The Outskirts of the Sixth Circle of Hell (Magic Mountain)

Published July 31, 2008 Birthday Parties / Events , Winter Activities 1 Comment
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Yesterday, Em attended a friend’s birthday party.  This is the second birthday party we have attended at Magic Mountain this year.  Seriously, I believe Magic Mountain must be the on the edges of sixth circle of hell, at least from this grown-up’s point of view.

I guess I should start out by saying the kids had a great time.   I think the group ranged from age 3 to maybe age 8 or 9.   There was a minor setback at the beginning of the party because MM requires socks/no shoes and since it was 80 degrees outside, some of the kids came in sandals.  Fortunately, Magic Mountain sells socks for $2 at the prize counter.  Crisis averted.

At the beginning of the party, the kids were set loose in the giant three story gerbil maze thing.   I will admit, that thing looks pretty fun.  The kids crawled around in there for probably 30-45 minutes.  They came out panting and sweating from the effort of having so much fun.  (All that sweat made me wonder how often MM cleans out the inside of the gerbil maze, but I didn’t bother to ask because I don’t think I want to know the answer.)

As an aside, I didn’t let L into the area with the gerbil maze.  She is only two, but she was VERY interested in what was going on in there.  I was afraid she would crawl up in there and freak out when she got lost.  I didn’t want to have to climb up and retrieve her.   She is also very easily overstimulated by all the noise/chaos, so I kept her a little out of the way, which was ok.

While the gerbil maze looked fun, Magic Mountain was also incredibly LOUD.  The maze area was open to the video game area on the top floor and the combination of video game beeps/buzzers/sound effects with the screams of kids clamoring around the maze was deafening.  By the end of the 45 minutes, I thought I was going to lose my ever-loving MIND (even though we weren’t even that close to the maze).

Then the kids were corralled into a birthday party space/ long row of tables laid end to end.  Because this party was on a weekday morning, the party space was not flanked on either side by other parties like the Saturday party we attended there in the past.   The saturday party was nightmarish because there were not enough chairs for the parents of the 45 kids (from 3 different parties) so it was incredibly hot and crowded and LOUD.   This time, it was no problem.

MM served up drinks and pizza very quickly.  The pizza at Magic Mountain was not the greatest.  It wasn’t as bad as Chuck E.  Cheese (which tastes like cardboard with a splash of ketchup), but it isn’t anything to write home about.  The kids ate it without complaint.  Then, the kids had cupcakes.  I don’t know if the cupcakes were provided by MM, but they were delicious.  For the record, I don’t even like cake at ALL, but these were really great.  After cake, the birthday boy opened his presents.  Then the kids were released back into the gerbil maze.  It was Elle’s naptime, so I rounded up the girls to go home.

As a parent who hosted our last birthday party at home, I can see the appeal of having a birthday party at Magic Mountain.  I think the birthday boy’s mom only had to prepare the goody bags, but everything else was provided by Magic Mountain.  There is also the benefit of not having to clean up after 15 (or so) kids drop crumbs/pizza/icing or spill milk on the floor.   They also didn’t have to manage any boring party games.

For the kids, I think Magic Mountain is generally a big winner.  Em has been asking for a MM birthday party since the first one she attended.  She loved this one too.   For bystander adults, or maybe just for me, MM was a bit crazy-making.  I couldn’t get over the noise.   I left with totally jangled nerves and wanted to spend the next hour rocking catatonically in the corner with my hands over my ears.

Graeter’s

Published July 30, 2008 Columbus , Restaurants , Weird Things Al Eats , Winter Activities Leave a Comment
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We ate at an embarrassing number of restaurants this weekend. Five restaurants in three days with two kids.  Even though I really, really like to eat out, I was pretty over it by Sunday night.

Despite my restaurant fatigue, we have a tradition of getting ice cream every Sunday evening in the summer.   I like it that the girls look forward to walking to the ice cream store.

Even if I forget, Em reminds me.  Over and over and over.

This week, we chose Graeter’s.  To be honest, I am not a huge fan of ice cream parlor ice cream.  Give me Breyer’s Vanilla Bean and some homemade hot fudge any day, but I don’t care that much for fancy flavors.

I do have a lot of respect for Graeter’s though.  One of the few ice cream treats I enjoy is a good chocolate malt.  I am picky.  My chocolate malt must be a Black and White –vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup.   I can not bear the bastardization that is a chocolate shake made with chocolate ice cream.   At Graeter’s they never hassle me about my order.  The know what a Black and White is.  They also don’t seem to care if I order extra malt.  They make a kick-ass malt.  It is also quite generous.  Elle and I share to spare the mess of giving a 2 year old an ice cream cone.

Allen always orders something weird.  This week it was a peach soda.  A dip of peach flavored ice cream in soda water.  He also had a small cup of extra soda water on the side.  Personally, I thought it looked icky, but he really liked it.

Who are we kidding?  You don’t have to work hard to sell ice cream to kids.  Kids will eat anything if you freeze it and make it a bright color.  But Graeter’s still goes the extra mile to lure the kids into their frosty web.

Their Bethel road location has a decent indoor play area.  Granted, it is always a tad sticky in there, but it is a nice touch.  There is a serious lack of non-mall (germ pits) indoor play options in North Columbus when the weather is bad.  Come February, I will happily pay for an ice cream cone in subzero temperatures just to let the kids run off some extra energy that doesn’t involve jumping on my furniture.  They also have a not-too-expensive birthday party option.

Even without the playground, the kids love Graeter’s.  Em’s current favorite is a cotton candy flavored sugar cone.  With sprinkles.   And eyes and a cherry nose.  The process of nibbling off the poor guy’s eyeballs and nose takes a good three or more minutes as she giggles with glee.

Nothing says fun like eating a face!

Top 5

Published July 29, 2008 Columbus , Schools and Education , Suburbs 1 Comment
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Allen and I were both born and raised in Ohio.  We also both got our undergraduate degrees from OSU.  I won’t speak for him, but *I* spent the better part of my adolescence and college years dreaming about getting as far away from Ohio as possible.   I was quite certain that anywhere would be better than here.  After OSU, Allen left for grad school in California.  As soon as I graduated, I followed him.  We stayed in the bay area for about 5 years.  It was fun while it lasted.

About 10 minutes after our first child was born in San Francisco (ok, it was really about a month), we began to plan our return to the buckeye state.  With a kid, the stresses of living in San Francisco became overwelming.  We couldn’t get back to Ohio fast enough.  In the past five years, the pros of living here have vastly outweighed the cons.  We love living in Columbus.

I know, people in other parts of the country don’t think of the Midwest as anything interesting.  Columbus doesn’t rank on the mental lists people keep of “cool” cities (You know: San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Austin, Portland etc.).  That’s ok.  If Columbus were cooler, it might stop being so amazingly perfect.

TOP 5 Reasons We Love Living in Central Ohio:

  1. The Cost of Living/Housing- It doesn’t matter what kind of housing you want — apartment, condo, single family home, McMansion, gentrifying neighborhood, whatever — you can get it here CHEAP.  The mortgage on our small (1900 sq ft) starter house is less than 2/3rds the rent we paid to *rent* a very small two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco in 2003.  It is also 2 bedrooms larger and has about twice as much square footage and yard space as the houses our few friends who managed to be home owners in SF own.  And it cost about $400,000 less than they are paid.  Other things are pretty cheap too.
  2. No Traffic - The difference between driving to Al’s work during rush hour and non-rush hour varies by about 10 minutes.  This means he gets off work at 5:30 and is home in time for dinner at 6:00 on a 15 mile commute.  Sure, rush hour traffic is a *little* slower, but I don’t think I have ever seen it become stop and go on our commute with the exception of a rare big accident.  And other drivers are polite in the Midwest.  If you turn on your turning signal, the let you change lanes without flipping you off.  It used to take me well over an hour to travel 20 miles to my job just outside San Francisco.  Lower bloodpressure is a nice side effect.
  3. Kid-Friendly – This place is designed for families like ours.  There are tons of activities to pick from every week.  Lots of them are free.  Most restaurants welcome our girls (high chairs, kids’ placemats, etc)  Changing tables are plentiful.  I don’t think I had ever even seen a changing table in San Francisco.  Places that might normally be adult-centric (museums, conservatory, etc) seem to have a lot of special events or other ways to include kids and families.
  4. Great Public Schools – We live in a suburb with a really great public school district.  When we were deciding where we wanted to live (once we decided to leave our first apartment in the Short North for the Suburbs ) there was no shortage of great public school options in the suburbs.  The only thing I have found lacking in my research on our local elementary school options is foreign language instruction.  Even that has been discussed at the district planning level.  Em starts at the public school this fall, so maybe I will have more perspective on it then, but so far, I like what I see.
  5. Small-Town Feel with the Amenities of a bigger City - When we were house-shopping, we did our own version of the Popcicle Test. Despite the cul-de-sac wasteland that surrounds a lot of Columbus, we were determined to live in a walkable neighborhood.  We lucked out and found a house in Worthington.  We will probably never leave this town because we love it so very much.  Once they are old enough, our kids to be able to walk to their schools, the pool, a candy shop, a pizza shop, several parks and to get ice cream.   Not only that, we are able to walk to restaurants, a drugstore, a hardware store, the farmer’s market, a couple bars and meet most of our day-to-day needs without ever getting in a car (with the exception of groceries).  People here are nice.  There is an honest-to-goodness sense of community here.  We know our neighbors and our kids’ classmates’ parents.  It is so Leave It To Beaver-ish it is almost creepy.  And when we get tired of small-town life, we can take a very short drive and access all the benefits of the City: good restaurants, the Arts, OSU, entertainment, Cosi, etc.

Those are my Top 5 tonight, though tomorrow I might have a different 5 altogether.

I decided to do a local blog because I happen to think I live in a pretty great place.  I will just give this blogging thing a try and see how it goes.

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