We had the best time taking Tennille down to German Village on Saturday.  We started out at Schmidt’s Sausage Haus.  If you live in Columbus and have not yet been to Schmidt’s, go now.  It is so good!  Nate tried just about everything since he got the buffet.  Tennille and I both got brats - hers with potato pancakes, mine with green beans and spaetzel.  We also shared a monster vanilla cream puff.  All their food is award winning and they have been featured on Food Network and the Travel Chanel’s Man v. Food.

Sam was exhausted, but that did not detour him from finishing lunch.

We also wandered around Book Loft, which is a crazy 32 room bookstore selling over 500,000 books.  We got lost a little bit.  It was a serious maze in there, but super fun!

Father’s Day was pretty low key around here.  We spent most of the day packing for our vacation (more to come on that), which is why I’m just posting pics now.  Magei and Sam made him breakfast before church.

Since the island is so small, the preferred method of transportation is golf cart.  We rented one for the day and the kids had a blast cruising the island and hopping on and off the cart.

We had so much fun at the beaches.  The first one we went to was filled with all kinds of seashells.  Magei gathered quite of few to add to her collection.

I think the best part about the whole trip for the kids was throwing rocks into the water.  We spent a few hours at several different beaches enjoying the scenery and throwing rocks into the water.

Another great part of the trip was the food!  We ate lunch at Goat Head Soup and Whiskey restaurant.  On the menu was Turtle Soup.  Nate wanted to try something new, so he ate turtle.  We all tried it…tastes like chicken…kind of.  I was mostly wanting to know where the restaurant was getting their turtle meat…but I decided not to ruin it for Nate!

Sam ate butter for lunch.

We also visited a little chocolate museum on the island.  It was more like a store that also had a collection of chocolate paraphernalia,but it was really cute.  They had Charlie and the Chocolate Factory playing and you could get your picture taken with an Oompa Loompa.

The chocolate was amazing!  We bought white chocolate covered pretzels.  They did not last long!

And because one chocolate store just wasn’t enough to satisfy us, we had to stop at another shop before leaving.  Nate got a chocolate dipped twinkie.

I got a chocolate covered banana, and we all split chocolate covered grapes.

On Saturday we took a day trip to Put in Bay, a charming island in Lake Erie.  It was PERFECT!!  We totally fell in love with this little island.  I could not possibly fit all the goodness into one post, so there will be a few.  I also have to add that the drive north was absolutely gorgeous and only added to the fabulous day.  We caught the ferry in Port Clinton.  I think this was Sam’s first boat ride.

We braved the upper deck of the ferry just to say we could!  Once the boat took off, it was slightly on the breezy side.  In fact, most people went down below before we even docked.

This is the view as we came into the dock at Put in Bay.

Fast forward to the boat ride back to Port Clinton…here are Nate and the kids after a long day of playing, waiting for our ferry to dock.

We decided to take our seats inside the boat this time.  We still had fabulous views, minus the wind!

Our library does a concert series every summer…just another reason why they are the number one library in the nation!  We packed a picnic and rode our bikes over to the library to hear RMT.  They did a Songs of America Concert that went through the history of America through music.  It was great!  They just put out a CD and the best part about it was it was only $3 at the show.  We were big geeks and made the band members sign our copy.  We were totally unprepared, so the keyboard player actually had to go back to his car to get a pen.  I know they are playing other shows around the Columbus area this summer…see their schedule here.  As an added bonus, we ran into our good friends, the Malmfeldts.

 The kids must have run up and down the hill a million times!

These kids were seriously getting down!

I thought this was so cute…some of the kids got together for a game of duck, duck, goose!

This weekend was prosthodontic graduation for the three third year residents.  This also means that Nate is officially a second year resident!  Saturday was a BBQ hosted by Dr. Holloway.  There was tons of good food and Dr. Holloway is always so considerate of the residents with kids.  She had games set up in the backyard, kid-friendly food, and even had a pinata!  Magei and Sam had tons of fun!

Saturday was such a beautiful day here in Columbus that we decided to take the kids out to Easton for lunch and boats.  We had a picnic by the fountain and then let Sam and Magei play with the remote control sail boats.

I say fab.  Ok, I went the movies alone last night.  This was not the first time.  I saw the 4th Indiana Jones last summer alone while Nate and the kids were in California for two weeks.  And it wasn’t because I was a big loser.  I actually met people at Easton for dinner and shopping after the show.  But it had been a goal of mine to face this fear before my 30th birthday.  I know.  I need loftier goals.  Anyway, I’ve made some progress since then.  Last year, I was admittedly apprehensive, if not self-conscious.  The theater was pretty full, but I put my purse in the seat next to me to make it look more like my date was either out buying popcorn or using the restroom.  This time I was slightly less concerned, but still intended on bringing a book to read before the movie started to make it look like I was super busy.  I forgot the book, but no matter…I was actually the only person in the entire theater!  So when I say I saw a movie alone, I mean serisouly alone.  My imagination actually started getting away from me and I made emergency escape plans just incase a masked man burst in.  No really…I located all the emergency exits.  And I thought about moving to the very back row so no one could sneak up on me from behind.  I’m happy to report I made it out alive and mostly enjoyed the movie.

And now for the review…I saw Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonean.

Major reason why I can never see this movie again: Hank Azaria.  When he isn’t lisping, he is fine.  But the problem is that he lisps practically the entire movie.  It’s part of his accent for the character.  I seriously could not stand it.

Another oddity:  this movie was a The Office cast reunion.  Andy Bernard, Kelly Kapoor, and Darryl Philbin all had parts.  They were small parts, but still.  I thought it was a little much to have THREE people from The Office in the movie.

The singing cherubs were actually the Jonas Brothers.  I was really hoping for NKOTB, but they were still a cute part of the movie.

Overall, I give it 2.5 stars.  I support the fact that it is good, clean, family entertainment.  You can see this movie confident in the knowledge that there are no naughty parts.  And if you’re not bothered by lisps, you may even think it should rate higher.  Bottom line: if you are going by yourself, go ahead and splurge for one full-priced ticket.  If you are taking the whole fam, consider waiting for the dollar theater.

We drove to Virginia for Memorial weekend to see our good friends, the Geyers.  We had such a fabulous time and wish we could have stayed longer!  I can’t even believe it has been a year since Nate graduated and everyone moved away.  Of course, Kellie didn’t tell me she was having problems with this pregnancy until after we got there.  Hopefully we took it easy enough for her…and hopefully she wasn’t too annoyed with my bossing her around to have a seat or quit lifting!

We have been to Virginia several times, but this was our first time in the Richmond area.  The drive was absolutely beautiful the entire way there.  I wish we would have had the time to stop and enjoy some of the scenery on the way.

Nate went to work with Jake on Saturday and had so much fun assisting him and seeing how his practice is operated.  Kellie and I had lots of fun with the kids and met back up with the boys in the evening.  We treated ourselves to banana splits every night after the kids went to bed and just had a great time!  Thank you so much for having us!!