Feeling hot, hot, hot

So the long awaiting 'NY cousins" weekend is here and going great, but the generally consensus is "we are feeling hot, hot, hot." Gina, Kevin and the kids rolled in around 1:15 on Friday, the decided to leave Thursday night and ended up making great time. Unfortunately I had an afternoon of meetings I couldn't get out of so I didn't see them until around 6. We made a great dinner and actually ate outside in 95 degree heat, but everyone was just excited to be together and we got through it ok.

Saturday we headed to Kings Island our amusement park in Cincy. We got there by 11am and spent the first part of our day in the regular park with the rides. It was over 95 degrees so we were hot. The little ones were ok as there is lots of shade in Snoopy land and we even brought a shade umbrella that helped. The older ones didn't feel quite as good on the coasters. We went out to the car to eat lunch and cool off in the AC before heading to Boomerang Bay their water park. That was great. As many of you know I am not a water person, it takes a lot for me to get in and I was in. The water felt great and we had a great time wading in the little pools and going down some slides.

We stayed until around 7 when we were all beat and decided to go home vs. back to Kings Island. Today we went canoeing down the Little Miami. We packed a lunch, but not being very smart (must have been the heat) we decided to leave it in the car. Bad move. The other bad move was the bus driver showing us "the mid point" which had a cafe. We were doing a 12 mile which they said would be 3-4 hours....and we were over 1.5 hours in no sighting of the mid-way point. Once we got to over 2 hours we pulled off at a place that had drinks and chips. We got some stuff to hold us over and let my sister and John off. He had witnessed his mom and sister get tossed in some rapids...while he remained in the canoe and really didn't want to get back in.

So we felt refreshed, tied two canoes together so we had two tugs behind us and decided to let the grown-ups do all the had work...trying to have Ben or Jake paddle wasn't helping too much. It ended up we were less than 2 miles away and did the whole trip, with numerous stops to swim and jump off trees into the river in less than 3 hours. Gina ended up getting a ride back to our car and was waiting when we go there...after lunch back at the car we headed home.

So we are officially beat but had a great time. It was hot but being on the river felt great and hopefully John isn't traumatized forever. Tomorrow the car heads back to NY with Gina, Kevin, Emily and John. Katie and Jake are spending the week with us...going to a cool sports camp with our kids before flying home next weekend. More fun to come.