The latest mega playground to open in the Cincinnati area is inside Blue Ash’s Summit Park. My kids are big fans of this playground after my mom had taken them a few times, and I recently had the chance to check it out with them over the weekend.

Ropes Course

On our way there our four-year-old made sure to grab an extra cardboard box to slide down the mound next to the slides. Once we arrived I realized that this is definitely the thing to do at the park. Even if you forget a cardboard box, there were plenty around and truthfully you can pretty easily slide down the hill without the help of cardboard. I may actually know from experience.

Play Mound

The other thing that my son enjoyed the most was the four person seesaw. You just don’t see these at playgrounds as much as you used to. This one is really awesome and is plenty big enough for adults to ride, provided you have enough weight on the other side to balance out.

Seesaw

Summit Park has recently earned awards and I can agree that the playground is really awesome. I can’t wait to see what else is in store for the former airport site.

Over the weekend I drove up to Columbus with a couple of friends to meet another friend who currently lives in the state capital. The primary destination of the trip was to attend the Columbus Blue Jackets game versus the St. Louis Blues. Growing up playing hockey, I’m happy to have a NHL team somewhat nearby, but I don’t make it to nearly enough games.

Nationwide Arena

Rather than making the two-hour drive north, most professional hockey I watch is provided by the Cincinnati Cyclones. But really there is no comparison. Aside from the obvious difference in talent, Nationwide Arena blows US Bank Arena away. Even the view from some of the highest seats at Nationwide are great.

Games at Intermission

There is a lot to do around the arena during intermissions too. My friends and I challenged some of the local kids to a game of table hockey and ended up losing badly. It was as if my friends and I were the Blues and these local kids were the Blue Jackets, though our score wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the real Blues 7-1 loss to the Blue Jackets this night.

High School Hall of Hockey

Connected to Nationwide Arena is the OhioHealth Ice Haus, the practice facility for the Blue Jackets. This rink also serves as the home ice for many of the high school teams in the area. In fact there was a game going on during the Blue Jackets game, and we could watch a little of the action from the concourse of Nationwide. Next season I may try to make a weekend trip to catch my alma mater play a road game as the Ice Haus along with another Blue Jackets game.

I’ve written about Dream Dinners before, and my family continues to enjoy these easy to make meals at least two or three times a week. My wife and I started using Dream Dinners when our oldest child was born, and now that there are two kids in the house these meals have really become a part of our weekly routine.

Ingredients

Recently I was asked by the owners of my local Dream Dinners location if I knew any other bloggers in the area that I could put them in touch with. What eventually happened was a tasting session that I was invited to along with some of my suggestions and some other bloggers that they had found on their own.

Dinner Is Served

During our session we all prepared three meals of our choice following the standard Dream Dinners process. Basically this means that you assemble a variety of pre-cut, fresh ingredients into the provided plastic bags. Take these bags home and put them in your own freezers. When it is time to eat, you simply defrost and cook the pre-assembled meals following the provided directions. It couldn’t be any easier.

Pi Pizzeria is a small St. Louis based chain that recently opened a restaurant in downtown Cincinnati’s AT580 building. They specialize in cornmeal deep dish pizzas, with the sauce on top of the cheese and toppings.

Inside

Our arrival at 7pm on a Friday night was unsurprisingly met with a wait for a table. Fortunately there were enough seats at the spacious bar for our group to get a couple of drinks and split a few pizzas. Speaking of drinks, the craft beer menu is pretty solid with at least a few choices in each of a handful of styles.

South Side Classico

My wife and I ordered a large sized south side classico pizza with mozzarella, sausage, mushroom, green pepper, and onion ($22.95). For my taste the cornmeal crust was much too thick, and I preferred the slices of thin crust that others in our group ordered. With that said, the sauce was good and the toppings were all great.

For my money, I prefer the stuffed pizza from Mio’s to this cornmeal based deep dish, and I will stick to the thin crust pizza from Pi on future visits.

Saturday was MadTree Brewing Company‘s 2nd annual Winter Bonanza, an all day celebration with bands, food trucks, and tons of great craft beer. I was able to attend for a few hours in the afternoon to sample a few new beers, listen to Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle, and grab an always delicious sandwich from C’est Cheese.

Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle

I also caught a couple of MadTree’s founders talking with the Southern Ohio Brew Show, a newer podcast dedicated to craft brewing in and around southern Ohio. The Southern Ohio Brew Show is a free local source for brewing information exchange; bringing you local brewing news, brewing experiments, and interviews with local brewing advocates.

Southern Ohio Brew Show

If you missed this awesome event, don’t forget that the Cincy Winter Beerfest is taking place next weekend. I’ll be down there on Friday, and likely volunteering and pouring beer on Saturday.

Cincinnati Beer Week BlackTart

Also don’t forget about the upcoming Cincinnati Beer Week, which kicks off with the Beerfest and runs for the entire next week. I’ll definitely make it to at least one or two of these official events. It’s a good time to drink local beer!

With a quick trip to Columbus scheduled for this coming weekend, I remembered that I had not finished a restaurant review from my last trip up I-71. My family and I met up with a friend who is currently living in the Short North area of Columbus a couple of months ago. We wanted to grab dinner nearby and with our young children along for the ride, we settled on Melt Bar & Grilled.

Bar

Melt is a small chain of restaurants in central and northern Ohio, which serves a variety of grilled cheese sandwiches and burgers along with a great selection of craft beer. We arrived around 7pm on a Thursday and found just a short wait for a table of five, really a four top with a high chair added.

Inside

One look at the menu and I was quickly sold on the fried green tomato BLT with hickory bacon, southern herb remoulade, romaine lettuce, and cheddar ($12.50). The sandwich was massive and the serving of fries on the size was equally as large. The sandwich was actually so thick that it was hard to eat, and the grilled cheese aspect is definitely an after thought. This is more of a grilled sandwich that happens to have a little cheddar cheese on it.

Fried Green Tomato BLT

My wife ordered the backyard BBQ with pulled chicken, thick cut battered onion rings, sweet BBQ sauce, and sharp cheddar ($11.50). Again the sandwich is super thick, which way too much bread. With that said the flavors of this sandwich were strong enough to shine through, which was not the case with the BLT. I would order the BBQ again, but skip on the BLT.

Backyard BBQ

Calling these massive sandwiches grilled cheese is not really an accurate description. The bread is too thick and there is no emphasis on the cheese. This is a much different experience than I’ve had at Tom + Chee (which is expanding into northern Ohio) and I would go there for a more authentic grilled cheese. With that said the beer list at Melt is great and worthy of a stop for a few pints at their large bar.

Our last stop on our recent Caribbean cruise was Cozumel, Mexico. We knew it would be hard to find reliable transportation to a nearby beach with our young children who we don’t like to transport without car seats. So instead we opted for yet another cruise ship sponsored excursion, the All Inclusive Passion Island by Power Catamaran.

Isla Pasion

After a 30-45 minute boat ride (and a lengthy docking process) we arrived at the Isla Pasión for an all-inclusive stay of 3 hours at the private beach. A buffet lunch of barbecued chicken, mahi-mahi, pasta, and some of the best guacamole around was available throughout our stay. There were also multiple bars setup with complimentary drinks including margaritas and rum punch.

Beach

The water surrounding the “island” gets a ton of seaweed (at least during our visit) but the staff did a great job removing what they could. My mom even found a beautiful conch shell in one of the seaweed piles, definitely the largest shell we have ever seen on a beach. With that said the snorkeling was not worthwhile.

Conch Shell

While we mostly enjoyed the time relaxing, there is plenty to do for all ages. A roped off kids zone had swings, play sets, and even arts and crafts for the little ones. For the bigger kids and adults there are a couple of trampolines setup in the ocean, kayaks, and volleyball. If relaxing is your goal there are several hammocks for relaxing in the water.

Hammocks

The time went by quickly, but we all had a great time and came back to the ship relaxed and ready for another day and a half of sailing before disembarking back in Miami. We had a wonderful trip!

Cozumel on Dwellable

The second stop on our recent Caribbean cruise was Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. For Christmas I bought an excursion for everyone in our group for the Amazing Turtle & Wildlife Adventure. This allowed us to visit the famous Cayman Turtle Farm, the world’s only sea turtle farm.

Group Shot

By far one of the coolest parts of the farm are the turtle touch tanks, where you can pick up and hold baby Green Sea Turtles. It was fun to watch the little guys swimming and playing with each other too.

Touch Tank

There is even a small tank where you can sink into knee deep water and get even closer to the little ones. This was definitely a highlight with our young kids.

Yearling

I really enjoyed the large turtle lagoon. Complimentary masks, snorkels, and flotation vests are available and once equipped it is really easy and fun to snorkel around the lagoon chasing sea turtles and fish. Some parts of the lagoon are easily twelve feet deep, so the flotation vests really helped.

Snorkel

It was so much fun to swim with the turtles and at the far end of the lagoon there is a window into the predator tank, so it almost looks like you are swimming with sharks! One of these sharks can be seen near the end of the video at the end of this post (around 4:20).

Turtle Swim

The breeding pond holds the turtles that are of breeding age, which is usually about 16 years old. There are literally hundreds of Green Sea Turtles in this pond, some weighing in at more than 500 pounds. During breeding season, from May to October, the connected beach area is used by the females to lay their eggs.

Breeding Pond

Grand Cayman on Dwellable

Late last week my wife and I had the chance to try the newest neighborhood restaurant, J Bar Pizzeria, occupying the former Indigo spot in Hyde Park Square. While we always enjoyed the food at Indigo, the atmosphere definitely needed some work. Fortunately upon our first steps inside the restaurant spot shares very little resemblance to its past.

Inside

J Bar has lots of dark wood work throughout, and the space feels very open. There is a newly added bar along the left wall, which meets up with the kitchen at the back of the room. A window allows customers to see back into the kitchen and watch as all meals were prepared fresh and from scratch. There are a couple dozen tables throughout the space and there were plenty available during our 7pm visit on a Thursday.

Potato and Ricotta Dumpling

We started with the potato and ricotta dumpling ($10). The dumpling also features small pieces of house made sausage. Fried Brussels sprout leaves, crispy kale, Parmesan, and pine nuts are served on the side. The dumplings were very tasty, and I actually preferred the bites without any sausage in them. I would order these again but I think next time I’d go for a salad, some of which looked amazing.

Half J Bar Pie, Half South of South

The large size pizzas can be split half and half ($21.50 for our choices). We went with the J Bar pie (red sauce, cheese blend, pepperoni, truffled gremolata) and the south of south (house made chorizo, chihuahua cheese, spicy red sauce, jalapenos, onion, cilantro, avocado). While the J Bar pie was fairly simple as far as ingredients go, the taste was excellent. And the south of south was like nothing I’ve ever had, especially with avocado served as a pizza topping.

Both pizzas were excellent choices and I saw a few more selections from the menu that also caught my eye, not to mention all the paninis that looks great too. I know for sure that I will be back soon.

The first stop on our recent Caribbean cruise was Ocho Rios, Jamaica. My wife, my brother, his girlfriend, and I all decided to do the Dunn’s River Party Cruise excursion. My parents have both done this at least once, so they offered to stay back with the kids while we took a ride on a sailing catamaran to the Dunn’s River Falls, climbed the falls, and then enjoyed unlimited rum punch drinks on the ride back.

Photo Op #1

Man-Made Improvements

I wanted to take my GoPro with us for the trip, but on the morning of the excursion I found that the batteries were dead. So we all chipped in and bought the DVD from the guys at the falls, which offers 15 minutes of video and pictures from our group’s climb up the falls. I captured a few images from the video to share, as they are the only pictures we have from the falls.

Waterfall Slide

The hike up the falls is not terribly difficult, but there are some added tricks that make it a fun activity for nearly all ages. We had a four-year-old in our group who made it up the falls, though he did require some big help from his parents. I don’t think it’s worth doing more than once, but everyone should experience this for themselves.

Cruising

The ride back was a fun time with the crew of the “Cool Runnings” catamaran. The rum punch was definitely flowing and I don’t think my glass was ever empty, thanks to the lovely crew.

Cool Kids

Margaritaville

For the rest of our stay in Ocho Rios, we found a nice little beach outside of Margaritaville, which overlooked our ship. Buckets of beer were available to take down to the beach and the restaurant itself was never very crowded. We had a couple of appetizers before heading back on board on our way to Grand Cayman.

Ocho Rios on Dwellable