Evie's Travels Part 1: Cincinnati

This past weekend was a kind of busy one for us, and included two day trips. On Saturday Amy, Evie & I hit the road for Cincinnati to visit the Voellmecke clan, including the Chicago contingent.

We got on the road in the late morning, and of course made the required stop at Sonic for some Cherry Limeade (well, a full lunch really, but without the Cherry Limeades, who cares? It'd be just another fast food joint). Evie & I hung out while Amy had to visit the powder room in the nearby LaRosas. Now, LaRosas happens to be Amy's favorite pizza, so while she was there, the cravings and guilt of uncustomerly powder room use combined to get her to buy a 60 gallon drum of pizza sauce. I think we're set on pizza sauce until Evie goes to college. Good thing I'm such a fan of eating pizza, eh?

After the grub-fix, we met some of Amy's family on her Mom's side (that is, non-Voellmeckes) at a Red Lobster, including Traci, Jodi, Shari, and Jodi's two cute girls Hanna and Bria. (warning: some of those name spellings may be incorrect.) Everyone had fun hanging out with and holding Evie - Jodi even got to feed her a bottle! The two girls especially had a great time:

After a little while there, we packed back up and headed up the street to Skyline to meet up with the Voellmecke clan. It was a pretty good showing, and we took up pretty much all of the little "private" big group area there. Evie got to meet her Great Grandma Voellmecke, quite a few of her great uncles and aunts and a whole passel of first cousins (once removed). Yes, I had to look that one up. Here's Evie hanging out with Becky and Angie:

I know it's the nature of the food they serve, but the speed the food came at Skyline was incredible. Here's something like 25 people ordering (most ordering multiple items) and the food was out in like 5 minutes! Madness. Clearly they're big fans of Henry Ford. Well, Henry Ford and Mr. Whipple. Obviously Mr. Whipple.

After Skyline we headed back to Grandma V's house and were joined by even MORE of the Voellmecke clan, bringing us up to an estimated 95% of the Cincinatti, Kentucky, and Chicago-based V's. Utter madness, though it did fall short of the unmitigated insanity that is Voellmecke Family Christmas. I tried to take some shots to provide a feel for the chaos. They don't really do it justice, but here's my attempts:


and a bit more "organized":


Everyone had a lot of fun meeting and holding and playing with Evie, who's the reigning "new hotness" of the Voellmecke clan. We tried really hard, and I'm pretty sure that everyone who WANTED to got to hold her, from Great Grandma V (of course!) all the way down to Ethan. Here's Evie hanging out with Aunt Clare -- can't you tell she's having fun meeting all these new people?


Just kidding - she actually did really great! With all those folks in a small room, she did get a little hot at times, but we just stepped outside into the cool for awhile and she was fine. While visiting and playing with everyone, we also got a great preview of two years from now, courtesy of the adorable Anna:


All in all, we had a great time visiting with everyone, and everyone seemed to have a great time with Evie. A big group left for the Reds-Cubs game (good for the Chicago contingent), and we visited for awhile more in the slightly less chaotic smaller crowd, then headed home for the night.

On the way home we decided to stop at a place I've heard a lot about -- Jungle Jim's International Market. Wow is that place insane. It's HUGE, has a full-size American grocery as well as tons and tons of natural foods and international foods, from all over the world. We bought lots of fun stuff including:

• Jolt Cola
• Virgin Cola
• HP Sauce for Gary
  
• Gulab Jamun
• Palak Paneer
• Brown Bread in a can
• some Vegemite!
  
• Two kinds of etouffe mix
• various candies
• and some other stuff I'm not recalling at the moment...

I could've spent HOURS in there. As-is it was about 1.5 hours. Evie wasn't doing so hot when we first got there, so she and Amy recharged in their movie theater (showing a "history of" film) while I checked out the first big international section. Kevin tells me his record for time spent there is 4 hours, and I can see how that could happen - though I think Amy would kill me before the halfway point...

All-in-all a really fun trip. I hope we make it back very soon, as it's always fun hanging out with everyone (yes, even in the chaotic huge crowds), and on top of that, there's lots of places there we'd like to check out restaurant-wise, shopping-wise, and of course, there's always Shadowbox South...

There's lots more pictures of the trip too - check em out.

That's all for now - I'll be back with Part 2 soon (though maybe not tonight)...