The summer has been flying by, as you can tell by the dearth of entries this month. Last week's thrill was a visit to Ohio to see the grandparents. We had a wonderful time, and that is in spite of a series of customer service glitches--even after carefully explaining our order, the hotdogs came on buns and had to be returned and redone because gluten intolerance outweighs going with the flow; after walking all over Cedar Point to find the gluten free French fries, the hot dog place near it was closed, and we had to walk all over the park to find gluten free main dish; because of a management glitch, the pizza place only had one gluten free crust left (we went back home and brought more); and several airplane delays had us waiting in one airport for five hours, racing from one airplane to another in fifteen minutes, and getting to bed at 4:00 a.m. body time. But really, we had a great time.

The weather made everything easier. Instead of being the typical 90 and humid, it was 70's and humid. That meant we could actually do things outside. We went to a put put golf place. We also played put put golf, bocce, and croquet at Kendal, the grandparent's retirement community. There's a large pond out their back door, and David played on the grass in front of it or ran around it. It was so great to have a way for him to get exercise. Luckily, he didn't run anyone down. We also went to a local lake where the kids dug in the sand, and John and I had lovely little canoe trip.

The fabulous free art museum was having a family friendly day on Sunday. This was a bit of a catch 22 for me. I was thrilled to get a chance to go the museum and frustrated that we raced through it due to David's attention span. The kids did a treasure hunt and found art in various rooms, but even the arms and armor couldn't keep David for long. But then there were all these projects in the atrium. The kids made kites, stop motion videos, and paper airplanes. We had a really fun paper airplane flying contest outside on the patio and won all sorts of cool stickers because we were the only participants all day. And John and I got to dance.

When we investigated, the art museum family fun day, we noticed they were also offering swing dancing on the patio. So, we tracked down the dance organization and discovered they were also putting on a swing dance the Friday after we arrived. Hmm. We had to do a little investigating because, you may recall, the dance we found in Hawaii was all west coast. But, this seemed clearly east coast/lindy, so we went to the dance Friday and a bit on Sunday.

We had a great time. The band was out of this world. They played the range of tempos we like to dance to, had a killer harmonica player, and played songs we know and love. The age range, style, ability level of the dancers were all a good fit for us. The instructor talked about Frankie Manning, our hero. He really did come from the same schools of thought we came from. We are looking forward to going to their dances every time we are in town.

Dancing was great, but Cedar Point was the definite highlight. This is our second year going, and we are getting the hang of how to pace it. None of us like the huge terrifying rides, so those siphon off a lot of people, and we have short lines for the rides we like. Next time, we want to leave time for the shows. From the top of the Ferris wheel, we saw a group doing really cool skateboarding and trampoline tricks.

We played lots of games, ate lots of cake and ice cream, played with toys, and got to meet the grandparents' friends. It was fun to be with the grandparents.