Hocking Hills Vacation

At the beginning of July, we went to Hocking Hills for a family vacation with my entire family.  This vacation has been in the works since last fall, and I have been looking forward to it for a long time!  We rented a cabin with five bedrooms and three bathrooms for ten adults, three kids, and a dog.  I had a blast!  Traveling with little ones is always pretty stressful (would you really call it a vacation?), but at least vacationing with family reduces the stress because there are lots of eyes willing to look after the kids, allowing for some down time and napping.  Each family got their own room, so that meant the Bonds were upstairs in what I called the "Bond Suite."  The four of us shared one large bedroom, a bathroom, and a loft area with four twin beds.  William slept great in the bedroom in his pack n play.  The other three of us, however, bounce back and forth between beds in all different locations in the suite, sleeping very little.  My parents actually brought Eliana's toddler bed with them which was set up in the bedroom.  However, she wanted to sleep in the twin beds in the loft, where is was loud and bright, which meant she went to sleep very late and only with a lot of tears, threats, and bribery.  Why does she hate to sleep so much??  By the last night, she was so tired, she feel asleep in the twin bed fairly easily, and I was able to carry her to the toddler bed to sleep the rest of the night.

Besides not sleeping, we went on a couple of hikes in the state park, played in the creek that went through the property on which the cabin was located, did a little swimming, and ate lots and lots of food.  We also celebrated William's birthday with a piñata, per Eliana's request.  I got to cuddle with my beautiful niece, spend time with my siblings around the fire, and enjoy some beautiful scenery away from city life for a while.  All in all, it was a wonderful vacation.  I can't believe we all managed to get together at the same time!  Hopefully we can do this again next summer.  But then we might need more than one cabin...

First hike to Old Man's Cave - I think Mike and Ben slept through this hike.  My dad stayed behind to babysit William, who was napping.

She enjoyed this hike!

Claire's first hike!  Cute family.

Great looking bunch on that bridge.

Everything was so green!  We have gotten so much rain lately that there were moss and ferns everywhere!  It was really beautiful.

Eliana spent a lot of time hiking through the creek.  Here she is trying to skip rocks with Uncle Michael.

William stayed back at the cabin to do a little reading.

Since the kids couldn't jump in the hot tub, I brought a little pool for them.  The huge deck was a perfect place to have a pool party.

Later that afternoon... David holding Claire.  This is one of his expertise: getting a baby to nap in his arms.

It was a sleepy afternoon.  Ben thought that he needed a nap after sleeping in through the morning hike.

More to come. :)