Visit the Home of Dum Dum Pops

If you are traveling through northwest Ohio, make a stop at Spangler Candy Co., home of the Dum Dum pop. They also make candy canes, circus peanuts and Saf -T pops. There is a great tour of the facilities aboard the Dum Dum trolley. The kids as well as adults will enjoy learning about the process of making the candies as you ride around the factory. A small museum houses some unique candy memorabilia. We were able to taste test the new flavors of Dum Dum pops that they were working on and the kids scored lots and lots of free pops. Perhaps a few too many! It was a quaint stop and so interesting to see the home of Dum Dums!  Check times as they vary depending on the time of year.
http://www.spanglercandy.com/about-us/tour-store-museum

Can Kayak Help My Travel Planning?

  

What is Kayak and can it help me in planning my next trip? Kayak is a website that will provide a rundown of the flights, hotels, vacation deals and car rentals in a format that will allow you to compare prices across several sites for purchasing travel. I usually will check Kayak to get a broad picture of the price range of whatever travel item I am looking to buy. It is a simple way to get travel quotes from the major travel suppliers such as Orbitz, Travelocity , Expedia, etc. in just a few easy clicks rather than going to each individual site and typing in the same travel request multiple times. As a busy mom, any tools to help narrow down the time involved in booking travel is much appreciated.
www.kayak.com

Entertrainment Junction: Calling All Train Fans

If you have a train lover in your family, Entertrainment Junction is a must-see attraction to visit in the Cincinnati area. This museum/train extravaganza houses the world's largest indoor train display. Walk through a historical tour represented by lots and lots of miniature trains running along tracks beside, above and all around. Steam locomotives, trolley cars, today's diesel locomotives and subway trains run through the mini towns, cities and countryside of our nation's history. The American Railroad Museum is also housed within the building and explores our country's railroading history with interesting and interactive exhibits. Imagination Junction is a railroad-themed playland for the younger set. My kids could literally spend an hour or two just playing within this area.

During the warmer months, there are some small-scale trains to ride outside and special seasonal activities for Halloween and Christmas are also part of the fun. Whether you live in the area, are coming for a vacation or just passing through, this is a unique, fun and educational place to visit.

http://www.entertrainmentjunction.com/

Featured Post at Our Everyday Harvest

Thanks to Kelly at Our Everyday Harvest for featuring my blog on the weekend blog hop. Check our her site for the latest coupons, deals, freebies and giveaways.
http://www.oureverydayharvest.com/

Check Out A Zoo Overnight

How many people are aware that their closest zoo might actually offer zoo overnights for families? Well, I was not until last year. We had been members of our local zoo for many years and I had never noticed the zoo overnight advertised in the newsletter we receive quarterly.

I am so glad that I finally read and researched about our zoo overnight offerings. It was an awesome experience for my daughter and one that we will definitely repeat. From San Diego to Houston and Atlanta, most zoos now have some type of family overnight. We picked the manatee experience- what a way to wake up in the morning with a manatee pressing its nose up to the glass watching you sleep. It was extremely economical for what we received. A special night tour of the zoo, animal shows, breakfast in the morning and behind the scenes tours of some of the animal buildings.  This may not be the case at all zoos, but we were able to just sign up as a family and did not have to attend with a larger group in order to participate.

Check it out, what a wonderful memory for your kids and something they will always remember!! We are already planning our next overnight trip and looking forward to it!

Travel Resource: Awesome Packing Lists

If you are like most moms, taking the actual family trip is fun, but the leg work involved to get ready for the trip: not so much fun! Laundry has to be done, clothes and toiletries packed, toys and activities for the car ride sorted out. It never fails that something will be inevitably left behind, especially if you have young children.
I recently found a wonderful packing list, courtesy of the travelmamas.com website. The list heading is for babies and toddlers, but it is really a comprehensive list for the whole family. It is already in PDF format, so it just needs saved to the computer and printed out for the next trip. I guarantee following this list will save A LOT of time in your next packing adventure.
http://www.travelmamas.com/media/Travel%20Mama%20Packing%20List%20-%20For%20Babies%20and%20Toddlers_PLG2.pdf

                                       "Mom, did you remember my toothbrush this time?!"

Welcome to Lovin' The Weekend Blog Hops with your co-hosts:

Karen from Tots and Me, Maria from Adventures of the Mommy Homemaker and Rena from An Ordinary Housewife.

Thank you to every one who has stopped by, whether this is your first visit or you have been a faithful ongoing participant!

We would love for you to stop by each of the co-hosts and follow us, then feel free to add your links to any or all of the following linkies.

 We also randomly choose a Featured host each week from the Lovin' The Readers linky. This week we are featuring Erin from Traveling Kids on the Go.

Here's what she has to say:

"I actually started blogging about 6 years ago as a way to chronicle our adoption journey. I kept it up for awhile and then took a little break from blogging. 

Fast forward to now: I have always loved to travel and really enjoy doing so with the kids (ages 6 and 4) so we get around a lot! Plus, since we homeschool, there are more opportunities to travel and explore at the off-season times of year. Many of my friends ask for tips and advice about traveling with kids and places to take them, deals, etc. so I decided I would start to put information into an ebook format. After finishing one mini-ebook and currently working on a second, I thought it was a good time to go back to blogging. There are not a ton of blogs that focus on travel with kids, but I hope people can get some new travel ideas and ways to make traveling with children a little more of a smooth process. "

Please take the time to check out her blog, let her know you are visiting from the Lovin' The Weekend Blog Hops. 

Don't forget to link up to the Lovin' the Readers Hop if you would like a chance to be a Featured host next week. Please comment with a way to contact you, especially if there is not an obvious way mentioned on your blog. We would love to include a little write up about you and your blog in the next week's Lovin' The Weekend Blog Hop post, including a link to your blog. And you will get to include the linky codes on your blog. Sound fun? We're looking forward to getting to know our readers better.

Here's how this blog hop works. We would appreciate it if you would follow Tots and Me, Adventures of a Mommy Homemaker and An Ordinary Housewife then please head on over to our Featured Host and follow as well. If you no longer have GFC please follow in some other way. After that there are three different linkies you can link to. Whichever one you choose to link to, please grab that button and share it on your blog (the codes are on Tot's and Me's sidebar). We'd love it if you could tweet or in some other way share about this blog hop, the more people who know about it, the more potential visitors and new followers of your blog. We'd love to meet some new friends this weekend.  

Some people are more interested in just increasing their numbers, while others really want people who appreciate their blog and want to keep up with their posts. So, there are two separate linkies. The third linky is for you to link up your giveaways.

If you are interested in increasing the number of followers to your blog via GFC, Linky Followers, email, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ link up here. We will follow you back if you follow us (just note which one you are linking to):

If you are interested in gaining followers to your blog who will read and comment and truly find an interest in your blog, link up here:

If you have family friendly giveaways to link up, here's your spot. Please make sure to include an end date for your giveaway.

We are so glad you stopped by. Please leave a comment if you link up and we will be sure to stop by and follow back.

Don't forget to check out my "Blog Hops" page for other great weekend blog hops!!