Irish Weekending

We had the best time celebrating St. Patrick's Day this year!  Kevin was on Spring Break so he planned a little road trip up to Notre Dame to visit.  The last time we were on campus was for a football game when I was pregnant with Fletcher.  We were all looking forward to our trip so close to St. Pats Day.

As with any trip there were plenty of highs and lows.  Good times and times I'm happy to forget.  We cleaned up throw up, dealt with meltdowns, fingers got smashed in doors, skinned knees and the kids struggled to fall asleep in the hotel.  We also managed to have a ton of fun doing new stuff.  Just know that any time I post pictures from our trips, there are plenty of behind the scene moments that were not all smiles and photo ops.

On to the highlights of our trip:

We stayed at Varsity Clubs of America in Mishawaka, IN.  It was so much fun!  There was Notre Dame stuff everywhere.  I'd imagine this place would be so much fun to stay at for a game day weekend in the Fall.  Although it's much cheaper to stay here in the off season.  They had yummy free snacks for guests, tons of amenities and my kids were a big fan of the giant hot tub.  It was also really close to lots of great things.  We'd definitely stay here again.

Restaurants Recommendations:
We usually get take out pizza for a pizza picnic in our hotel when we travel.  The hotel staff highly recommended Mimmo's Pizza and it was delicious.

Our whole family LOVES Mexican food so we were excited to give Salsa's Mexican Grill a try.  It was amazing!!  They had this delicious ranch dip that I'm still dreaming about.  We all licked our plates.

Kevin picked up a Groupon for a local breakfast place that was just okay and for Ritters frozen custard.  It was so good!  It's also right by the hotel.  Kevin's deal saving tip for when we travel is always check out local groupons near your hotel.  See if there's any good deals for places with good reviews and buy them.  He also would give Evil Czech Brewery a big thumbs up.  He said their beer and popcorn were delicious.  We ran out of time to eat there, but it is a family friendly restaurant.

We headed to the campus bookstore first.  Olive was cracking us up this trip.  She knows Kevin went to college here so she said, I bet everyone is going to be so excited to see you here again!  Haha  Kevin had to explain that he didn't really know any students here anymore.  It was also Spring Break here so campus was really quiet.

We never have trouble shopping in the campus bookstore.  It was fun to be there on a week day instead of a game day.  We basically had the place to ourselves.  Game days are NUTS so that was a nice treat.

We visited the new bookstore/Starbucks location, too.  Something for everyone :)

We headed out on our walking tour of campus.  It was much warmer than we were expecting, but still chilly.  The kids did great and were happy to be along for the ride.

Fletcher mastered a couple of new phrases... Golden Dome and Notre Dame while we were here.

Touchdown Jesus & Touchdown Olive

We walked out to Kevin's old dorm.  We were looking around he asked a student to let us in to use the restrooms.  The student called him SIR and made him feel extra old :)

Cute little leprechauns were excited to play in the snow that was on the ground.

We look forward to coming up for game day weekends when the kids get older.  For now, we'll enjoy road trips to visit during the year and playing on campus with the kids.

Hope you had a great weekend, too!