Thursday, May 05, 2011

Day 9: Ohio Who?

We slept soundly and long last night. It was the first full night sleep that the Jedi had gotten in a few days. We deliberately didn’t plan any big trips or activities for the day so that we could rest and recoup.


The first thing we started was laundry. I joked on Facebook that I ran 2000 miles away from home, but I couldn’t escape the laundry monster. Really though, it was nice to be able to run five loads through the machine and to work on blog posts and photos from the trip while the laundry ran.

We heated up all the bbq leftovers we had collected and ate those for lunch. After lunch, the kids went out to the pool, since it was 80 some degrees and sunny. I took my netbook and a big glass of ice water and sat on the covered patio near the pool while they swam and splashed around. Toa’s cousin taught him how to swim and to float on his back. And to do a cannonball. That’s an important life skill.

After swimming, we headed out to Leatherby’s Family Creamery for ice cream. We sat down at our blue tiled table on our white wrought iron chairs and looked over the menu. While we were doing this, the server brought the orders out to the table next to us. She set this huge banana split in front of the dad. He just stared at it in disbelief. He turned to us and said, “I ordered a small!” To the little girl, she handed over an ice cream cone whose top half was bigger than the little girl’s face.

We proceeded to order with caution….except the Jedi. The Jedi ordered the second biggest sundae that they made. (The photo for this is on my phone. Do I know how to get it off my phone? No, I do not. But I know the word "no" in the previous sentence is an interjection. That should count for something.)

The thing was ginormous. Our California family members had never witnessed the Jedi putting away ice cream, so they were skeptical of his ability to consume the entire dish. Until the Jedi began. Then, the eldest cousin said, “Oh, he’s going to finish it. I can see the look of determination on his face.”

Finish it he did. But, he wasn’t the first one done. The first one to put away her whole dish of ice cream was Sweetling, who ordered a junior strawberry sundae. Sweetling has won herself an Ice Cream Badge. (For those of you keeping track, that’s the third badge I need to create when I get back home.)

Toa of Boy ordered a clown sundae with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. The clown hat was an inverted ice cream cone. Everyone was engrossed in their own ice cream when Toa received his, so Uncle was the only one to witness this event. Toa stared down his clown, spun him around so the hat was pointing at Toa’s face, and made the announcement, “Ok, his hat is going to go bye-bye. Is everyone ready? Here it goes….” Toa, mouth wide open, then descended upon the clown sundae, In one huge chomping bite, he devoured the clown hat.

Surprisingly, even after a large late afternoon ice cream trip, we all still had a tremendous appetite. I think that was due to the tantalizing aroma of dinner grilling. Uncle went down to the local carneseria and got us delicious stuff. We had carne asada and carnitas cooked on the grill and served on corn and flour tortillas cooked in a cast iron skillet, Mexican rice made from scratch, and refried beans cooked by the eldest cousin in another cast iron skillet. Uncle also chopped up fresh cilantro and red onion and tossed them in lemon juice for a garnish. Talk about some delicious food.

For dessert, they had brought home a bag of assorted pallettas, which are like all natural frozen smoothies on a stick. Eswin and his swim buddy cousin each had a cookies and cream, Sweetling and the Jedi had strawberry and strawberries and cream, Aunt had coconut, and I had  rice pudding (complete with raisins.)

The kids took off to play Wii together and the adults hung out and visited till bedtime.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 8
On to Day 10

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