Ohio: The Fun Begins

Considering previous pool adventures and her love of bathtub swimming, it was surprising to see Bridget acting so tentative in the (literally 90-degree) pool. Still pretty cute to watch her veg on a raft, though.

My mom celebrated her birthday shortly after our arrival.

The effects of our wild journey didn't set in until a full 24 hours later, but then it took days for Bridget to recover...poor baby. 

The boys, on the other hand, exploded off the blocks.

Here was our whole-extended-family cookout:

My cousin Julie with baby Bryn

Her husband Mike and their son Eli

All that swimming and eating sure took its toll:

But Bridget finally got her mojo back on about day 5:

I finally got to meet my good friend Erin's baby Frank, who turns one in just a few days. He was even cuter than this picture indicates:

Here are the boys in action, having quickly completed their one-day course of what I call Ohio Boot Camp with Finn swimming without help in the deep end for the first time (like Will did last summer).

Meanwhile Will is perfecting his crawl stroke:

It was hard to leave Ohio when I was little and every day felt like a party with so many cousins around; now it's hard to leave because my kids could spend all summer in the pool and with their grandparents, and a week hardly feels sufficient.

Of course, we also miss the sight of my grandmother swinging open the back door to greet us when we get there. The surprise of her absence has ebbed a bit two years later, but the strangeness will never go away entirely.

We left making theoretical plans for how we'd get there next summer with five kids under six, but we all quickly resigned ourselves to a wait-and-see mentality. And thus ended our final family trip as a quintet. (I'm not supposed to go any substantial distance from home now that I'm past the 24-week mark.) It was a great one.