Cincinnati an some catchup.

So!  Another couple of weeks went by in a blink.  Renovating! Organizing!  Scrubbing! Painting! Driving out of town for weddings!  Work!  Trying to figure out where to put a baby!  Everyone is sick! GAH!

But!  As I'm writing this the kids are playing happily in their new and damn close to finished playroom.

Matt is out at home depot (again.  trip 100,000 of this renovation).  And it's crazy the amount of uninterrupted time this playroom is giving me.  Seriously I've been sitting here for an hour thinking they are going to need me for something any minute.  They haven't.  So finally I went and got the laptop  (I don't think they even noticed I disappeared) and downloaded a few weeks worth of pictures.  How about a quick photo rundown?  I'll post as much as I can before a kid needs me... and... GO!

(Edited to add:  I got exactly 0 pictures posted before my kids needed me.  As soon as I wrote that I would have time I cursed it.  NEVER POKE THE DRAGON!)

So we went to Cincinnati last weekend for a friend's wedding.  We debated but ended up bringing the kids.  Figured we might as well get in one last trip as a family of 4 before travel once again becomes a BFD.  I'm so, SO glad we did.  The kids were great:

Our kids at a random park in Columbus eating Wendy's.  Because that's how we roll.

The drive was surprisingly easy both ways.  The kids have finally reached an age where we can explain what's going on and they get it enough that travel isn't horrifying.  The dude spent the whole way down just looking at trucks.

We stayed with a friend's sister and left our kids behind while we went to the wedding.  It's nice to make new friends:

And spend some time with old ones:

The next day (after breakfast with some other good friends and their adorable baby girl) we met more friends at the Newport Aquarium:

I've never been but it was pretty cool.  Much larger and with much more variety of creatures than the Cleveland Aquarium:

These things can grow up to THIRTEEN FEET.

The jellyfish room was awesome and also the stuff that nightmares are made of.

The dude had so much fun he was asleep before we left the parking garage:

But we wanted to show our girl around the city that we use to live in.  And also check out a project that Matt worked on:

Somewhere on Vine close to the no longer super-ghetto Kroger.

Matt's rendering.

Of course we had to swing by our old stomping grounds:

I lived here for 3 years.  Matt for 2.  Also we are both charter members of the Rabirius chapter of this fraternity.  And he wouldn't let me randomly knock on the door. BOOOOOOO.

And I'm not sure what nonsense went down while we were gone but DAAP is GRAY:

Um WTF.  Also Crosley is still standing.  How many rumors did I hear about them tearing that thing down?

We were told later on that the pastels will return.  They are re-cladding the entire building in metal panels.  Much better than the EIFS monstrosity it used to be.

Construction pic of the DAAP courtyard courtesy of my friend Mark.

Also in the WTF category they've clad one of the 3 sisters: 

  But Wilson Auditorium is still standing there unused and falling apart. Some things never change:

Seriously, UC.  We did a studio on adaptively reusing this mofo 11 (!!!!!) YEARS AGO.  Get it together.

And with that we headed home.  Our girl was asleep the second we were on the highway and done with fun things to look at.  She is her father's daughter through and through.

Yay for a fun trip and good friends!