We woke up at 7a.m. and made the split decision to go to Cedar Point for the 2nd time this week. It made me so happy to let Chris finally get on some of the killer rides, not without anxiety though. First we took Chris to the Top Thrill Dragster. Here is a picture from this snapshot I got from the video Matt took:

As you can see, I am in the gray shirt, and Chris is next to me. Not hard to miss because he’s the smallest on the ride. I love the look on his face! Next, I have the video this was snapped from, but it goes so fast you can’t tell it’s us. At the very end Chris pumped his hands (briefly visible on track back) and said, “oh yeah, I wanna do this again!”.

I was hoping for a “rollback” where it just almost doesn’t make it over the top and then rolls back down the track, just to shoot you up again! That didn’t happen though!

We took Andrew on Millennium Force, which used to be the tallest and fastest. He cried all the way to the ride. We tried to hide the fact that the monstrous hill in front of him was not the one he is going on, but Chris blew that. He freaked out, but didn’t fight me getting in. When I got him into the car, I put his safety belt on and I stepped on him to get some leverage while I pulled it as tight as I could — too tight in fact. Then I placed the lap bar down on him and proceeded to stand on it to make sure he was tight in there! I didn’t want any chance of him flying loose since he’s only barely the requirements in size to get on. He was calm the entire ride and at the end, i said, how was it, he said good, but then proceeded to tell me how badly his stomach hurt. Mostly from me squeezing him into the seat hard! I told him no more scary stuff. He tackled the Iron Dragon several times, the Blue Streak, Snake River Falls a few times, Shoot The Rapids, Mine Ride, Wild Cat, and several others, so it was worth the money.

I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to do anything at home because I measured him at home with shoes off at 47 inches. In the park you go to the operations office and they officially measure him, and he measured in at 49″ tall! 90% of the rides are good with 48″. Chris did ok, he measured at least 54″ so he could go on everything he wanted. The little boogar did the worst coaster, Top Thrill first, then Millennium Force, and then chickened out as it was our turn on Wicked Twister. I’m thinking he chickened mostly because of it’s speed and the fact that you are dangling your feet rather than sitting in a car. We got all the way in line and when it was our turn, we skipped over the platform and left, only for him to turn to me 5 minutes later and say, um, I think I want to do that now. I said, oh no, even though the line was super short, my feet have huge blisters. These blisters started at my other trip to CP on Tuesday and they reopened really bad because the kids hit up the water parks real early in the day. We got sopping wet and I had soggy feet for several hours, which contributed to nasty blisters to say the least.

We left the park at 4:30, which is totally normally uncalled for under normal circumstances, but the kids were so tired and even Chris said, “I’m coastered out!”. I was ok with that since I could barely walk at this point!

Today I have been on a cleaning binge. It’s amazing, the little places you forget over time to clean and then you’re like “WOW” 8 years later. I was bad about baseboards in the kitchen. I got on my hands and knees and was like, omg, have pigs me sleeping up against my kitchen counters? It took 2 magic eraser to get that job done. I should know better but for some reason it was one of those places I always overlooked cleaning. Now they are better than ever before. All of my cabinets are sparkly clean. Magic Erasers by the way, are a godsend. In case anybody reading this does not use them, you have to try them. They get up everything! Anyhow, cleaning kitchen baseboards are going to be my monthly priority now. My tricks of the trade are Greased Lightning spray and Magic Erasers. I couldn’t be a clean mom without either of those products. They are my godsend!!

I’ve still got a lot of work to do around here. We’ll get this place cleaned up as soon as we are all evacuated. I like working in nice open rooms to clean so I can see everything. We aren’t going to leave our house a dump, like some others do in our situation. We want our house to sell for as much as possible. First we will try to do a short sale, and if that doesn’t happen we’ll work with the bank and see what our other options are.

I am more concerned about the maintenance of the property once we leave. I don’t want it to get all overgrown and nasty immediately. I was thinking about hiring my brother to go over there and mow the lawns once a week, just to keep up curb appeal.

Tomorrow I will tackle the bathroom. I will clean the tiles by hand and the tub, getting around every corner. Ultimately when we move though, it’s going to be a matter of taking all the little stuff in the van over there daily, as much as we can, and saving the big stuff for last. So far it’s just Matt and I doing all the heavy lifting. I seen a new infomercial for something called EZ Moves, and I honestly think I will invest.

Ok well goodnight. My bones are creaking and the blisters I have on my feet from my 2nd trip to cedar point really wore me out. We’ll probably go one more time to Halloweekends in the fall!