Hocking Hills State Park

A couple weeks ago, we decided to take a weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio for my son’s 11th birthday. Our whole trip started because we just HAD to visit the Columbus Zoo after watching Secrets of the Zoo on Disney+. So, since I didn’t just want to travel 5 ½ hours to go to a zoo, I looked for other things we could do while we were there. Recently, my family has gotten really into hiking, so I looked for somewhere we could go. That’s when I found Hocking Hills. I had heard of this state park, but never visited. After reading some reviews, I was pumped. It’s about an hour away from Columbus, but I figured we’d spend a couple hours there and make a day of it.

We drove out to Hocking Hills State Park and let me tell you, that last bit of the drive there is no joke. I’m talking a 2-lane road with twists, turns, and hills. Personally, I had a blast driving, but my husband was nervous so...just be aware. It’s not right off the highway.

But Oh. My. Gosh! When we got to the parking lot (at Old Man’s Cave Visitor Center), there were cars everywhere! People were parked along the road, all over the place, in the grass. It was insane. I was not excited. I did not drive an hour to hike with 3,000 other people. But since we had driven so far, I was determined to make the best of it and we luckily found a spot right up by the Visitor’s Center. Someone was leaving, just as we pulled around.

Due to Covid, we decided to wear our masks. However, I will tell you that almost no one else did. Luckily, once we got on the trail, people were mostly spread out. The further and further we got into the trail, the fewer people there actually were.

There are so many beautiful sights along this trail. And a couple different trail options to take.

First, note that (at least at the current moment) these trails are meant to be one way.

We started out taking the Upper Falls Loop Trail where we saw the Upper Falls.

Then, we quickly diverted to the Grandma Gatewood (Buckeye) Trail, which took us to the bottom of the Falls and on to Devil’s Bathtub.

We then continued on and chose to keep going toward the Lower Falls instead of turning toward Old Man’s Cave.

I honestly had the most fun at the Lower Falls. We spent so much time here. My son and I definitely broke the rules and went off trail. But it was just so pretty. We couldn’t resist. We walked behind the falls. And we climbed a rock. Which gave us some amazing pictures.

Then we took the Lower Access Trail (which had SO many stairs) up to the Gorge Exit Trail.

At this point, we’re like, how do we get to Old Man’s Cave? I don’t know if we just couldn’t see where to go or what, but we ended up going the wrong way on the trail to backtrack to Old Man’s Cave once we saw the Visitor’s Center. This was such a fun place to explore.

 

Seriously, this whole place was very interesting and we had a ton of fun exploring it! Ideally, there would have been fewer people there, but we did somehow end up here on the first beautiful day of the entire year with clear skies in the low 70s. Plus, it was a Saturday.

There were way more trails to explore, but we were starting to get tired, so we headed back to the car.

We did end up driving over to Cedar Falls. And it was pretty. And we thought it was worth the visit. But be aware that the entire trail to this is stairs. Seriously, straight down. Look at the falls. Straight back up. It was insane. But we loved it!

Overall, I walked 14,816 steps that day. We were exhausted, but we enjoyed every second of it.

5 Tips for Visiting the Columbus Zoo

Last weekend, we visited Columbus, Ohio for a short weekend getaway to celebrate my son’s 11th birthday. We had so much fun! The first thing we did on Friday was to visit the Columbus Zoo. 

 While we were there, they were open 10am to 5pm. However, when I went to book our tickets, all of the 10am ticket times were taken so we weren’t able to get in until 10:30am. Obviously, you should try to get in as soon as possible. However, I had forgotten that spring break was occurring for a lot of schools.

So Tip #1: Plan ahead! Get your tickets as soon as you can.

Admission is $16.99 for everyone 10 and up. Plus, there is a $10 parking fee (which we bought in advance with our tickets).

We arrived around 10:15am to look for a parking space and get ourselves ready. We needed to make sure everyone had a mask and a water bottle. My husband grabbed our backpack. And then we were ready to line up and get into the zoo.

Tip #2: Pack a backpack.

What’s in our backpack?
We brought snacks, hand sanitizer, extra masks (in case the ones we were wearing got wet), an umbrella (the forecast called for rain), Wet Ones, lip balm (because for some reason, ever since we started wearing masks, my lips have been chapped), sunscreen, reusable straws, hats (just in case the sun decided to show itself), Tylenol, and a charging bank (just in case all those pictures you take kill the battery on your phone).

We then walked our way around the zoo. It wasn’t too busy while we were there, but it definitely wasn’t empty either. We did end up seeing every animal that was on exhibit, but we also didn’t care if we didn’t make it everywhere. We made a list of our top animals to see, and we made sure to visit all of those.

Tip #3: Decide what’s important to you and make sure you see those things.

For example, seeing the polar bears in the underwater viewing area was high on our list of things to see. However, when we got there, they were lazing around, and definitely had no plans to get in the water. So, we saw a couple of the animals in that same area and came back. They still weren’t in the water, so we waited. We ended up waiting for about half an hour. But eventually, they got in! Actually, my husband was up top while my son and I waited down below and he texted me that they were getting ready to throw some enrichment items in the water (which he learned from an employee that probably felt bad for us because they had seen us waiting for so long haha). And we were not disappointed!

There were a couple things that were closed while we were there. Like the Africa section. The only animals out were the lions. I think it was just a little too chilly for the rest of the animals.

Overall, we really enjoyed the Columbus Zoo. We’ve visited a lot of zoos and this one really impressed us. I would highly recommend a visit here if you’re a zoo lover (like us).

This zoo is not small, though. Which brings us to…

Tip #4: Wear comfortable shoes!

I mean, I recommend this no matter what zoo you’re going to, but especially a large zoo like the Columbus Zoo. I just looked, and I clocked 18,543 steps the day we visited. And we seriously didn’t do anything else. My feet were tired the next day!

One of our favorite parts of this zoo is the Manatee tank, which is why we saved it for last (or so we thought). It’s so sweet to see the surrogate mama manatee with her transplant babies. The babies are rescues that will eventually be returned to the wild. Plus, there’s a sea turtle in there, which is my son’s absolute favorite animal of all time.

 

Tip #5: Be flexible.

This is pretty much my life model. While we at the manatee tank, the woman talking was saying that you could touch and feed the stingrays over in another part of the zoo. And while I knew we could do that, I hadn’t planned to just because we’ve done that quite a few times before. But that didn’t stop my son from begging to go that way. So even though we thought we were done after the manatees, we ended up making our way over to the stingrays before exiting.

So, I hope that this was helpful and has fully convinced you to visit this zoo! We had a blast. And my son has told us that we definitely need to return in the summer.

It's Christmas! Day 5: Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis

Today is my birthday! I know as adults (especially ones with children), we tend to not really think about ourselves on our birthdays. That's why I love having a December birthday. When I was a kid, I didn't like it that much because I felt like Christmas always outshined my day. People were always busy and didn't have time to celebrate with me. Family members would give me a gift "for Christmas AND my birthday". It just never felt special. Now that I'm older, I choose to see it as an ongoing celebration of life and I'm lucky enough to have everyone celebrating with me (even if they don't know it). Ok, now that you're all in on the celebrating with me, let's get back to why you're here.

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

For my birthday this year, my husband took me on a little one-night trip to St. Louis. We only live a couple hours away, so we visit here frequently. One day in November, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw that a friend of mine posted about the Missouri Botanical Gardens hosting the Garden Glow again this year. I thought it looked like a blast, so I signed up my family to attend.

There are different ticket types for this event. On weekends and the couple of weeks during Christmas and New Years, tickets are a little more expensive. There is also a family day (on Wednesdays) where kids tickets are much cheaper. For our family, however, it worked out for us to go on a Thursday night, which fell on a “Merry and Bright Bargain Night”. Our tickets cost us $18 per adult and $10 per child. When you purchase tickets, you choose a time to enter. We chose a 7pm to 7:15pm entry time.

We knew ahead of time that there would be opportunities to pick up hot chocolate, s’mores, and other food throughout the Gardens. We got some s’mores to roast. It was great to take a little break by the fire.

My husband and I were really excited to try some of the specialty drinks. There was the Tree Topper (Fireball hot chocolate) which is what my husband got, Cozy Caroler (Amaretto hot chocolate), Snowed In (Peppermint hot chocolate) which is what I got and it was delicious with the peppermint schnapps, and the Merry Manhattan (whiskey, vermouth, bitters, and holiday spiced simple syrup). I even got a light up mug for my drink.

Covid safety is important to my family so we were pleased to see a statement on their website explaining their health and safety guidelines. Their rules included social distancing from people not your party, providing hand sanitizing stations, requiring everyone to wear a face covering, increasing the frequency and intensity of cleaning surfaces, limiting trash cans to limit touch surfaces, having health screenings for their employees, and adding plexiglass to their sales counters. Overall, we only noticed one person not wearing a mask (who we stayed far away from). So we felt pretty safe.

We had a great time! The lights were gorgeous. And we definitely recommend a trip if you get the chance.

Homeschool: Read Aloud Books for 4th Grade

One of the things my son has become really great at over the past couple years is reading. However, that doesn't mean that he doesn't still love to be read to. We've been reading books to our son since he was born and I love that now (since he's older), I get to read books that are interesting to me too! Since we started homeschooling, I definitely wanted to keep Read Aloud time during his "school day". He told me how much he loved it when his public school teachers would do it. My son did NOT have a very good public school experience so if he said there was something he liked, I was absolutely down for keeping that a part of our day. So, every day, I read from a book (that I have chosen) for 20-30 minutes. We also have silent reading time every day where he reads a book of his choosing.

These are the books that we read last year (2019-2020 school year). We truly loved them all (but some more than others, for sure!).

I found these books based on online recommendations and from teachers. I wanted to keep the books age appropriate, but still fun.

1. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Staar
This book was interesting. I don't think it was my son's favorite. But I loved how a lot of things didn't make sense until the end.

2. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
This was easily my son's favorite book all year! He still talks about how amazing it was. I never thought I would be able to relate to a robot, but this book has made me a believer.

3. The Wild Robot Returns by Peter Brown
Obviously, we had to read the sequel.

4. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor
This book does talk about prison, but it's in a calm, minimum security kind of way. It was definitely different from what we normally read.

5. Fish In A Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
I loved that this book gave the perspective of someone that is unlike my son. The main character has dyslexia, but she's moved so many times that no one has ever caught it. I think reading books like that help to show why should have empathy for people that are suffering even if we don't know what it's like. It also shows why you shouldn't judge others or be mean to them because they might be going through things that you know nothing about. I definitely want to find more books like that this year.

6. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
I remember reading this book when I was a kid. It still held my interest, even to this day.

7. Smack Dab In The Middle Of Maybe by Jo Watson Hackl
There is a lot to unpack with this book. I don't think it was one of my son's favorites. But mostly because he didn't like how sad he felt for the main character. That being said, it is still a pretty good book.

8. The Infinite Lives Of Maisie Day by Christopher Edge
This was an unexpected book. I didn't really know what it was about before wwe read it. There's a lot of science. And it doesn't have your typical happy ending.

9. Gloom Town by Ronald L. Smith
This book is dark. But not in a bad way. It was just very intense. But we still enjoyed it.

10. Matilda by Roald Dahl
This is a classic! And I realized I had never read it before! I have seen the movie a good 20 times, but never read the book. I'm glad I did. And of course, we watched the movie when we were done.

11. Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
This book was definitely in my son's top 3 favorites this year! It's such a fun story about a girl and a squirrel.

12. The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner
I loved that this book really showed you the consequences of wishing for things instead of doing everything you can to make them happen. It's a good lesson.

I hope our list gives you some ideas for what to read to your own kids!

Everything We Did in NYC!

Our trip to New York City for my 30th birthday was seriously amazing! We just had the best time. And now we can't wait to go back! So, here's everything that we did on our trip to NYC.

Day 1:

1. Checked into our hotel: Hilton Garden Inn New York/Midtown Park Ave
2. Walked to Bryant Park to get food from a Christmas Market.
   -We had delicious food from Pierogie Boys.
   -We ate an amazing chimney cake for dessert.
3. Walked around some more to take pictures with Christmas decorations.
   -Giant ornaments
   -Giant lights
4. Went to the top of the Empire State Building (102nd floor)
5. Dinner at Il Mulino

Day 2:

1. We took a carriage ride through Central Park
2. Then we took a behind the scenes tour of Radio City Music Hall
3. Shortly after our tour, we watched the Holiday Spectacular featuring the Rockettes
4. Waited in line to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center
5. Watched the Saks Fifth Avenue light show
6. Stopped to look at Times Square
7. Ate dinner at City Kitchen
   -chicken strips for our 9yo
   -ramen and pork buns for DH and myself
   -donuts for dessert!

Day 3:

1. Walked around Central Park
2. Had Coffee at The Plaza
3. Walked down 5th Ave to look at the window displays
4. Stopped to look at displays at the Lego Store
5. Went to Washington Square Park
6. Ate at the Meatball Shop
7. Went to the Museum of Illusions

Day 4: 

1. Checked out of our hotel
2. Walked to Macy's
3. Saw Santa at Macy's
4. Looked at the interactive windows outside of Macy's
5. Took a cab to the airport
   

NYC Trip: Brooklyn

    This past December (I know, a lifetime ago), my family went on a trip to New York City for my 30th birthday. It was so much fun. I had always wanted to go to New York, but was kind of nervous because everything is super expensive, it's easy to get lost, bad things happen to tourists, etc. Well, it turned out, there was nothing to be nervous about at all. We mostly stayed in Manhattan, but one morning, we decided to spend a little time in Brooklyn. Here's how our day went.

Around 10am, we took a cab that dropped us off in the Fulton Ferry District. We weren't 100% sure what we wanted to do yet, so we just had our cab drop us off so that we could walk around. We ended up walking over to the corner of Washington St and Water St to get that iconic photo of the Manhattan Bridge. You know you've seen it. It's been in shows, movies, commercials, every person's Instagram. It was a beautiful spot to get pictures, but there were TONS of people there. I'm guessing that if you want to get pictures with little to no people in them, you'll have to get there super early in the morning.

After a couple minutes, we decided to walk down the street to Main Street Park. That's where we found this great little rocky beach area to take pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. It was surprisingly peaceful so we sat and chilled there for a while. 

We didn't have a lot for breakfast, so around 11am, we started our walk over to Old Fulton St. Now, the entire reason we came to Brooklyn was to get some iconic pizza! Our first instinct was to go to Grimaldi's, but after some research, we learned the owner of Juliana's was actually the original owner of Grimaldi's before selling it. So, we chose to eat at Juliana's. We did stand in line for about 20 minutes before it opened, but we were seated immediately, ordered soon after, and had our pizza within 10 minutes. O-M-G that pizza was good. We're from Illinois so my husband is a huge deep-dish fan, but I prefer that thin, foldable, delicious, wood-fired pizza. You may wait in line, but this pizza is so worth it. I'm sure people that live in New York City have other places that they prefer, but Juliana's really lived up to the hype for me.

By this time, it was after noon. We were extremely close to the pedestrian entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge so we decided to walk across it. I had read that the views were beautiful and they definitely didn't disappoint. There are a few benches along the way if you need a break or just want a place to step to the side for a picture. We stopped multiple times so our casual stroll across the bridge took about half an hour.

In all, we spent less than 3 hours in Brooklyn, but we had tons of fun while we were there and we won't hesitate to go back.

Our day in La Jolla

Last October, during our trip to San Diego, we decided to spend a day in La Jolla. It was my husband's birthday, and we ended up having a great time. We really only spent about half the day there, but here's what we did with our time:

We started out the morning by driving up to the Mt. Soledad Veteran's Monument. To be honest, we didn't really look at the monument very much. What we did do was look at the amazing views that you see from that height. It was beautiful, and while it was a little foggy that morning, we got a great view of La Jolla.

We then made our way down to the heart of La Jolla and ate breakfast at Cody's. We got there around 9am on a Wednesday and it wasn't busy at all. My husband ordered french toast while I ordered the breakfast chicken sandwich with cheddar scallion biscuits covered in sausage gravy. Both were amazing. If you're in the area during breakfast, you should definitely stop here for some food. It did seem a little pretentious, but the food itself was really good. My son didn't really find anything on the menu that appealed to him (because he's picky. ugh.) so he just ordered some bacon.

We then walked to The Cave Store. Now, this is obviously a super touristy thing to do, but we weren't going to see the inside of a sea cave without going here, so we made the trip. It cost us $13 for 2 adults and 1 child to walk down the stairs. There was a super rude woman at the bottom, but luckily, they left shortly after we got there. There isn't a whole lot of space so I would say that area can really only hold less than 10 people at a time. It is very difficult to take pictures in here with the severe brightness outside compared to the darkness of the cave. We did see some snorkelers swimming by, which was cool. We enjoyed our time down there and no other people came down so I could have enjoyed the peaceful ocean waves for hours. The stairs back up didn't seem that bad. There were over 100, but as an obese person that isn't in shape, it wasn't that bad.

We went to get the car and drove it closer to where we wanted to go next. Be aware, we were there on a weekday in October and it was difficult to find a spot. If you're going during the summer, it will be next to impossible unless you show up super early. That being said, we did find a spot. We were planning to go to a cove, but on our way there, we got distracted by a ton of sea lions and seals playing in the water and sunbathing on some rocks. We knew not to get too close (even though apparently, some people did not!). I believe there is a law in California that you are to stay a specific distance away from these animals. We didn't get anywhere near that close. That didn't keep up from getting some great pictures though. We stayed here and watched these amazing creatures for about half an hour. We easily could have stayed longer though. In this same area, there was a cool rock that you could sit on and get some great pictures of the waves breaking on the rocks. I would have thought that lots of people would have wanted pictures here, but I guess they were all distracted by the sea lions.

We then walked over to Shell Beach because it was right next to where we were. We didn't have our swimsuits with us and it wasn't a very warm day, but we did take our shoes off and explore. The beach itself is very small. But it's so fun. When you first walk down the stairs, to your right is a little cove area that you can explore. The rest of the beach has the huge wall of rock going up to where everyone else walks past. It's actually a pretty easy beach to skip by and not notice. That being said, there weren't many people down there with us. My son loved standing on a rock, letting the waves crash against his legs. It was a great little break away from a lot of people. I wouldn't say there were very many shells there though.

We continue to walk down the coastline to the Children's Pool. This is where you can watch the seals. While we were there, there weren't very many seals, but we did get to see a couple. You can walk out on this wall that juts into the water to create an area of beach where the water isn't very rough. This is why the seals love it so much!

We then tried to drive around and take some cool pictures with some Instagram spots I had found online. Some of them turned out okay and others were a hot disaster. So, that was mostly a waste of our time and just be aware. If you're trying to look for a specific mural or photo spot, it might be difficult to find parking or even find how to get there.

After that little adventure though, we decided to get lunch. We went to the Taco Stand where my husband got a carne asada taco and a baja taco. I got carne asada fries and my son got a 1 lb bag of tortilla chips. What can I say? He eats much better at home, but we were on vacation. Everyone loved their food and I was pumped about my fries. They were delicious. We then shared some churros.

This was the last day of a somewhat exhausting vacation so we decided to go back to our hotel and just pack, watch movies, and order room service to relax and enjoy the rest of our time before returning back home. We had a great day exploring.