I couldn't bear the thought of spending 10 days home with the boys, and having them spend all day telling me they wanted to be somewhere~~anywhere~~else. That comes under the heading "the grass is always greener....." So I surprised them with a mini-vacation to.... wait for it..... Columbus Ohio.
Yeah, that's basically pretty pathetic, but it was very do-able so we did.
Columbus is the capital of Ohio, and the kids have done drive-bys of about a dozen other state capitals, but not ours. My bad. They did attend the 200th celebration of Ohio's statehood by attending events in the first capital, Chillicothe. That was a fun year, 2003. Except for going to our lake in Jackson, Michigan, all of our travels that year were in Ohio. But we still managed to miss Columbus. Frankly, it ain't that great of a town. For a hundred years the only things that were there were state government related stuff and The Ohio State University. Big whoop. (Sorry to all you OSU types.)
The Columbus Zoo, of Jack Hanna fame, is there. I've heard lots about it, but had never been there. I gotta tell ya, I'm not that impressed. Like so many zoos now, you can walk from stem to stern and never see an animal. Weird. There was also a lot of 'built environment' compared to the number of animals, which of course includes the ubiquitous snack shacks of every imaginable kind. (They even have beer!) Zoo pics are pretty hard to get right, but I managed a few.
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| Huge fake moose. |
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| Real moose-let. |
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| Those are some bigass feets. I like the reflection of DH's hat, too. |
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| Which is scarier? |
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| Hat hair. |
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| Best pic of the day. Zoo pics are hard to take. |
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| DD, the younger. |
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| FTD, the elder. |
So now we've been there. We started our trip with the guided tour of the Capital building. The boys put up with it. Every time the guide said, "Does any one have any questions?", FTD went into Rainman mode and told her some totally unrelated Ohio factoid he has stored in his weirdly wired data bank. That's my boy all right.
Best part of the trip was dinner with our 'old' neighbors. They were our closest neighbors for 18 years, and since The Dad got a super-duper promotion (can you say General?), it meant a move to Columbus. We've known it's been in the works, but this summer they all moved down there. I told The Mom that I was kinda glad I wasn't here for the actual moving day, because I would have been bawling my eyes out. In addition to being great neighbors (mind you now, their house was a half mile from us), their son was in Scouts with FTD and a good friend, and their younger daughter is one of my honorary grand-daughters. What a sweetie. I made her this little quilt last spring.
Since I fussy cut the material, I have quite a bit left so I made her a relax pack with it, along with one for her Mom and Big Sis. I do so miss them.
I've got lots more completely useless info to write about, but I'll call it quits for now. It's time to get ready for tomorrow's
Audubon Christmas Bird Count after all! And then it'll be time for Gaelyn's cyber New Year's Masquerade Ball. Did I mention that I have dibs on the Building History Museum in DC?
