There is no better way to spend a sunny summer day than eating BBQ, drinking ice cold Coke and hanging out with good friends and family. To me, that’s what summer is all about.

Remember when I told you about the Coke Live Positively/America is Your Park Initiative and how we were going to have ourselves a picnic at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park? Well, we did. And, it was pretty perfect.

The goal of America Is Your Park is to encourage people to play, be active and help their favorite park win a recreation grant provided by Coca-Cola Live Positively. First place winner receives $100,000 and the title of America’s Favorite Park, second place wins $50,000 and third gets $25,000.

Dayton is only an hour from Columbus, so it’s not a bad drive…especially on a weekend morning. We arrived to find every picnic table available, ample room for the kids to run around and plenty of shade. We set up our chairs and blankets, set out the food and enjoyed our cold drinks.

The adults took in the fresh air and caught up while the kids had fun climbing trees and enjoying the outdoor space. Across the field, towering over a plaza, stood the Wright Brothers Memorial and just down a trail was an overlook where we could view the Huffman Prairie; the place where the vision of the Wright Brothers took shape, and ultimately, flight.

After lunch, we stood around the Memorial as two Park Rangers gave us a brief history on the Air Force Base on which the Aviation Heritage National Park sits. They also discussed the Wright Brothers and gave us an overview on the history of flight. Then they told us about a totally unexpected activity.

We were going to make paper airplanes.

The Rangers passed out paper, had us fold it, decorate it and then turn it into a tube, of sorts. It was like no other paper airplane I’ve ever seen. It flew straight up and when the kids (okay, and the adults) started competing with each other, the quiet park suddenly heard a lot of excited yelling!

The only thing that would have made our picnic better is if there would have been a swimming pool in which to throw ourselves, because it was H-O-T. Really hot.

But, those Park Rangers had another tool up their sleeve – The Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center. An air-conditioned Interpretive Center.  Ahhh.

The cool building houses a movie theater, where you can watch a short film on flight history, and interactive exhibits, including a flight simulator for the kids! Although most of them crashed, a couple of them completed the flight and got a special certificate. My 12 year old daughter was one of them.

And, tonight at dinner she said that she wanted to be a pilot when she grows up. I would like to thank the Wright Brothers, who made her dreams possible.

So, we will be voting for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park as our favorite and hope you will join us in voting for your favorite park as well.

Voting details:

·         Everyone can vote for their favorite park to win the title of “America’s Favorite Park” by visiting LivePositively.com.

·         Voting runs until September 6, 2011

·         There are other ways to vote for your favorite park, including uploading photos of the park to LivePositively.com/americasparks and checking in on Facebook Places when you go to your park. More information about these methods on LivePositively.com/americasparks.

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I have been really busy lately. Like, so busy that I don’t call my friends, or my dad, or even the dentist when I have a toothache so wicked that I want to knock out my molar with a sledgehammer.

That busy.

My mom has been a huge help to me. For the last few weeks, she has taken one, or both, of my kids to her house almost every day. She usually picks up my son in the morning while my tween daughter hides in her room, then she drops him back off in the early evening. Even though the BlogHer Conference is over, I am still catching up, so he went over there again yesterday.

When she dropped him off after dinner, she told me that they had just had an interesting conversation. Although my mom knows my son is famous for making inappropriate comments, she asked him, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

My filterless boy replied, “Half and half. You’re half not-pretty because you’re old.”

“What about the other half?”, my mom questioned.

And, he proved his ability to manipulate when he said, “The other half is pretty because I love you.”

I have never seen anyone give a simultaneous insult and compliment quite so well.

For the record, today is my mom’s 77th birthday, so feel free to tell her how awesome she is for putting up with me for all of these years. You can do that now, BECAUSE SHE JUST GOT INTERNET…which is really like MY birthday present, because I don’t have to print my blog posts anymore.

Please, don’t tell her she is half-awesome. You can leave that to my kid.

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Whew.

The last five weeks have been quite a blur. That tends to happen when your employer runs an enormous conference and you are assigned the Twitter account of their 30,000+ followers. People had questions, I found the answers. Lots and lots of them.

So, I apologize for one of the longest bloggy breaks since the swine flu/pulmonary embolism scare of 2009, but I’ve had to be on my toes elsewhere. Literally. I have blisters to prove it.

But, I will happily wear my battle wounds…because that elsewhere of which I speak? Was the fabulous San Diego.

I had never been to San Diego before, but I had heard plenty of people talk about it and out of all of those people, I’ve never heard a disparaging word. My mom used to live there and has told me of its beauty for years. Everyone said that I would love it, that the weather is ideal, the sky is always blue and that the scenery is lovely.

I still wasn’t prepared to be so, incredibly, swept off my feet. Let’s just say that if I didn’t have a family, I wouldn’t have come home.

The temperature and humidity were such that you could walk around during the day wearing a bathing suit or jeans, and be comfortable either way. I never saw a cloud in the sky, the water was gorgeous, the streets are pleasantly walkable and the people are so nice. How could they not be, what with all of that sunshine, margaritas and delicious Mexican food?

And, oh boy did I eat that food. Lots of it. Fish tacos, steak tacos, beans, the sushi to end all sushi and a piece of creme brulee cheesecake. See how someone went and invented something made out of my two favorite desserts? They were practically begging me to eat it.

I sat on the wide beach and laughed with friends at the Hotel Del Coronado, walked along the Embarcadero Marina, and sipped drinks around a firepit.

I did a lot of deep breathing every time I went outside and on the last morning those breaths turned to sighs. It broke my heart to leave. There is so much more to tell you about my trip, but for now…I’m still reeling from the perfection of this city.

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So, you know how your husband goes out of town for the weekend and your young dog has been vomiting and having diarrhea for four days, and you have big deadlines, and you have to go get your daughter at camp, which ends up taking more than six hours, and you cry the whole way there because you just got a crown on your bottom tooth, and it’s sitting too high and jamming your upper tooth into places where it shouldn’t be and “bruising” the nerve, and it hurts so bad that you take three Dilaudid and it still hurts, but OH BOY do you sleep…you know, when you should be working, and you need to do laundry so you can pack to go out of town and speak in front of 3600 people, and then your old dog gets a tick and when you try to pull it out with tweezers you just end up getting half of it and a whole lot of blood all over your kitchen, and you have to make an emergency trip to your out of town dentist on a Sunday…you know, when you should be working, and then the young dog who has been vomiting and having diarrhea for four days decides she DOESN’T WANT TO GO IN THE YARD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM ANYMORE and you have to literally drag her to the grass, and then she gets stung by something and her face swells up so much that she can’t see, and then you are SO HAPPY when your husband walks back in the door?

Yeah, me too.

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