spring break 2019

the kids had spring break at the end of march, so we decided to explore Cincinnati!

in true Brower fashion, we found that Butler County has a donut trail along with a geocache trail and we decided to make that the focus of our trip.

basically, you hit up 12 donut shops (and their corresponding geocaches, if doing the cache portion) and get your passport stamped at each location. then you take your passports to the visitors bureau and they give you a t-shirt and a geo coin. it was really fun!!! we spaced it out over a couple days and at each location we bought 3 donuts and shared them. it was a plain glazed, a maple, and then we let each kid take turns picking the third donut. that way we could compare a basic glazed and maple donuts and pick our overall favorite once the tour was done. in the beginning we were tempted and occasionally bought 4 donuts, but quickly that went back to our starting goal of 3.... pretty soon it turned into 2 donuts.... and then 1 hahaha. I wish I could remember how many donuts we bought all together, it was a crazy amount of donuts in 2 days!

VICTORY!

we spaced out a few other activities in between donut stops.

we went to Jungle Jim's, which is an enormous store filled with international goods. when I say enormous, I mean it. we spent hours there.... and then went back again to see everything that we missed the first time.

Ellie said "WOW! look at all those chocolate fountains!". we decided not to tell her what hookahs are :)

it was a pretty overwhelming store. we ended up only buying a few treats from the British section and some hot sauce.

if there is an old spaghetti factory in any city we visit, we have to stop there! Chris has a special place in his heart for this restaurant from his childhood.

unfortunately, they've changed their bread and butter recipe, so that was a little disappointing. but the kids decided they really loved the spumoni ice cream!

we spent one morning at TopGolf and had a great time!

we also went to the most stunning museum. its an old Art Deco era train station that they've turned into a museum. the architecture was truly amazing.

the rest of our spring break was spent at home doing whatever we wanted... except for me. I was sick. super sick. jack tried his hand at making croissants and they turned out fantastic! great lamination!

Chris took the kids to COSI for an afternoon to see the new mythical beast exhibit. it was a little disappointing they said.

they met up with DeLauna and Marc for pizza and I got a text from DeLauna with this picture:

Owen wishes he was a pup.

we had lots of play time with friends. Ellie and Evie have a great time together and they just go go go from one thing to the next, laughing the whole time. one night they put on a magic show for us. I love this picture because not only are they doing magic, but they've got roller blades on too, ready to take off on their next adventure (which happened to be bedtime haha).

it was a very nice spring break and we felt lucky that chris was able to be home for most of it!