My family was not only invited to stay overnight and experience Fort Rapids Waterpark Resort in Columbus, Ohio (our first time there) but I get to giveaway a resort package similar to ours to one winner here at the blog!

The night we stayed was the same night that Extreme Makeover Home Edition was having a private party there. No, we were not invited and I didn’t see anyone “famous-to-me” aka Ty Pennington. I did have the boys pose by the sign anyways. This area was right beside the dining room were we had this big pizza for dinner. I think they normally cut it into something like 8 slices but the waitress offered to cut up into squares for us. We had leftovers which we were able to put in our fridge in the room and microwave later if we wanted.

For breakfast we ate from the breakfast buffet, they had french toast, pancakes, bacon, sausage, cereal, juice, fruit and I may be forgetting a couple things. Yummy and filling!

Our Oak Creek Cabin Villa.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well, I did a short video tour of our room, the winner gets the same kind of room as we had minus our mess: one of the Oak Creek Cabin Villas. If you’re reading this in email you will have to click through to the blog to see the video.

The Oak Creek Cabin Villa sleeps up to 6 people. This room is an oversized studio with 2 queen beds and a queen size sleeper sofa.  Our room had a clothes dryer, fridge, coffee maker, microwave…  Of course with the room comes up to 6 waterpark passes! I thought the bed and pillows were comfy. The resort also has a work out room, gift shop and a huge lovely lobby with a huge fireplace.

The night we stayed our boys attended story time and it included cookies and milk

The Waterpark.

You can experience the waterpark on day of check-in and day of check-out.

The waterpark is decorated in a western theme, as is the Resort itself. You’ll see in my video above the Indian huts and a horse or two. The lazy river is very nice. Its splits into two paths one has jacuzzi like sprays under water that feels good on the feet. You might want to park it, with your feet over a couple of those sprays for a minute. Just sayin’ Nice massage!

Okay, the other path takes you through a place you only go if you want water dumped on your head or you like the challenge of trying to dodge it.

The black slide is fun. Its like a big toilet bowl you go ’round in and then down the last shoot into the lazy river!

There are lifejackets and we needed them for our kids but there didn’t appear to be many around. We had them when we needed them though.

In addition to all this they have a huge arcade and a section where your kids can sift through a bag of dirt containing gems or fossils (you have to buy this bag of dirt with either gems or fossils- under $10 each). You’ll see a picture of kids doing this on Fort Rapids Resort website.

*You can now purchase Fort Rapids day passes & gift certificates at Drug Mart.

Ready to enter for a chance to win an overnight stay at

Fort Rapids Waterpark Resort?!

Rafflecopter has made some changes and you now have to sign in to enter the giveaway, this is suppose to be a good thing. Let me know if you have any problems.

Everyone has up to 11 entries possible in this giveaway! Take your time, giveaway begins today and end Jan. 20th at 11:59pm EST.

The only MANDATORY entry is the first thing listed below in the Rafflecopter widget. Everything else is optional and will give you more entries, increasing your chances. One winner will be picked randomly.

*Our family received a one night stay with waterpasses and complimentary dinner and breakfast as part of this review. This was not a paid post and as far as I know meals are not part of the winners package. Opinions are mine.
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a Rafflecopter giveaway

<——The Bloggers.

Doggone-it. Its a lot of work to write a good post, edit pictures and all. As a result,  I ended up just condensing some of our experience into one new post after the fail.

Today I want to share some “missing” pictures.

From this group of blogger’s I have made some especially sweet friends who are fun to keep in touch with online and some I’ve had some great networking opportunities with and they are… Jackie of Writ Rams, Tammy of Ann Arbor Mom, and Cindy of Akron Ohio Moms.  Jackie was an incredible help to me after losing about a months worth of posts after the blog fail episode and in May invited me to be the Homeschool Contributing Writer at her other blog Prime Parent’s Club.

The Castaway Bay trip was really about all the great stuff you’ll find at their Spa. You don’t have to be a resort customer to visit the Spa and it is very nice in there.

I compiled pictures of our trip from our room, waterpark, kids story with Snoopy & movie, and more into this slide show below (if you’re reading this in email you’ll need to click through to see).  Castaway Bay is a great place to take your kids and its got a very “beach resort” feel to it, which is important to those of us who love the beach but can’t make the drive often enough.

Visit my previous post on our Castaway Bay trip to see links to our short videos.

*Disclosure:  My family received a free night’s stay at Castaway Bay Resort which includes waterpark passes, naturally, as part of the Spa review event.  All opinions are my own.

Last weekend (Father’s Day weekend) our family participated in a VIP Blogger’s Event at the Lodi Station Outlets in Lodi, near Burbank, Ohio (Medina area). Our family occasionally shops there so Lodi Station is a bit familiar to us, it’s probably about a 45 minute drive for us from Canton. Jockey is one of my favorite brands and I find the lowest prices on what I want right in their outlet store. Another of my favorite brands to shop at Lodi Outlets is The Children’s Place.

Both of those stores had good deals going on but I found myself buying at some stores I usually don’t.

Lodi Station Outlets wanted us, bloggers and our families, to see and experience a variety of what makes Lodi Station Outlets the place to find great prices, great products and family fun. They armed each of our families with one/ $100 Visa card to shop the outlets, a Swag Bag (gift bag) of products and info from some of the stores, they fed us lunch from the Steam Cafe and ice cream cones from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and gave us a ride on the train. All of this is so we can “show & tell” you first hand about our experiences at Lodi Station Outlets.

* I recommend the Buckeye ice cream (peant butter/chocolate- YUM) at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory & special thanks to the Steam Cafe for custom making my picky boys their favorite- butter & peanut butter sandwiches. I know, kids are weird

I made a list of what I knew we should focus on to make the most out of this shopping trip and we got most of it.

What we bought.

We spent about $21 in the Men’s Wrangler store- Joel got a pair of jean shorts and a nice shirt.

At Osh Kosh B’Gosh we got Brendan 1 shirt and Jack 2 shirts and a pair of shoes – about $30.

I visited the Bali Playtex store and found my (hard to find) bra size and in record time, I think, tried on and bought 3 of the nicest bras I’ve found- and on sale Buy 3 and pay $16.99 each. A VERY GOOD deal, indeed. Great quality and price. Literally I saved $6 and/or  $7 off each one by buying three. About $54 total there.

If we had more time we could have searched more for shoes for Brendan and Joel but we had a church group cook-out to be at so we had to leave about 4pm.

In the Swag.

One of the items in our Swag Bag (gift/goodie bag) was this awesome 4 set of  Hamilton Beach spatulas on a removeable ring. I used them for the first time this morning while making icing for our cinnamon rolls and they are really nice to handle. And how cute are they!

These can be found at the Kitchen Collection and the price on them said $9.99 (worth it!) and are safe to 450 degrees.

First stop when you arrive.

Be sure to stop at the Customer Service desk and ask about the HOT TICKET card to savings.

Also, if Train Rides are your reason for visiting often, ask about the VIP Premier Pass. I believe it costs $35 for one year of free train rides. They gave each of us one of these (you get your picture taken and put on a plastic card) but the card says it expires in December so they may run on a calendar year basis.  Be sure to ask before you buy because 6 months is not the same as 12 months. Being (needing to be) a frugal family we would not buy these passes. However, this may be a great deal for you.

Be sure to pick up their Lodi Station Savings Courier. It looks like a small newspaper 2 front/back pages and I found many % off and $$ coupons in it as well as a list of activities/events to plan ahead for at Lodi Outlets.  I’ve listed most if not all of what is coming up between now and end of September:

For Sales:

7/1-4         Independence Day Sidewalk Sales

7/5-30      Back to School Gift With Purchase

7/24-26    End of the month sidewalk sales

8/1-14       Back to School Gift With Purchase

8/26-28    End of the month sidewalk sales

9/2-5         Labor Day Weekend Sidewalk Sales

23-25        End of month sidewalk sales

Meet & Greet Chugga Chugga Charlie:

July 2 & 16 from Noon-3pm

August 7 and 27 from Noon-3pm

September 3 & 10 from Noon – 4pm

Other Special Events:

Chalk on the Walk, July 2 & 16, Noon-2pm

Wild West Weekend, Reverse Train Robbery on August 27 & September 17

Follow Lodi Station Outlet on Facebook and on Twitter.

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*Disclosure: We received the $100 Visa card to spend at Lodi Station Outlet, lunch,ice cream, train ride and VIP Premier train ride Passes (something NEW at Lodi Station) for free as part of this review opportunity. All opinions in this post are my own. If you’d like my family to review your company, product or event, please visit my PR Media page: I work with Brands.

As a blogger, I was recently accepted to participate in a Chevy Girls campaign for the Northeast Ohio Chevy group. Chevy also invited us to the VIP breakfast opening day of the Cleveland Auto Show.

This was the first time I’d been to an Auto Show at the I-X Center in Cleveland. The Auto Show started the past Saturday and goes through March 6th so there is still time for you to get over there too

It also gave me a chance to wear my new boots ((that I got for $13 on sale!)) that my husband thinks are too fancy  for church.

Saturday during the VIP continental breakfast we watched the unveil of the new 2011 Chevy Sonic and 2011 Buick Verano, checked out the cool camaros and other new cars. {There’s more than just new Chevies at the show and there is a section with the old fashioned cars as well.}  Below I share some of the pics we got at the Cleveland Auto Show.

The Auto Show was fun. You could get inside the cars, do some test driving on some of them, and ride an obstacle course with others. There were interactive type things to do and some cool displays. You can get the scoop at this link including – ticket prices at –> Cleveland Auto Show if you think you want to go.

PS- The yellow Camaro was the inspiration behind the Bumble Bee Transformer and the Stingray was a fun car to look at and take pics of {Doesn’t it look happy!}. The Patriotic Chevy is called “American Pride”. Join me on Facebook here to see more pics as I add them.

This week head over to the Gotta Love Chevy NEO Facebook page and “like” them and then leave comments for your chance to win the DAILY prize. This week its $50 gift cards to Tower City! Check back each week to see whats going on. You can also click through the ChevyGirls banner in my side bar —>

Several weeks ago I purchased our new family membership from Coyote Point now known as CuriOdyssey. Now, we don’t have any plans on ever going to California (though I was born there) but the price was better.

How to buy the best zoo/science museum membership plan for your family.

Today we broke-in our new Coyote membership by visiting the Akron Zoo for free but paid $2 in parking. My favorite exhibit was the jellyfish and the touch pool /kids play area near the jellyfish.

*UPDATE: As of at least Summer 2011 Akron Zoo stopped allowing CuriOdyssey members Free Admission to their zoo.  Also, CuriOdyssey’s family membership has gone up in price to $75 I think.

Do you have or know of a membership to anywhere special that the Hall of Fame Moms readers would benefit from knowing of? Please share in the comment section.

Now we can get into a variety of science museums AND zoos for FREE or discounted admission! Since I’m homeschooling now, this is a great thing

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I introduced our trip in this post. You can read it if you wish.   So without further ado I want to tell you that we had a BLAST at Wild Water Kingdom. Possibly the first time either my husband or I (and of course our boys) had been to Geauga Lake’s water park in Aurora, Ohio. It was about an hour drive one way for us coming from Canton.  *We were provided free entrance, Beagle Bucks and parking to visit the park so that I might write a review about it.

My youngest is a born scaredy-cat, potential party-pooper .  Mr. “I will NOT be the life of the party” preferred this position when we got over to the really fun water park area with water slides and the big bucket that dumps on ya. This was an area where any age could have fun. Their were slides for my little guy and slides for big kids too.

But after awhile {and donning a life jacket} our little guy got into the “party” and appeared to be having a really good time in the water I’m glad to report.

Yeah, I know he doesn’t “look” thrilled here but that might be because his life jacket was up a bit high. He really did start having fun.

So I mentioned in my intro post that we were given Beagle Bucks to spend like cash in the park. We were given $40 (thats $10 per person) and I wanted to report that we were able to spend the day from about 2:45pm -closing at 8pm not needing all of that. Now we did spend just under the $40 but that included a few souvenirs (less than $8) which we could live without but bought anyways.

Since our family is young with small kids we split meals.  Our food purchases were for a  decent-sized pizza stuffed pretzel, a hamburger, a large slice of pizza which the boys shared and bottle of pop (20 oz I think) and a big Icee/slushy thing, a medium dish of the ice cream dots (Fun Dots?)…oh and a bag of cotton candy on our way out of the park   You can bring your own food and drinks to eat outside of the park in an area provided for those who want to do that. You just can’t take food and drink inside the park.

Some things to take note of about this Wild Water Kingdom…

• they have sand too!

• they have a really nice Little Tikes playground area.

• they have lots of those nice  (blue) lounging seats in different areas of the park.

• they have lockers.

• its a good idea to bring a stroller (even if your baby is 4 yrs old) to carry your wet towels and change of clothes.

• you cannot bring food/drink inside the park, but they do provide an area outside of it that you can eat at.

• they have lots of life guards that receive top training and they do have an interesting “head-move-groove” while they’re guarding

• They are giving HallofFameMoms’ readers  a $5 off ticket! Click here to get (and print) your coupon. Save $5 per person up to 4 persons during the 2010 operating season!

Here’s  a short video of clips from our day.

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*And that “not so good” surprise when we got home was finding the freezer door (above the fridge) hadn’t been shut all the way. And it wouldn’t have been too bad except since we got home late from the water park I didn’t find the freezer door like that till the next day. Lots of thawed and some warm (fridge section) food. I ended up throwing just about everything away ;(

Well, the fridge/freezer were due for a cleaning anyways.

Columbus is about a two hour drive for us but we get free admission to Cosi because we have a membership at a local museum here in Canton. You can learn more about getting free admission by checking out my post HERE.

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My chosen expression.

I have a narrow hallway and I was stumped about how to hang pictures. I wanted a look that made sense and was appealing. I picked out this expression and applied it to the center of the wall. I really like this expression “Each Day is a Gift”.  Isn’t it the truth! I plan to hang pictures around it. In fact I’ve already started.

Starting to hang pictures.

I just love this decorating idea! And they are running a buy 2 get 1 free special! I’ll tell you more about that in a bit.  But when you get yours, just be sure to follow the directions! There were a few times where the expression was sticking more to the paper than to my wall but it all worked out. Just follow the directions.  I think I had used soapy water to wash my wall and I shouldn’t have (think I forgot). My wall is plaster with trowling. It has these rainbow shaped lines in it basically so its textured. I don’t know if that was part of my problem in some spots  but once I got it on there (and its not hard)…I just applied more pressure to it.  Don’t get it wet. Anyways…watch the video tutorials. They are short and easy to watch.

Back to the special they are having.  You still have time, its been going on for awhile but between now and September 10th  you can buy any two items and get an additional item of equal or lesser value FREE.  And they are affordable…I’ve seen prices for $9.95 and up… I think I saw something about custom expressions where you pay per letter too. They have a really nice idea catalog for Fall/Winter 2009. I was also surprised to find out Ashley isn’t far from me. I think she said she saw my website listed on TuscMom.com so she can do a home show if I choose to go that route.

You can find out more about Uppercase Living by clicking here. Ashley also has a Fan Page on Facebook: Uppercase Living-Ashley Varga if you’d like to get updates there from her. Also note, her link/page on Uppercase Living is http://www.varga.uppercaseliving.net/Home.m  and must be typed in that way. Ashley also had this to share with me …

“on Sept. 15th we launch the Photo Prints line.  You upload any photo (high resolution) and we print it on vinyl that is removable and resuable.  The smallest is 2 feet x 2 feet, and they look really neat.   Something to keep in mind.  I also have a facebook page that updates the current specials and I have some new Uppercase photos on there-Uppercase Living Ashley Varga…”.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be looking into this some more. And Christmas is coming!

Well, we were able to fit in one short, fast mini-vacation this summer just before school starts. Our oldest will be in kindergarten this year   So we went to the Columbus area (Ohio) which isn’t all that far from where we are in Canton.  We were fortunate to be able to stay overnight with family down there and visit with them in between the plans we had for our own family. And I will add, it was much more enjoyable staying with them, I think, than staying in a nice hotel room. Our boys had their cousins to play with (and of course all their toys too), we had other adults to converse with and a free room! Can’t beat that, right?! And it was my neices’ birthday open house party too. Happy Birthday, Maia!

So we visited the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium…and it was a hot day! But we had a good time, not to mention the timing was great! I saw online that it was Teddy Bear Safari day and if the boys brought their bears they’d get free admission. That saved us $14.00 total! Whoo-hoo! We likey-that.  Note to self: Always, always! check the website for special deals before leaving the house.

I had thought to get a family zoo membership somewhere so we could go to different zoos more frequently for free or discounted but… a FaceBook friend told me about a place that we could have gotten BOTH zoo and science museum memberships together for  less than we would have paid to get them separately.  If you are looking for the best deal in memberships you can check to see if this is for you or not at Boonshoft. I’m not sure what the rate is and since I’m not buying one right now, I don’t care too much. But you might!

We had already purchased the museum family membership from the McKinley Museum (about $49) and that gets us into many museums around the US and some in other countries (not that we will be going there) for free or perhaps discounted.  And that got us into Cosi for free this past weekend as well. These memberships more than pay for themselves if you like to visit them often.

We had been to this zoo before but we had never been to Cosi. That is another fun place to go. Very hands on, see Jack holding up the moon There were gadgets and fun things, a big “little” kids section complete with water play, an Egyptian room, complete with (real) mummy,and a (fake) camel. You could ride a unicycle across a high-wire, yes, visitors could do this. And so much more. We didn’t even see it all.

I also got to go shopping at Krogers and Trader Joe’s! Am I sad or what? I found this actually made the trip an extra joy for ME! Just call me “pathetic”.  It was a whirlwind short mini-vacation, but it was fun. We got to do some new things and see some family.

And so I leave you with a picture of me and my oldest sitting at Donato’s restaurant…after a hot sweaty day at the zoo.