Gosh it's hot

Our intended vacation for last week got rescheduled/rearranged a bit, but since John had the time off anyway, we decided to go ahead and take the kids to Cedar Point.  First, we had to figure out what to do with the puppy.  What. a. pain!  After a few phone calls and mild panic attacks, we finally found a pet-friendly hotel and brought him with us.

Cedar Point has a Pet Chek where for $15 a day you can take your dog.  John found this information online.  Great!  We can take him and then ride the rides and then....  Oh.  We found out why it was so cheap.  It's not a kennel in the traditional sense of the word.  It's an air conditioned room with crates for the animals.  They do not walk the animals or give them potty breaks--it's all up to the owners to take breaks from their fun to go let their pooches out of the crates.  Ahhhhh....  Well, good thing Zuko is basically crate-trained.  (And at least they give the animals water and food.)

It was HOT.  Brutally HOT.  (As an aside here, when I saw the forecast, I tried my hardest to convince John to go to the Kalahari--water park--instead, but he was determined, and two of the three kids were determined, so....UGH.)  Anyway, it was HOT.  I slathered on the sunscreen multiple times on myself and the kids.  I was wearing two layers of tank tops, and I eventually had to remove the top one because I was so hot.  This was unfortunate, since the bottom layer was black, and as John kindly pointed out, helped make me "of ALL the people here, the pastiest and whitest."  Yes, I'm a pale person.  I burn quickly and badly, so sunscreen is my FRIEND, hence, I STAY pasty.

Despite the heat (and yes, the slight sunburn that we all STILL managed to get even after multiple sunscreen applications), the kids were pretty well-behaved and really seemed to be having a good time.  John and I split our time between taking the older two to the roller coasters and at Camp Snoopy with Izzy--where there was never a line, and she just got to ride rides ALL DAY LONG. 

I guess the biggest pain on our trip was not getting to sit down at a nice restaurant since we had the dog.  John's sister and her family were in Sandusky (at the Kalahari!), and we couldn't even meet them for breakfast.  We saw them for about 10 minutes in a parking lot! 

So...as nice as it was to bring our new baby on our trip, it was kind of a pain in the butt.  It was a last-minute trip, so it was a bit difficult to make any other accommodations. Zuko is a good traveler.  Long car rides don't freak him out, and he's a pretty quiet dog, so he doesn't disturb other hotel guests.  I won't mind bringing him on future trips, but I'd prefer to try to locate a "real" kennel while we're at non-pet-friendly attractions--or at least a hotel that allows us to keep him in our room alone--in his crate, mind you--while we enjoy a nice meal in a restaurant for an hour or so.

And now, for some bullets:

1)  Mary, who does love a good roller coaster, still does not have the patience (despite finally having the HEIGHT) to wait in line for the Millenium Force OR Top Fuel Dragster.  This is our third year going to CP in three years, and John and I have STILL not been able to get on these rides!

2)  Izzy, the littlest, is probably the bravest when it comes to rides, and it'll probably be a good two or three years yet before she can get on most of the big ones.  :-(

3)  I lost count of how many times Izzy and I (let alone John and her) rode the Woodstock Express.  It's a pretty fast little ride for a kiddie coaster--and if we waited at all, it was only for about one ride's length of time.  Once we got to ride it twice in a row.  There was no one waiting in line to get on, so the operator ran it again for those of us on the ride!

4)  Mary still insisted on playing games at the end of the day, despite the fact that she always gets uber-upset when she does not win, and we have to deal with her attitude/grumbling about it the rest of the night.  Yes, we explained to her, repeatedly, that those games are MEANT to be lost!  Yes, we picked a game (the water-shooting one) where we thought ONE of the kids would have the best shot.  Unfortunately, Keith won--twice--and got a Pokemon stuffed animal--and that just threw her overboard.  Yes, we took her to the gift shop and bought her a freakin' $20 stuffed animal (Keith's cost $18 total to win, so really, what were we out?) to help appease her.  Yes, she still grumbled.  No, there is no way to win here unless we DON'T play those games at the end of the night when everyone is tired (but then if we win we have to cart crap around all day), OR just not play games....  And no, we probably shouldn't have bought the $20 animal, but....*sigh*

5)  Everyone slept surprisingly well both nights we were in the hotel (maybe because we brought an extra air mattress?). 

6)  Poor John drove us home Thursday and then had to leave immediately to go play a round of golf in his golf league.  In that intense heat.  Gosh, I'll bet THAT was fun!

7)  How we got out of the no-eating-in-restaurants problem:  Tuesday night we picked up food and ate it in a park by the Lake (Well, we ate in the car with the air on since it was so bloody hot, but then we got out and played on the play ground and skipped stones into the Lake and Izzy got to experience a really, really nasty latrine for the first time.  She did pretty well--especially considering she still goes into screams if she sees an automatic-flush potty.)  Wednesday night:  pizza in the hotel.