Martin visit part 1: Cincinnati

Ryan's parents came to visit for 10 days and it was so much fun to have them here!  It was nice to have company around so it wasn't so boring and Ryan got a lot of work off, too.  Lucy certainly loved the constant attention as well. :)  They got here late on Wednesday, June 5th, which happened to be Janae's birthday.  Friday was Ryan's first full day off of work and we went down to Cincinnati.  We started the trip by going to lunch at a place called Tom & Chee.  They specialize in fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, with their signature one being a glazed donut grilled cheese.  Ryan and I saw this place on Shark Tank and when we heard it was in Cincy, we knew we had to try it out.  It lived up to the hype.  Sooo good!  After that, we went to Jungle Jim's, which is a huge international food market.  They have regular grocery stuff but then they also have different sections of the world all over.  We hit up everyone's mission aisles (Brazil, Ireland, Portugal, Hungary, Africa, etc.) and bought a few things to try.  They also had a huge cheese section, produce section, candy section, and others.  I even found a big box of one of my favorite candies- tropical dots.  It was so fun walking through this store and we spent about 2 hours there, which was way longer than we expected but turned out to be the perfect amount of time.  After Jungle Jim's, we headed back to downtown to go eat dinner at another Cincinnati staple, Skyline Chili, and then head over to the Red's baseball game.  It was perfect weather that evening, Lucy did so well on this whole trip, and we had so much fun exploring new places.

 All of our different grilled cheeses.  I can't even remember now what they all were, besides delicious.

 Ryan checking out the grilled cheese glazed donut.  It was so good that we ended up making some of these ourselves at home later.  I shouldn't admit that.  

I just now realized that all 4 of us adults (including Ryan not in this picture) were wearing blue a blue and white striped shirt of some sort this day.  We got the memo.

 Cincinnati streets were cute and quaint and filled with trees, brick walkways, and old fashioned looking signs. Loved it.

 We actually had to drive into Kentucky and then back into Ohio to get to Jungle Jim's.

 Ryan got a cheese bread kit (like the kind you eat at Tucano's) and some drinks/juices from Brazil.  He loved them.

 Mark served a mission in Ireland so we made sure to swing by there as well.

 The store had huge decorations hanging up all over the place, which Lucy loved.  The plane behind her and Ryan in this picture was one of them.  Love her face in this one. :)

They had a whole huge room filled with aisles of different hot sauces.  We took this picture for Marc Rasmussen because he likes hot sauces... at least I think.  If I remember correctly.

 Lucy saw a few of these M&M guys around the candy castle section and with each new one she found, she gasped and ran over and gave them big hugs.

This bathroom pic is probably one of those "you had to be there" moments, but for my and Janae's sake, I'm telling the story because it still makes me laugh.  At the end of our trip Janae and I had to use the bathroom.  When we found them, we were kind of surprised that they were just port-a-potties and debated about actually using one.  Ryan told us just to walk in and that it was fine because he saw them earlier and they were normal.  However, we didn't quite get that he meant normal as in a normal bathroom and not a port-a-potty.  We then saw a woman go into the ladies one, so we stood back and waited while a guy tried to convince us that we both should go in.  We were thinking that wasn't possible because someone just went in to use it.  Finally, something clicked and we figured out that it really was just a normal bathroom with this door as an entrance.  When you walked in, there was a big room with all of the toilet stalls and sinks, etc.  haha.  We had a good laugh over that one.

Dinner at Skyline.  At this point, we were just eating because it was dinnertime, not because we were hungry.  I'd definitely recommend the vegetarian chili over the regular.

 Lucy was really good this whole day trip and had a little entertainment help from Grandma's iphone later in the evening.