A Great Discovery for all Clevelanders

We discovered-thanks to a tip from a friend- an amazing deal here in Cleveland. First some background...

With the twins almost here, as well as the long months of winter, Rachel has been looking for ways to avoid the cabin fever that comes from being couped up in a house all day that is too small for our expanding family. See, the problem with winter is that it is too cold to be outside for long, especially with kids. Before we had children (and even with Evelyn when she was little), we filled these long months by going to dollar movies, window shopping at the mall, or visiting our libraries and getting good books to read together. Unfortunately, none of these activities is particularly appealing to young children. Kids prefer things like the zoo (indoor zoos in winter), or an indoor playground. The problem is that getting individual passes to all of these places would be prohibitively expensive. That is when we talked to our friend and discovered the Boonshoft Museum pass.

The Boonshoft Museum is a discovery museum down in Dayton. I will probably never go there. But I still bought the pass. Why? Because the museum has reciprocity agreements with over a hundred places throughout the nation that are kid-friendly, including several here in Cleveland. Thus, for the same price as a yearly pass to the Cleveland zoo, I got the Boonshoft pass which includes a yearly pass to the Zoo, Rainforest (indoor zoo), Museum of Natural History (Dinosaur Museum), the Akron zoo (short drive from here), Inventor's Hall of Fame (sounds interesting, but not super kid-friendly) and the Great Lakes Science Center (a discovery museum for kids). And that is just in around here! Bring on the winter!

So what did we do this week? Well, we went to the zoo. Twice. We also visited the Rainforest for the first time and I have to admit that it better than I expected. Evelyn really liked it too- especially the monkeys. It has been a lot of fun watching Evelyn grow up and become more interactive. We are trying to spend a lot of quality time with her since in a couple of weeks we will have three to divide our attention and she won't be our only little girl anymore (sort of a sad thought). She is going to be a great sister though, and I am excited to watch her take on that role.

Rachel is hanging in there and will deliver exactly 2 weeks from today assuming that all goes well. She is still active, but is slowing down a little for this last little bit of her pregnancy. But only a little. Like I said, we went to the zoo twice this week and she is at an interpreting job as I type this blog post. The thing is, that she also looks amazing as she is doing all this. I married well.

One other thing happened this week. We hosted a prospective dental student at our house while he was going through the interview process. It was sort of fun to take him around the school and the neighborhoods. Also, I realized how much I really like it out here as I answered his questions about life in Cleveland and at the school. This is surely the place we are meant to be.