President's Day in Cincinnati

The Holicks and Nicastros loaded up our cars for a President's Day weekend trip to Cincinnati with the goal of keeping the kids out of the house, busy and happy during a long weekend of no school.  Our kids get along really well and the adults always have such a great time catching up as well.

Both families drove into Cincinnati on Friday night (Valentine's Day) and met for dinner at J.Alexander's before heading to the hotel to check in.  Let's just say since it was Valentine's Day, we made it a quick dinner with five kids in tow and MANY couples surrounding us trying to have a romantic dinner.  After dinner, we all got settled, put the babies to bed and let the big kids hang out in one room while the adults wound down in the other.  I had brought two video monitors so we could keep an eye on the big ones.  They were really cute as they all watched Free Willy together and were up and down several times for more snacks and drinks.

The next morning we headed out for the Newport aquarium.  It was a nice aquarium.  Pretty busy given the holiday weekend but the kids had fun looking at all of the fish, eating lunch and then stopping at a candy store on the way to our cars.  The day of fun didn't end there!  After the aquarium, the kids did some swimming in the hotel pool, we showered up for happy hour snacks and drinks at Bravo and then had a pizza party at the hotel before putting the babies to bed and letting the other kids hang out and watch another movie so the adults could spend some more time.

On Sunday morning, we had a slow breakfast and then packed up and headed back to Columbus.  It was a great time, the kids had an absolute BLAST and loved staying in the hotel together.  We are already brainstorming where we will take them next year!

The babies checking each other out during their dinner date.

Enthralled by Free Willy.

 The stingray center was probably the coolest exhibit at the museum.  The kids could crawl down in this hallway underneath the stingrays and look up at them.  You can see Nolan to the left of this one.

 You could also pop your head out of this tube and look around at them.

 Ready to swim!  The pool was actually kinda chilly so they didn't swim for too long but they had fun.

Late night hallway games at the hotel.