Our Cincy Getaway

Two weekends ago, we left town on a Thursday and stayed gone til the following Tuesday with an agenda of activity in Cincinnati that included a homeschool convention, a handful of field trip style excursions, and a surprise visit to an indoor water park before leaving town.  We were so pumped!

It was a wonderfully long weekend and we really enjoyed the getaway after our intense month fostering the boys and cramming in Easter before we hit the road.

Convention shot from Duke Energy Center which turned out to be so great for this event.  Way better than Opryland Hotel was last year at a different homeschool conference I attended.  That is our hotel there in the middle, Millenium Hotel, which was oh-so-conveniently situated across the street and connected by a sky bridge. 

One of the larger meeting rooms ... the grand ballroom where they put the big name speakers.

I got so much helpful language, reading, writing info in the smaller meeting room sessions though.

Visiting with these speakers, writers,

and publishers led me right into where the REAL party was ....

in the vendor hall!  This was but one half of the layout.  I got lost repeatedly.  They all started looking the same the more you wandered.  Ha! 

At least there were food vendors there too, so we wouldn't starve in the process. :)  The Walking Taco at Skyline Chili was delish.  Another night I feasted on J. Gumbo's Red Beans and Rice.  Another night, I enjoyed a taco salad with Josh and the kids who had gotten back in time to join me.

While I was filling my brain to its brim with all manner of homeschool speak and curriculum shopping, Josh and the kids got all over town doing field trips and earning school hours in the process.  They hit up Cincinnati Museum Center which housed three different museums...

While Cincinnati has a couple great train museums and destinations, Josh didn't make the kids suffer through those with him this time.  BUT, they were all excited to get to watch a working train yard from an observation tower before heading home from the museums.  They got some video footage of this as well.  It was just really neat for them to see in action.

Another day, my crew visited a Butterflies from the Philippines exhibit at the butterfly garden at Crohn's Conservatory which was situated inside Eaton Park.

But their favorite field trip destination that weekend was, by far, Newport Aquarium.  They were really impressed with it, which says a lot because we have been to three other well-done aquariums in their short lifetimes already. :)

Every night at the hotel was a movie night in the room.  And every night we were all WORN THE HECK OUT and asleep by 9:30. 

My kiddos slept late in the mornings which never happens!  We checked out Sunday and skipped over to the zoo there in Cincinnati.  That place was so well done! There were exhibits at every turn, which meant far less hoofing it than we have to do at our Nashville Zoo.  Guess that's the perk of an inner city location ... less room to spread out.  There were zookeepers giving talks all over the place.  We even got to see a demonstration of a cheetah running at full throttle.  It was an impressive show.  Short, but stunningly powerful and fast! 

We actually got to see the lions and their new cubs up much closer, but I loved this shot from across the way as we left that exhibit.

This guy was awesome.  Kept swimming to this spot and flipped over and backstroking to the other end.  And repeat.

Monkeying around.

So neat to see up close.  But also a little sad. :(  He would slowly turn and look you dead in the eye and you felt so awful to be a spectator of this poor thing enduring captivity. It ached a little.

See the baby chimp? Adorable!

The Cincinnati Zoo also boasts a botanical garden.  It was so bright and beautiful at every turn. And oh, the sweet smells!

One last shot before we left in the early afternoon.  The kiddos were in for a surprise destination and, while they loved the zoo, were chomping at the bit to see what came next.  Also, we were just tired from the start, I think. We didn't quite make it to everything, but had had our zoo fill just the same.

Before we leave the zoo and Cincinnati entirely, check out this close encounter with a tasmanian devil on the streets.  Can you spot the temper tantrum?  I still giggle to recall it.

Moving on to Great Wolf Lodge!  While this place has a grand and impressive exterior, the kids still didn't know what was coming.

 They could tell it was fun and awesome at check-in because the whole place is novel and so kid-friendly, but they still did not know what they were about to find.  

 

So I walked them to the back of the lobby to take in the real view and surprise.  

 

They were BEYOND thrilled.

We stayed for two nights and it was a blast from start to finish. We got to the room, I called my sister to gab, and Josh and the kids beelined for the water fun to scope it all out.  First, a lay of the land out/in there!

I spent much time in front of this view.  The kids were thrilled with the slides and did them over and over, but they always came back to the wave pool.  Takes us back to the beach a bit. ♥  Anna is further back in this pic, but you can see Noah in the blue life jacket in the middle.

Next up, Slides!  Noah did not care for the fast ones, but was brave and tried them all.  Anna enjoyed them with Josh and was less scared of the speed. This one, in particular, she was too short to ride on.

Sweetie pie kiddie slides with my two sweetie pies at the top of each.

Family slides.  I did this one a couple times to humor my people.  It's fun.  But not as much fun as I remember them being when I was kid.  :}  I told my loves that really I just have the most fun watching them have all this fun and I retired to my nice chair to read and take pics and otherwise chill out.

Noah LOVED these slides with no tubes needed.  They even got me to go down this one.  Once.

After that I would faithfully stand at the bottom and be Noah's audience and cheering section.  I got used to this view of him clearing his head after each turn.  Ha!

Next up: Swimming shots...

Annabird vigilantly waiting for Josh and Noah to finish a slide so she could give it a whirl with Daddy, too.

Wave pool during non-wave minutes.

Made my heart lurch for a moment.

Anna taking on the lazy river all by herself.  Josh was on edge about this, but she proved that worry to be needless.  Plus, there are lifeguards EVERYWHERE and they took their jobs seriously.  We were so impressed with the staff.

My view of Noah during the waves.



Anna always liked to go deeper where the waves originate in back.  Noah loved to crash in the breakers

... usually headfirst. Love him and his ways!

 Back to the lazy river ... which was pretty fast flowing ... which isn't exactly lazy, but whatever.

Toward the end of the second day, the kids were slowing down.

Bathing beauty.

Another fun water area that kept calling the kids' names ... mostly because they got stronger and quicker at it every time. :)  

Racing!

GWL also boasts a neat wand video game with stations hidden all over the hallways around the hotel. We passed on that extra expense but enjoyed the free face painting and balloon animals.

The kids also really enjoyed the story time and show in the lobby each night at 8:00.  Pjs were donned and we joined the party.

Anna was not interested in meeting the Great Wolf characters that made an appearance, but Noah surprised me with his wish to get in line and take pics with them.  We girls hightailed it back to the room, but Josh humored the boy and stayed to snap some shots, however subpar his phone's camera was. :}

Great Wolf even has a kids' spa, adult spa, glow-in-the-dark putt putt and an ice cream shop and pizza place and another restaurant.  We chose to bowl in their adorably kid-friendly arcade.  The lanes were half the length and the balls were half the size and weight.  So basically, an overgrown skee-ball of sorts, but still... We had a blast.  And Kimmie won big time.  Ha!

In the spirit of all good adventures and change of pace activities, I can only wrap this trip up with the ever popular summary, "A good time was had by all!"

A good time was had by all ... until the IKEA run on the way home, that is. :} 

We chuckled to ourselves remembering our last IKEA run in Atlanta when our children lost their ever-longing minds.  Precious memories then and now.  Anyway, thanks for a great escape, Cincy!  We have St. Louis on our list of new cities to explore next time...