Vacation, day 4

Day 4 had us leaving the Louisville, KY area at 7:15ish am and driving to Cincinnati, OH!
This was another "iffy" weather day...another day in which God was victorious--our time at "The Beach Waterpark" was full of sun, warm weather--perfect swimming conditions!
Around 3:30, we were starting to feel like we had had enough and PLOP came the sprinkles....which turned into HUGE sprinkles and we decided "That's it! We ARE ready to leave!" Literally, as we got into our van, it started to downpour and we were in the middle of a summer storm!

As you can see, our photos are few--above is ALL we have from The Beach Waterpark. We didn't want to carry our camera around with us nonstop, we didn't even want to take our good camera into the park with us! We ended up taking Ellie's camera and we just used it for the above 3 photos! We surely did have fun though--Jayna surprised us all by loving this straight drop down slide and Colin was in heaven as The Beach had "pools" and also had a sandy area that kids could play in. Ellie REALLY loved the wave pool....it was a fun day.

But before I leave The Beach documentation, I have to report on some of their policies. Online, there is NO contact phone number for the park. But there ARE statements indicating that all bags will be searched prior to entrance into the park and no outside food or drink is allowed. However, if you can "prove" your food allergy, they will refrigerate your safe food. (In our family, we try not to have Ellie eat boring food if the rest of us are having something fun...but we were in a quandry as the website also did not list ingredients of their available foods!) We were SHOCKED upon talking to an outside food vendor--I mentioned Ellie's allergies and the server whipped out a laminated 8 page list of all foods the park served and what allergans were found in each item! Amazing. We loved it. AND...the food inside the park was reasonably priced too!

For the rest of our trip, we were going to be hotel-bound...no more spacious cottages for us!
When Andy was researching cottages in KY, it became very obvious that many places are pet friendly. We are not a pet friendly family with our allergies and Andy started a very difficult task--to find accomodations for a large family that was "pet free". He thinks there was just 1 place in the Cincinnati area that was in our budget...the Doubletree Suites. Now, Doubletree is all about service. Andy had requested extra towels and hypoallergenic pillows (Ellie is also feather allergic.)...and the room had so many pillows! Colin thought it was so fun:
The Doubletree also had a mascot in the lobby...a REAL mascot...this parrot! The kids loved this bird and looked for it each time we walked through!

After dinner Wednesday night, we decided to locate this "famous" ice cream that Cincinnati is known for---Graeter's Ice Cream. Oh my...were we in for a treat or what?!
The ice cream is amazing...in fact, to read all about it, check out their website at www.graeters.com. They make all of their ice cream in super small batches--just 2 gallons at a time and each pint is hand packed. By folding in cream and egg custard in a french pot process, the amount of air is reduced in the ice cream and the result is very tasty, creamy treat. Some commercial ice cream pints can weigh as little as 8 oz because of all the air in the ice cream...but Graeter's ice cream pints weigh nearly 1 pound!

It was so tasty that all 3 nights we were in Cincinnati, we found ourselves at a Graeter's location!
Now, some of you might be wondering what Ellie did when the rest of us were drooling over the ice cream....they had SORBET for Ellie! And, according to Andy and Ellie, it was the best, most flavorful sorbet ever tasted. We would have loved to have some shipped home...but at $90 for 6 pints, we decided to pass on that idea!

Day 4 was low on the educational factor...but it was one definition of summer fun--spending time at the pool and eating ice cream on a hot summer night!