On June 28th, we piled in the car and headed south to Ohio. It was a long trip that lasted late into the night, but it was good. I’ll publish some of the songs that our magnificent children came up with along the way in an entry or two from now. We woke up on the 29th and it was very hot outside. It’s so hot that my lens ended up with a fog of condensation on it from walking out into the hot from the air conditioned comfort of the inside of the house. Here Ian and Kaylee had fun in a gigantic pool.

So, yes it was hot. Was it hot Connor? See, it was hot. See this image larger.

Kaylee, ready for her close-up! See this image larger.

A tragic moment, Nina dropped some of her goldfish crackers in the grass. See this image larger.

Nina now eating goldfish crackers. These were not the ones dropped on the ground, don’t worry Peanut. See this image larger.

Nina in hot pink. FYI, I think I woke up at like 11:00am that morning, but I drove all night the night before. So it was a weird day for me in so many ways. (You’ll see why shortly!) See this image larger.

Uncle D hops in the back of the minivan — we headed off to a Connor baseball game. Connor was headed toward the end of the season… if he won that night, he’d be playing more on Saturday. If he lost? We’d be done with baseball for the weekend. So which happened? Neither!

My delightful children await the start of the game. See this image larger.

Connor is sometimes a pitcher, sometimes a catcher, and all times awesome. Yeah, I said that. Extremely proud of my nephew! See this image larger.

Folks in the stands getting’ rowdy. See this image larger.

See that smile? That smile is the smile of a boy that just threw somebody out trying to grab second base. Nailed it. See this image larger.

He’s proud and he should be! See this image larger.

Here he’s up to bat and teaches that ball to respect. See this image larger.

He rounded first and headed for 2nd base… See this image larger.

He gave it a stomp, and kept movin’. See this image larger.

Meanwhile, Scooby Doo and Shaggy found the kitchen at the O’Leary Manor, and began to make sandwiches. See this image larger.

*Hey, that looks like a good sandwich.* See this image larger.

This particular shot I tried to correct the lighting a bit, but have you noticed that the exposure on my camera keeps slipping darker and darker in the shots above? That’s because a storm was blowing in. And this was no little storm. The game got called for lightning, first, so Connor’s games would end up being postponed long before a winner was declared. See this image larger.

We started heading home and then the wind picked up… and kept picking up. The local weather service said the windspeed hit 75 mph. This tree, behind Aunt Mel and Uncle Ben’s place tried very hard to knock down this phone/power pole, but it needn’t have worried, its brothers took up the fight.

This was one of four branches on the lines across the street. Power was out for the duration of the trip, and did not come back on until the night we got back.

This is what evening was like. Most of us gathered on the living room floor, with the doors open. There wasn’t A/C or running water. (That pool came in very handy, by the way… the water from it allowed us to flush the toilets. Aunt Mel came up with the idea of using the pool, good call. Uncle Ben knew the one place in town that would sell us ice because the old lady that worked there was awesome!)

Days went by and there just weren’t too many opportunities for photos, or I didn’t have my camera — but frankly none of us was feeling very photogenic, I think. One of the days we went to see a movie in a town that did have power. It was Madagascar 3 and the kids really enjoyed it. Nina’s a popcorn fiend too. Anyway… after that we went to a park that was like some kind of amusement park. It was fun and I think some good pictures were taken, but I didn’t have a camera with me and my phone had died days before. Aunt Mel got some shots, I’ll have to see if I can steal them from her someday. So this picture is from July 1st, the day we turned around and headed home. See this image larger.

The kids drove in Kaylee’s motorized vehicle. See this image larger.

The street in front of the house is never busy, being a cul de sac — I can see why it would make sense to play around with one of these in that scenario. I honestly would not let my kids drive one. On our street it’d be too dangerous.

And so it was time to leave, so we packed up our bags and went home. It was a good trip, but could it have been better with some power? Probably… the biggest thing was that it seemed like we went camping, but had not packed for a camping trip. So going was a treat, and coming home was kind of a treat too. See this image larger.