in the first 10 minutes (after the Pledge of Allegiance) and in the last 30 minutes of part 3 of the meeting, which is where poor flustered President Hartstein has finally had enough.

Causing most of the problem is Ms. Lisa Stone because she doesn’t seem to respect the most basic rules of politeness nor eloquence.  She interrupts the other board members; speaking out of turn, continuously overriding her superiors and her time limits (time limits which were created, voted upon, and passed by her fellow board members because of her actions at previous meetings), and she just doesn’t seem concerned about any agenda other than her own.  After watching these little pieces of political treasure (ah, Illinois politics, gotta love ’em.  Isn’t this a state poised to have TWO former governors in the pokey at the same time?), I couldn’t resist doing some internet research on Lisa Stone.  The most interesting thing I found was her election website, electlisastone.com where the very same newspaper who provided a play-by-play of her getting told to ‘shut up’  by the board president  endorses her political career with very encouraging words which are displayed prominently and proudly on the top middle of the page!  Also of interest on this site?  Check out the little video on the left side – the then-mayor of the same city, Buffalo Grove, also endorses Lisa in the election.  And guess who the mayor was during the election?  Elliott Hartstein, the same president of the village board who got so flustered with Ms. Stone that he told her to ‘shut up’.  How about those politics, folks!  More entertaining than a 3-ring circus and for free, from the comfort of your own living room!

The following news story caught my eye because well, let’s be honest – any sort of physical comedy involving someone in a big mascot costume is funny.
Ok, so it’s not funny when someone gets hurt; I stand corrected.  Best wishes to Ms. Porky Pig for a speedy recovery.  From suburban Chicago’s newspaper, The Daily Herald:

Two employees of Six Flags Great America turned against a coworker dressed as Porky the Pig on Monday after posing for a photo with her.

Dmytro Petrychenko, 19, and Taras Sikalchuk, 20, were visiting the park on their day off and were seen slapping a woman dressed as Porky Pig in the front and back of her head multiple times, according to Gurnee police. Both men are from Waukegan, reports indicated.

The men were apprehended, removed from the park and issued local battery citations by Gurnee police.

The victim was taken to a first aide station after complaining of a headache and neck pains. She was treated and released, according to a Six Flags spokesperson.

Kind of reminds me of the Sausagegate incident of 2008…

My kids are driving me nuts!!  It’s the middle of summer, and although I’ve scarcely heard the words, “I’m bored”, my kids are driving me and each other up the walls and back down again.  My 3 girls (ages 10, 6, and 3) are bickering constantly!  By the time I get their brother (age 2) down for a nap in the afternoon, I’m so exhausted that I really cherish my “me” time, which is always laced with sounds of the girls’ fighting and bickering.  My husband suggested we do more activities together (we read books and color in the mornings, and I take them to the library every day to play), but it’s a vicious cycle.  The more they fight, the less I want to do with them, and the less I do with them, the more they fight, as if their fighting could increase.  I am so thankful that Friday is the day when I get to meet their Grandma in South Bend and arrange a trade – 3 girls to Grandma’s for the week!!  I could not be looking forward to it more!  Sure, I’ll miss them, but given the way they’ve been acting lately, it will be a challenge for me to not dread the monotony of the summer continuing when they get back.  I can think of plenty of things to do, but like I said, I’m so exhausted by the constant refereeing (aren’t refs supposed to be paid?) that it’s hard to find the energy to facilitate an activity and clean it up.  Wait, Grandma reads my blog, I better not dwell on the fighting too much.  Wouldn’t want to change her mind about next week!!

Only 39 days until school starts!  One week at Grandma’s and 10 weekend days, so really only 22 days left – not that I’m counting or anything…  Now where is that countdown timer widget?  🙂

I found this article on cnn.com a few weeks ago detailing the laws that foreign countries have about baby names.  That’s right – here in the fifty nifty United States we have the freedom to name our kids pretty much whatever we want, but in other countries, they actually have strict laws specially crafted regarding this kind of thing.  I found the following article interesting and amusing, and at the same time, I gratefully celebrate the freedoms in my country.  And an interesting note – this blog post is being written by the mother of a little girl named Disney…  I couldn’t help but notice in how many of the following countries my sweet little Disney’s name would have been rejected.

For the article in its entirety, click here.

1. Sweden – Enacted in 1982, the Naming law in Sweden was originally created to prevent non-noble families from giving their children noble names, but a few changes to the law have been made since then.  The part of the law referencing first names reads: “First names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name.”  If you later change your name, you must keep at least one of the names that you were originally given, and you can only change your name once.  Rejected names: “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb111163 (pronounced Albin, naturally) was submitted by a child’s parents in protest of the Naming law. It was rejected. The parents later submitted “A” (also pronounced Albin) as the child’s name. It, too, was rejected.  Also rejected: Metallica, Superman, Veranda, Ikea and Elvis.  Accepted names: Google as a middle name, Lego.

2. Germany – In Germany, you must be able to tell the gender of the child by the first name, and the name chosen must not be negatively affect the well being of the child. Also, you can not use last names or the names of objects or products as first names.  Whether or not your chosen name will be accepted is up to the office of vital statistics, the Standesamt, in the area in which the child was born. If the office rejects your proposed baby name, you may appeal the decision. But if you lose, you’ll have to think of a different name. Each time you submit a name you pay a fee, so it can get costly.  When evaluating names, the Standesamt refers to a book which translates to “the international manual of the first names,” and they also consult foreign embassies for assistance with non-German names. Because of the hassle parents have to go through to name their children, many opt for traditional names such as Maximilian, Alexander, Marie and Sophie.  Rejected names: Matti was rejected for a boy because it didn’t indicate gender.  Approved names: Legolas and Nemo were approved for baby boys.

3. New Zealand – New Zealand’s Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act of 1995 doesn’t allow people to name their children anything that “might cause offence to a reasonable person; or […] is unreasonably long; or without adequate justification, […] is, includes, or resembles, an official title or rank.” Officials at the registrar of births have successfully talked parents out of some more embarrassing names.  Rejected names: Stallion, Yeah Detroit, Fish and Chips, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy, Sex Fruit, Satan and Adolf Hitler.  Approved names: Benson and Hedges (for a set of twins), Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence.

4. Japan – In Japan, one given name and one surname are chosen for babies, except for the imperial family, who only receive given names. Except for a few examples, it is obvious which are the given names and which are the surnames, regardless of in what order the names have been given. There are a couple thousand “name kanji” and “commonly used characters” for use in naming babies, and only these official kanji may be used in babies’ given names. The purpose of this is to make sure that all names can be easily read and written by the Japanese. The Japanese also restrict names that might be deemed inappropriate.  Rejected names: Akuma, meaning “devil.”

5. Denmark – Denmark’s very strict Law on Personal Names is in place to protect children from having odd names that suit their parents’ fancy. To do this, parents can choose from a list of 7,000 pre-approved names, some for girls, some for boys.  If you want to name your child something that isn’t on the list, you have to get special permission from your local church, and the name is then reviewed by governmental officials. Creative spellings of more common names are often rejected.  The law states that girls and boys must have names that indicate their gender, you can’t use a last name as a first name and unusual names may be rejected. Of the approximately 1,100 names that are reviewed each year, 15-20 percent of the names are rejected. There are also laws in place to protect rare Danish last names.  Rejected names: Anus, Pluto and Monkey.  Approved names: Benji, Jiminico, Molli and Fee.

6. China – Most new babies in China are now basically required to be named based on the ability of computer scanners to read those names on national identification cards. The government recommends giving children names that are easily readable, and encourages Simplified characters over Traditional Chinese ones.  Parents can technically choose the given name, but numbers and non-Chinese symbols and characters are not allowed.  Also, now, Chinese characters that can not be represented on the computer are not allowed. There are over 70,000 Chinese characters, but only about 13,000 can be represented on the computer. Because this requirement is a new one, some citizens are having their name misrepresented, and some have to change their names to be accurately shown on the identification cards.  Rejected names: “@”: Wang “At” was rejected as a baby name. The parents felt that the @ symbol had the right meaning for them. @ in Chinese is pronounced “ai-ta” which is very similar to a phrase that means “love him.”

So we pull into our driveway after our 4 hour drive back from Nashville Indiana (not going to waste time with a recap, these posts are long enough!  See my previous post if you want to know what I’m talking about), and my husband’s aunt’s truck is parked in front of our house.  We had agreed (or so I thought) to meet them  at their hotel (which was a safe distance of 10-15 miles away) for some dinner and swimming –  after just getting back from being out of town for a few days, which was preceded by constant activities for my family for the 4th of July, I wanted some time to make the house presentable.  Much to my dismay, that did not happen.  We pulled up to our house and see that their truck is there – I could not believe it.  Luckily, they were no where in sight, turns out they had gone shopping downtown.  So hubby and I bribed the kids to all go play together upstairs, we unpack the car as fast as we can, and we quickly run around the house doing some very fast spot-cleaning.  It worked out, but I get really stressed about stuff like that – it would have been better if they had just adhered to the original plan.

So they come over (they called first, so they get bonus points for that), and my mother-in-law mentions giving my aunt-in-law a tour of my house multple times.  Under normal circumstances, I would be more than happy to do so – personally, I love to see the different layouts of people’s houses, and I’m always excited to take a tour if one is offered.  But when I haven’t had the time to clean my house in a few weeks, I’m a bit apprehensive about giving my aunt-in-law (who has never seen the house) a tour…  but I think it’s about time I get over some of my hang-ups, so I oblige and give the tour through the dirty house –  and we all survived and came out alive.

After that, we went out to dinner and swimming at their hotel, and that was a lot of fun until we made the mistake of letting our little 2-year-old boy out of his floatie.  He began to run around and do other brave things, like get onto the pool ladder and act like he was going to jump in, all of which terrified me and compounded my exhaustion from the week before – so I had had enough; it was time to go.  The next day, we  left it up to our guests where to eat lunch, and they chose our local circa 1950’s diner, which has a cute atmosphere but I warned them that the food is not so great.  I hadn’t eaten there in probably about a year though, and my philly cheese steak sandwich wasn’t too bad, although it left me hungry.  After the diner, we decided to play tourist in our hometown some more and went on the “Lolly Trolley” at the Dum Dum factory – you know Dum Dums, and don’t try to tell me you didn’t save up your wrappers when you were little to send them in for various bits of Dum Dum treasure.

The Lolly Trolley was fun, much more fun than I had expected given the factory’s disclaimers of how we weren’t going to be able to see the kitchen where the candy is actually made.  We also spotted our good friends’ son on the job as he is an employee of the factory, so that was fun.  After our tour, we went swimming again in the hotel pool, and someone had a marvelous last minute idea for dinner – let’s go to Walmart, pick up some ingredients, and have my husband’s mother cook us dinner!  She is a brilliant cook, I might add.  So she made us come kind of delicious baked chicken breasts on a bed of croutons with swiss cheese on top, and the house smelled almost as good as dinner tasted…  until my son was left unattended for literally only 2 minutes, when he used that opportunity to produce one of the dirtiest diapers he’s ever had.  I will spare details, but let’s just say that the mess did not stay in his diaper (not an accident,  either), and the upstairs carpet was one of the victims of this disaster.  Luckily, Hubby is great at fast clean-ups, so he helped me quickly clean up the mess and our son before any additional guests arrived for our game night.

Game night with my mother-in-law was extra fun, even if she did sabotage herself in a game of Mafia by talking out loud and accidentally revealing her position – it just added to the fun for the rest of us.  We also played other game night favorites, and people stayed too late as usual – not that I ever mind because it was fun, as tired as I was on Saturday.

Saturday we took the family to the produce tent and the local pizza buffet for lunch, and then we just sat around the living room and chatted for the afternoon while my son napped, learning more about my husband’s cousins’ hobbies (his 16-year-old cousin is really into air-softing, something I hadn’t heard of, but I was glad to hear him provide a little more info – getting pictures in my email of this boy I’ve basically watched grow up wearing camouflage and brandishing a gun was a bit alarming, so I appreciated hearing the details about his sport).  They left for home a little after 4, leaving us just enough time to get to  a dear friend’s retirement party.  We were a tad late, but we overcompensated by staying way past the time the party was supposed to end and had a lot of fun meeting her family and celebrating her accomplishment.

Sunday was my little guy’s actual 2nd birthday, so we took him to the Mexican restaurant where the staff sang to the birthday boy, who was frightened by all the attention being paid to him and jumped out of his highchair, burying his face into Dad’s shoulder.  We returned home for a day of some much needed r and r, and here it is Tuesday, and I’m STILL recovering!  But in this family, busyness is the norm and while summer provides us a break from school, youth group, and other obligations, we always find plenty more to do – besides, would we be able to survive boredom?  I think not!!

Well, it’s been a long week and a half – which is probably how long it will take you to read this super-long blog post I’m about to write.  Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to  blog, and I have lots to say!  Tons of fun since the 4th of July weekend, but go-go-go constantly, and I am so tired, it’s unbelievable!  A quick (well, kinda, sorta) rundown…

July 3 – my birthday, so we dragged the kids down to a larger town down south to see their fireworks, one of my favorite birthday activities.  The only problem is that the fireworks didn’t start until 10pm, and we wanted to get there by 2pm because we had tickets for a raffle at a party thrown by a store.  Even with our 5 tickets, we did not win any one of the 50 prizes (no surprise there; our luck is terrible when it comes to things like that).  But the party was lots of fun with airbrush tattoos for the kids, sand creations they could make, free coloring kits, and also free hot dogs, pizza,  and baby water bottles.  We had no trouble killing time for the next 8 hours, although it did exhaust all 6 of us.  We had a nice birthday dinner at Bob Evans (have you tried their pot roast stroganoff?  It’s yummy!!), even though they forgot to sing to me or my little boy, whose birthday is 8 days after mine (so we were celebrating both).  No matter, I usually hate stuff like that anyway (like it for my kids – for me, not so much), but I was willing to give it a try just for the free dessert.  Oh well.  This larger town’s fireworks were much better than our hometown’s, though the kids would not let me forget that they are starting to find fireworks boring.  Might have to find something new for next year’s bday celebration, or maybe a babysitter so Hubby and I can enjoy fireworks alone for a change…

July 4 – After church, we packed all day long for our upcoming camping trip.  This involved doing lots of last minute laundry and preparing the house as best I could so that it wouldn’t be too much of a mess when we got back.  Although we were exhausted, this turned out to be a good decision because when we got back from the 3 day camping trip, my mother-in-law and her sister and kids were here waiting for us – that was SO not the plan.  They were supposed to be at their hotel, and we were going to change into our bathing suits and go meet them at the hotel for swimming, giving me a chance to pick up my very messy house.  But more on that next post…

July 5-8 – July 5 was the day the kids had been waiting for – we left for Nashville.  Not the well known country music capital of the country in TN, but the lesser known, population 800 Nashville in Brown County, southern Indiana.  What a beautiful place!  I can understand why it’s a very popular destination in the fall, the scenery must be nothing short of gorgeous when the leaves change colors.  As for visiting in July, that was nice too.  Never mind that the weather was above 90° all 3 days of our vacation – we barely noticed, thanks to the accommodations my husband was able to find for us:  an over 3,000 sq ft fully furnished house that fit all 13 of us comfortably on its secluded 10 acres.  I made a video tour of the house, but I haven’t figured out how to put in links to youtube.com playlists yet, so you lucked out – a video tour of a house you’ve never been to would probably bore the pants off of you, and now you don’t have to sit through it.  You’ll have to settle for the ultra-exciting text version I’m going to describe below (some of which you can skip if it gets dry – remember, I use my blogs as sort of a family diary as well.  Years into the future when I’m long gone, I’m hoping my loved ones will enjoy reading my ramblings.  If not, hey, my feelings certainly won’t be hurt!).

The long, tree-encircled, steep hill of a driveway ended at a garage with a basketball hoop, grill and table and chairs for grilling out, which we did a lot!  Hubby and I played a few games of  H-O-R-S-E with my dad, which quickly became a championship when all 3 of us were tied at one win apiece.  Unfortunately, Hubby and I were not able to win a title for our family name, but we still had lots of fun.  Just off of the driveway, there was a swing that overlooked the pond area, which was a short way from the house, down a steep hill and past the firepit area.  We had lots of fun cooking our lunches over the campfire and making smores at night.  My 10-year-old daughter also revealed her hidden talent as a master fisherman, er fisher-person!  She found a bit of line on the ground with a hook, and proceeded to use it – without any bait – to catch no less than 5 fish, and they were larger fish than we had caught with my nephew’s fishing pole and using bait!!

Upon entering the house, the living room (2 couches and large tv with over 100 movies from which to choose, as well as a bookcase full of board games, books, and magazines) was to the right, and the kitchen and breakfast nook was to the left.  Off the back of the living room was a washer / dryer (who wants to do laundry on vacation?  But in case  of emergency, it was very nice to have, especially if you were going to stay longer than the 3 days we were staying) and a half bath.  On the 2nd floor, directly at the top of the stairs was a bedroom with a bathroom (where my sister, her husband, and their 2-year-old slept), another living room (this one with a couch, futon, and billiard table), and a wrap around 4-season room with CD player and CDs (no country music?!?  Don’t worry, this is the only suggestion I could think to make on my comment card – everything else was perfect) and a  Foosball table.  Off  of the 4-season room was another bedroom with bathroom (this is where Hubby and I and our 2-year-old slept), and then outside of the 4-season room was a yard with a deck with swing, chairs, picnic table, hammock, hot tub, swingset, sandbox, and outdoor fireplace.  And oh yeah, my sister’s room and our room shared an outdoor patio as well.

We also had a cut-throat pool game championship with my dad, but we didn’t do very well at that one either…  and since we’re on the subject of lost games, I might as well get it out there that Hubby and I came in last on the Cornhole tournament as well.  How funny is that when the Illinois family had never heard the term ‘cornhole’ anyway?  😉  Must be an Ohio thing, but that didn’t seem to help our Cornhole skills…  So we lost H-O-R-S-E, we lost cut-throat,  and we lost Cornhole, but in what must have seemed like an even exchange, we made our reluctant family play some party games against their will –  Mafia and Partini.  I can’t say they were big fans of either game, but at least they gave them a try and gave us some hilarious memories in the process.  Here’s what happens when people reluctantly play a normally very fun game called Partini:

Back to the house…  from the 2nd floor living room was a staircase that led up to the 3rd floor master suite, which boasted a master bathroom with whirlpool tub.  My parents slept up here, and lucky for them (?) there was a huge walk-in closet right next to their bed, which the 4 older kids (my 3 girls and their cousin) immediately eyed as a “clubhouse” where they could sleep right next to Grandma, who of course agreed.  Also on the 3rd floor was a little nook with another queen bed, huge closet, and a little couch and chair – this is the bed where Uncle Bud slept.  And off of the master suite was a huge outdoor wrap-around deck, where Hubby, my dad and I spent the first night watching the hilarious comedy The Goods in the fresh woodsy air (on our laptop – didn’t want you to think there was a tv outside or anything.  There were an abundance of cool bugs – huge moths and a different sort of firefly than I’m used to, but no outdoor tv).

Overall, a wonderful trip; I don’t think we could have asked for it to be any better…  well, perhaps the weather could have been  a bit cooler, but what else can be expected in early July in southern Indiana than three 90°+ days in a row?  That made our trying out the hot tub interesting – here we are packed in like sardines; we did try putting some ice cubes in it, but that didn’t work so well.  It kind of felt like being meat in a stew for a giant’s brew:

And with that kind of weather, it made us even more thankful that we had changed our original vacation plan which was Jellystone campground in Fremont Indiana.  It still sounds like a fun place, but the cabins there were very tiny and didn’t have bathrooms, plus it was going to be mobbed on the dates we had to go – July 5-8.  I will take our secluded, 3000+ sq ft, air conditioned house with plenty of bathrooms any day!  It was a bit further than Jellystone – 4 hrs vs. 45 minutes, but it worked well because our Chicago family had basically the same travel (distance-wise, anway –  they made a lot more stops than we did and so the trip took them longer to complete).

Whether you’re looking for a fun place to have a family get-together, a vacation with friends or with co-workers, I highly recommend checking out the houses and cabins for rent in Brown County Indiana.  If you would like to know which cabin is the one we stayed at, just leave me a comment, and I can send you more info!