Library makes Holiday Travel a Breeze

Hope you're heading somewhere fun for the long weekend! My husband and I are going camping at our family farm! And then next week, I'm headed to Myrtle Beach for a week-long vaca. I can't wait to unplug for a while!

Before you load up the car for your holiday road trip, stop by your Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County branch, where you can:
•       Grab books on CD for everyone to listen to during your travels.
•       Check out portable Playaways: About the size of a deck of cards, Playaways come loaded with an audio book. Just press and listen. Everyone can listen to their own book.
•       Download free music from thousands of songs in over 100 genres. Best of all, they’re yours to keep forever. Check it out!
•        Lighten the load by downloading books to your eReader or your mobile device. Available to download 24/7! No late fees! Click here to learn more.

Don’t forget that all the books you read and/or listen to moves you closer to winning a free NOOK Color and Reds tickets as part of the library’s Summer Reading program, which continues through July 31.  Log onto www.CincinnatiLibrary.org/SummerRead and register the whole family.

Not sure what to read? Once you’ve registered for registered, you can browse more than 100,000 book reviews left by other readers who are in the summer reading program.


FREE EBOOKS in JULY:
Get FREE eBooks, as an added bonus. You’re halfway through the Library’s Summer Reading Program and there’s so much reading left to do! Not sure what to read next? From July 1-9, let the Main Library’s TechCenter staff help! Bring your Nook, Sony Reader, Kindle, flash drive, or blank CD and we will give you 45 free eBooks to help you get through the next month! Classics, computers, philosophy, history, and more are all included. No library card or registration required.
There's still time to register for SummerReading and log books to win prizes -- including a NOOK Color.  www.CincinnatiLibrary.org/SummerRead

Have a great weekend! Safe travels!

Review: Lexus RX 350

Lexus RX 350 from Lexus RiverCenter

Pete, my husband, is a new year's baby. So, we always go on a little getaway for his birthday and New Year's. This year, we decided to go somewhere warm and we went to Panama City Beach.

Of course, we made these plans last minute, so flights were outrageous. I asked Lisa, the GM at Lexus RiverCenter, if we could borrow a car and do a review of it on my new blog. She loved the idea and set us up with a 2010 RX 350 to take on the trip.

I was excited to have a spacious car with lots of storage because Pete and I both have little cars as our daily drivers. Not nearly enough room for a long road trip -- or all the shoes I planned to bring for the trip!

Here are the things we loved, and didn't love, about the RX 350.

"I felt like the queen of the road, and this car was my throne"

Didn't love:

• Pete said it looked like a "grocery getter." Sure, it's no sports car, but I actually think it's the perfect alternative to a mini-van (I solemnly swear to never ever be a mad mom in a mini-van!!). It's soooo much more aesthetically pleasing than a mini-van, but has a lot of the same luxuries of one, like an automatic hatch door, storage, extra cup holders, etc.
• No GPS. Luckily we had our own GPS we brought with us to navigate our trip, but now I'm spoiled and like it in the dash. My OCD was kicking in a little with all the cords - I didn't like them. So, if I were buying this RX 350, I would've sprung for the upgrade and gotten the GPS.
• Pete says he likes off-road capabilities in any SUV, which this didn't have. But the realist in me knows he'd never use that. It just makes him feel more manly to know he could take his car off road if he wanted to. Boys and their toys, I swear! :)

We loved the automatic hatch door

What we loved:

• Heated seats (came in handy coming back from Florida to Ohio). At least my bum felt like it was back on the beach!
• All the multimedia inputs. Pete completely freaked out when he opened up the console and saw all the power sources, USB ports, and auxiliary hook ups. It could accommodate every single gadget he brought with him. And believe me, that's a difficult feat. We brought a GPS, radar detector, iPod, iPod charger, phone, and camcorder - and the RS 350 handled it all beautifully. 
• Bluetooth. We set Pete's phone up through Bluetooth, so when anyone called, we could see the caller on the dash screen and it piped the audio through the stereo.
• Automatic hatch door. It was super handy to press a button from afar and have the hatch open on the back and we could load in our luggage, groceries or purchases we got when we went shopping at Pier Park (we highly recommend going there if you go to PCB!). Then, you can close it with another push of a button.
• Seat/steering wheel memory. Not only could you program your seat/steering wheel placement preference for multiple drivers (which came in handy when we were switching drivers on the trip). But Pete also loved that every time you turned the car off, the seat automatically moved back and the steering wheel lifted up a few inches to give you extra room to get in and out. Then, when you turned the car on, it automatically moved back to the setting you set when the car was last running. Just a little touch we really liked.
• Sunroof. We loved this to let in extra sunshine and ocean air when we were at the beach. It was nice and big so it helped us pretend like we were in a convertible and not in an SUV. :)
• Lots of cupholders. On long trips, the lack of cupholders is always an issue for me. In my car, I only have two. In the RX 350, I counted six cupholders. It was great! We had plenty of cupholders for our water, Gatorade, Red Bull and coffee for our long trip. Unfortunately, this meant lots of bathroom breaks! haha!



The spacious RX 350 was great for a road trip

• Wide spectrum lights. I really loved how well the RX 350 lit up the roads at night. We were driving through the backroads of Alabama at midnight. I've watched waaay too many scary movies and I was fully expecting some demented good ol boy to pop out of some dark wooded area. But with the brights on, it felt like daylight and I wasn't so scared anymore. :)
• Ride height. I didn't think I would like sitting so high up on the road, because I've always been behind the wheel of road-hugging sports cars. But I loved driving the RX 350. I felt like the queen of the road, and this car was my throne. It set up nice and high, but not too high, and with all the windows, I felt like I had great visibility.

Obviously, there are more "loves" than "don't loves," so it's pretty clear we were huge fans of the RX 350. When we decide to expand our family, I could see us driving this.

Check out the video below as Pete and I give you a tour of the car and what we loved most about it.