Cincy, City of Cin, Cincin-nasty, home sweet home....

Mike and I went to Cincinnati over the weekend, (yep, ALONE! No Charlotte, just Mike and I)

and truth be told, I'm already in love with the city.

I'm not kidding, I was giddy over the weekend thinking about moving to this beautiful place.

Who knew Ohio was so pretty? I didn't.

Oh and it was pretty much perfect weather all weekend, another reason to love this place.

Mid 60's and sunny? Yes, I'll take it!

Cincinnati is filled with old, charming suburbs each with their unique "down towns". Too bad the really cute, charming areas will be a little too pricey on our fellowship budget. :) We'll just have to visit and window shop the darling boutiques and shops on the weekends.

One of the best parts moving to Cincinnati is my friend Lauren who lives in Chicago will only be a 5 hour drive away. But wait it gets better, a lot of her family lives in Cincinnati, which means she has all the more reason to come visit! Chicago is so close, she even came down to spend part of the weekend with us.

Love this girl. She showed us the ins and outs of the city. Mike and I feel so much better acquainted with the city because of her help! Plus she took us to her uncles specialty running store in the heart of the city. Nice to already know of a good specialty running store!

We also went to the famous Graeter's Ice Cream. Didn't know it was famous? Ok, I didn't either but apparently this is a very popular ice cream chain that has been featured on the food network and Oprah herself is a fan of it.

The ice cream was very good. Much creamier and softer than any kind of ice cream you can buy at the store. Lauren introduced us to Buckeye ice cream. A buckeye is a tasty chocolate treat that supposed to resemble the nut of a buckeye treat, another fun fact we learned over the weekend. And between the three of us we devoured all that ice cream.

Downtown at night. Quite the pretty sight if I do say so myself.

Over the weekend we visited a couple of the hospitals where Mike will be working. So exciting to see his new work place.

We also visited the University of Cincinnati campus. Although Mike will not be attending the University, (he's been done with any kind of school for 3.5 years!) we still enjoyed walking around campus and checking out the sights. While walking around we both commented on how old we felt. It's been awhile since either of us went to a university class. Not to mention we are both a good ten years older than a lot of the students we saw walking around.

Funny fact, the stadium goes down into the ground and was completely open. We could have walked right onto the field and ran around had we wanted to. Those Ohioians (not sure what you call people from Ohio, so Ohioians it is!) are trusty people. I like it.

Cincinnati is set on the Ohio river which divides Ohio from the state of Kentucky. There are nine bridges across the Ohio river connecting Ohio and Kentucky. One of the bridges is for pedestrians only, called the Purple People Bridge. Nice name huh?

It was a lovely little walk across the bridge.

One of the things I'm most excited about Cincinnati is all the hills. You know how I LOVE my mountains in Utah, it's one of the things I will miss the most when we move, so I was happy to see Cincinnati is not completely flat. There are rolling hills ALL OVER. And SO MANY trees. Seriously I was in awe over how pretty it is there.

Check out that hill, one of the many near downtown Cincinnati.

Downtown Cincinnati feels a lot like Salt Lake's downtown. Not too big and overwhelming but not much going on either. :) However there are three professional sport's teams we are excited to cheer on while we live there.

The weekend was really good for Mike and I. First because it was just US. Yes we love and adore our child, but every couple needs alone time and alone time we got! It was also so good for us to check out the city. We spent a lot of time driving ALL OVER the city looking for potential suburbs to live in. We now know where we would like to live once we move there, which will make finding a home slightly easier. We also met a bunch of other residents while visiting over the weekend which was super helpful.

I did feel overwhelmed at times, thinking of all the new changes coming our way, but I feel so much better prepared moving there than I did Chicago. As hard as this move is going to be, things are falling into place for us and neither of us can help but feel like this move really is meant to be.