What Dena'e has been waiting for

 OK, here are our family vacation pictures.  Above are Joel and Nate at the petting zoo, and a really neat animatronic t-Rex.  Not shown is the fear that Asher had of both of these things.  He is at the "scaredy-cat" age, and nothing would convince him that the goats, and other little creatures would not harm him!  We did not have to remind him to stay in the stroller at the zoo.  The rest of the children had a lot of fun.

 Lunch break at the Cincinnati zoo.  It was a hot day, but we had a great time. 

 Asher wasn't scared of the airplanes at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH.  It was a really neat, and huge museum full of airplanes and other flying things from the Wright Bros, to modern day.

 At the zoo we were able to watch the zoo keeper interact with the elephants and he spent time afterwards answering our children's questions about the elephants. 

 Joel, Nate and Jeremiah were the biggest fans of the A.F. museum.  They especially liked the modern day planes, like this stealth fighter.  It was very neat to see these things in real life.  Joel really liked the missiles and they had a space pod from one of the earliest moon missions there also.  Rachael didn't like the museum so much, but she did a GREAT job walking around and being with her family.  I liked the Vietnam and Korean War era hangar and we tried to identify the planes and helicopters my dad would have been in.  We all learned quite a bit about the POW camps during the Vietnam war. 

 Benny and his mommy at the zoo.  He liked the Creation Museum the best and then the zoo.  The manatee, the monkeys, and the other animals kept his attention. 

 The giraffes were really neat, the way the zoo had them set up.  You could be on eye level almost with them, and could be very close.  It was a great zoo for getting closer to the animals than at the Philadelphia zoo. 

Mr. and Mrs in the Japanese garden in the zoo.  I look like I am growing another leg, but I am not.  That is just Benny! :)

Elijah's favorite duck.  This duck, whom we all thought was soooo cute and friendly quickly turned into a tyrant, going as far as stealing Elijah's sandwich from him and running off with it, snapping at the other ducks who wanted a share of his plunder.  This was the second day of the creation museum.  We had sat down outside to eat our packed lunch before heading inside to watch a planetarium show.

Our family in the garden of Eden.  The children really enjoyed this museum. We spent two full days touring the museum, watched two planetarium shows (I only saw one, Luke wasn't going to endure the second day's show.), and other movies.  Nate liked one on dragons and we all enjoyed the Men in White show. 

Sound asleep the first night in our hotel.  The kids did a WONDERFUL job in the van.  We left home at six am, and arrived at our hotel around 9 at night.  We were mindful to make many stops for stretching of little legs and potty breaks.  We took secondary highways for the most part and got to enjoy some beautiful scenery as well as a back wood West Virginia gas station and bathroom :)  Our hotel was nice and had a pool.  We need two adjoining rooms and that gives us plenty of space to spread out. 

Nice and fresh.  Stopping around Gettysburg for breakfast at eight am.  Everyone was very excited about this trip, and it went so well that it eased my fears of traveling with so many children.  I would gladly do it again.  Our van had a bigger meal allowance than we did, it gobbled up four tanks of gas on the trip.  McDonald's pancakes are way more affordable!  Our hotel served biscuits and gravy every morning (as well as other selections) a sure indication that we were very close to Dixie Highway.  I also brought two dinners along with us (spaghetti and sloppy joes) as well as sandwich fixings, fruit and snacks and lots of bottled water to ease the cost. 

We had a very memorial vacation this year.  We all learned a lot, especially the children.  We had fun being together and making memories together.  Besides one meltdown (from all nine of us, at the same time) when we were "lost" in Indiana, which was put to rest by stopping for drinks and a cookie (It was after seven pm and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, and the baby was screaming, Asher was screaming, Eli peed his pants, you know that kind of meltdown:) )our vacation was pretty much what we had hoped it would be.