Seven Hills Homedays, July 27

Last Sunday the kids and I went to the Seven Hills Home Days.  Yuta had gotten up super early to work the opening shift at SBux, so we left him at home to take a nap.

The Friday before we went to watch the Home Days fireworks in our friend's in-laws' backyard (great seats!!), and we wanted to go back and check out the rest of the stuff.

Based on our experience in Strongsville a week or two prior, I didn't really expect the kids to want to do any rides or many activities.  I thought we'd mostly be spectators again, but I was wrong.  When we first got there we found a place to sit under a tree and watched the rides for a bit.  Then we decided to go see what games were there - they had the typical balloon/dart, basketball shooting and water pistol games.  But the one that the kids were most interested in was the strong man game - the one where you swing a mallet to try to ring a bell.  Each of them was able to take a few swings.  Taisim was just able to lift the mallet.   Here they are taking their turns:

After that we came across the funhouse, and the kids were eager to give that a try, so we went to buy tickets.  We went through the funhouse three or four times.  At the end was big spinning wheel, and Taipan would go thru it first, then push the emergency stop button (as directed by the ride operator) for me and Taisim to come through.  Here they are at the funhouse mirrors:

After the funhouse we went to a kid-oriented thing called Adventure Land (or something like that), where they could climb a ramp, jump into a ball pit, climb out via a rope-net ladder, go across a bridge and down a slide.  They wanted to do this quite a few times - we spent the rest of our cash on some more tickets and went through that as many times as our tickets allowed (and then a couple more thanks to a generous ride operator).  I knew they'd be disappointed to leave, but I'd spotted a balloon artist, and used that to transition out of Adventure Land.  

Taipan requested a blue monkey, and Taisim asked for a pink flower:

After Home Days, we went to Handel's for some ice cream and milkshakes.  They had blast climbing through the rock garden, but I'd left my camera in the van, so no pics of that.