Jarom served his mission in Cleveland, OH and has not been back since, so we decided to make the trip(in June) since we live so close. It only took us 3 years to get there, but better late than never. On Monday night we decided to go, so we booked our hotel and left Tuesday morning. We were worried about how the kids would do and sure enough, Jerry started screaming about 20 min into our drive. To try to curb the screaming we tried to bribe him with a movie, Beauty and the Beast. That worked until the scene where Bell's dad goes to the castle and Beast locks him up. Jerry got scared and started freaking out, so we put on The Little Mermaid, which worked for awhile, but then Jerry had had enough of being in the car. Because Jerry likes suckers so much, we bought some dumdums at the gas station assuming that would stop the crying. Little did we know, that it would turn out to be a very sticky mistake. Not only did that not stop the crying, I think it might have actually made it worse. It also put a sticky coating on Jerry and everything within his reach. This is right after consuming a blueberry dumdum.
Right after passing through Columbus, we took a detour through Amish Country where Jarom served for a few months. It was a pretty drive through the hills. We saw a sign for Ohio's longest covered bridge so we turned off to take a look. Not very long, but it was still pretty cool.
We went by one of Jarom's old apartments in Wooster so that he could reminisce about old times, and he said it smelled of stale cigarette smoke just like it used to. Oh, the memories. As soon as we got to the hotel, I took Jerry swimming and Jarom ventured into the ghetto to look for a grocery store. We ended up just eating fast food for dinner and going to bed around 9:00. The kids did surprisingly good the first night. we didn't know how they would do, but Jerry was in his pack-n-play and kept standing up to make sure we hadn't gone anywhere. Once he knew that we were still there, he would wave and lay back down. He must have done it 10 times before finally falling asleep. We woke up and went to Bob Evans for breakfast. For those from Utah, Bob Evans is more than just a news anchor on FOX 13, he's also a glorified and overpriced Denny's restaurant chain in the East, with food that is not very good.
After breakfast we drove to the temple and spent the morning at the sites. We got through all of the sites without any major meltdowns from the kids with one exception...The Temple of course! We went on the 12:30 tour which happens to fall right in the middle of Jerry's nap time, so Jarom spent the majority of the tour restraining an exhausted screaming little man. After the temple we put the kids in the car and before we made it up the hill, (1/4 mile), Jerry was asleep.
We then drove to the Great Lakes Science Center, which is right on Lake Erie and waited in the car for the kids to wake up. Once they woke up, we went inside where they have all these exhibits for kids. Jerry seemed to enjoy himself, especially in the ball pit. After that, we drove back to the hotel to go swimming and then to bed. We left early the next morning and were dreading the drive because of how bad Jerry was on the way up, but both kids actually did pretty good. All in all it was a spiritual, exhausting, and fun filled last minute trip!
