An Outing with My Kids

This weekend I did something I haven't been able to do for a very long while. I took my kids out. For hours.

For those of you who don't know me or my story, up until a few months ago I walked with a cane and not far. I couldn't drive more than a few miles without getting very uncomfortable. I couldn't stand on a hard surface like tile or cement more more than a couple of minutes. 

I drove them into downtown Cincinnati, farther than I've been able to drive in a very long while. We went to the Cincinnati Museum Center to see the train display. When we got to the parking booth just after a solid rain, a full double rainbow graced the sky. One end of it was amazingly wide and bright and ended on top of a really ugly and apparently abandoned industrial building. It was amazing. We pointed it out to the parking booth guy and held up traffic so he could gawk at it with us.   

The surprising thing about the exhibit is it was less about the trains (no trains in the pictures) and more about the buildings. Half a floor of the Cincinnati History Museum was dedicated to a miniature Cincinnati complete with the original baseball stadium and Coney Island. My kids were mesmerized by the detail in the display as was I.


In addition to the train exhibit, we decided to see the Omnimax movie about trains. We have a three-year-old who has never seen a regular movie in a theatre. We came up with an exit strategy for the little guy while we stood in line forever. The forever part, standing in line for more than twenty minutes on tile, was not good for my foot. I kept my eyes closed for half of the movie to combat the motion sickness, and I felt my foot swell up. 

My little guy did great - he was the only one of us that kept his eyes opened for the whole movie. He laid back on his dad's lap and took in the whole experience. I think he's going to be disappointed when we take him to a normal movie. 

We wanted to go to another museum after the movie, but I couldn't do it. My kids didn't seem disappointed at all, just happy we were able to do everything we had already done. I can't remember the last time we've done something like this as a family. I am looking forward to many more outings this year. My kids were so happy. So was I.