Cincy Museum

Last weekend we went to the Cincinnati Museum Center to see the Real Pirates exhibit. First we saw the OMNIMAX film called Sea Monsters. I don't think I'd ever been to an OMNIMAX theater. It was almost like a planetarium where the screen was sort of dome like.

The Real Pirates exhibit was a National Geographic exhibit about a slave ship turned pirate ship called the "Whydah" (pronounced Wee-duh, named for the slave port Ouidah in Africa). It displayed a bunch of artifacts recovered from the wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod and told the story about the pirates of the 18th century. Very educational and very interesting for kids and adults. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures in the exhibit so below are pictures of the museum and right outside the gift shop.

Louisville Zoo

Even though that we had been to two zoos in the past month (Cleveland and Cincinnati) and the Upchurches had been to two zoos in the past two days (Louisville and Cincinnati) we wanted to do something fun with the Upchurches before we headed home. Since the Louisville Slugger Museum was not doing bat productions on Sundays, Jodee suggested that we go to the Louisville Zoo and so off we went. Here are the pictures...

Cincy Reds

After the Cincy zoo we went to see the Reds get their butts kicked. I heard that they sucked this year, but man, were they ever bad. They lost 4-0 and only got 1 hit. Very lame.

There were so many Cubs fans there that we thought that we were in Chicago. Perhaps it was just because we were sharing the nose bleed section with the Cubbies but all that you could hear was "Go Cubs!" and "Cubbies, Cubbies!"

I didn't get to see much of the game because I was constantly running and getting food, fan paraphernalia, etc. I think I saw a total of about 2 innings. I obviously did not really miss very much. The saving grace was that the rest of the family had fun and the tickets were only $6.50/piece. And the field was pretty cool with a good view no matter where you sat.

Anyway, here are the pictures...

Cincy Zoo

A couple of weekends ago we went to Cincy with the Upchurches. First we went to the Cincy zoo to see how cool their zoo was in comparison to ours (Columbus and Louisville); the verdict: ours is way better. The only pictures we are posting are the Lorikeet Landing. There were actually other animals but none that have us in the pictures with them. Enjoy!

Slate Run Historical Farm

For their field trip several weeks ago, Nicole and the kids went to what is called a Slate Run Historical Farm. I'm not exactly sure what "Slate Run" means (only thing I could find was that it is a river in PA), but according to the website this place involves experiencing "a first-hand what life was like on an Ohio farm more than 100 years ago." Here are the pictures. More pictures can be found here.

Cleveland Zoo

Since we apparently didn't see enough dinosaurs at the Creation Museum and Dinosaurs Alive!, we decided that we should catch the dinos at the Cleveland Zoo before they became extinct from there as well! There were lots of live animals at the zoo, but we're only going to post the pictures with the kids in them which also just happened to be the pictures with the dinosaurs in them.
















Here are the kids being eaten by a snake!












Kids petting the Amargasaurus.











Rebekkah and the Muttaburrasaurus.











Micah and the Deinonychus Slasher.














Rebekkah and the Suchomimus.











Kids and the Torosaurus.














Kids getting scared by the T-Rex.

Chillicothe Paints

Here are a few pictures of us at the Chillicothe Paints baseball game that we went to back in early August. The Paints are Chillicothe's semi-pro baseball team. Man was it ever hot! It was a nice relaxing time for the family. And the best part about it was that someone out front had two extra tickets that they gave us.

Creation Museum

Several weekends ago we visited the Creation Museum near Cincinnati. The obvious draw for Micah was the dinosaurs and there were quite a few. It was a great opportunity to talk to the kids about creation vs. evolution and God and the universe.

The museum was really a gospel presentation which presented history from creation to the end. All the exhibits were based around the seven C's: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. After some introductory rooms the C's really started with a film about the first six days of creation in a dramatic reading of Gen 1. Then you went into the Garden, to the Fall, to the Flood, to Babel, and finally to Christ and the cross. Nothing much was devoted to the subject of consummation but I suppose that was just a clever way to round out the seven C's and complete the thing.

All in all it was a pretty excellent museum. Especially since a lot of times it seems that Christian presentation are a bit cheesy. This was not. Plus they had a nice planetarium that we saw on the way out. Very well done. I'd definitely give it 4.5 stars since there could have really been a bit more on the science. I suppose if you were not Christian you would probably think it was a flop as far as the science part goes. Anyway, here are the pictures...

Day 3 Pennsylvania - Lancaster

The third day was spent invading any shred of privacy that the Amish communities of Lancaster County (it's pronounced "LANE-KEST-R", with the emphasis on the KEST) may have left after the weekend invasions.

To me the whole thing felt a little wierd; almost like we were going to a zoo where the specimens to view were people who were Amish instead of animals. One immediately obvious difference was that the specimens waved at you. The whole time I was wondering what they thought of us. They probably think we're a bunch of idiots who have nothing better to do than drive around and stare at them as they work to put food on the table.

Anyway, we first stopped at the Mennonite Information Center to watch a short film about the old order Amish. It was very educational and just talked about who the Amish are and what they believe. We learned that the largest old order Amish community in the world was right in our neck of the woods in Holmes County, OH. Lancaster County, PA was the second largest old order Amish community in the world.

After the film we hopped in the car and proceeded to drive around their neighborhoods. It was apparent that they did not have washers and dryers since every house had gigantic clotheslines with massive amounts of identical looking clothes and towels on them.

The Mennonites live among the Amish here and so there were shops every so often run by Mennonites (since Amish are not self promoting and do not use electricity, etc.). We stopped at several recommended places along the way. There was a Mennonite bakery where we got some whole wheat hot dog and hamburger buns, pastries, and ice cream. The kids also fed some goats here. At a petting zoo along the way, we took a picture of this wooly cow that was something we'd never seen before. The petting zoo was actually really disgusting so we didn't stay here very long.












At the end of the day we bought some homemade root beer for $2/bottle and it was totally disgusting. It tasted like nasty medicine. The last stop before we drove home was Intercourse, PA. Now we can say that we've been there. Nothing here exciting enough to write home about. We opted not to take a carriage ride here since we thought we just do one when we visit Holmes County, OH.