At the end of every May, Chris has a national conference. I'm not particularly good at 5 straight days on my own with the triple threat, and his conference this year happened to be in Indianapolis, so we packed up the crew and headed to grandma and papa's house for the week. It was a party.
My kids are awful travelers. Seriously, you can't take them anywhere. The way there we made it without stopping. They way home we weren't as lucky. Isn't the way home always worse? Luckily, Michigan has bizarrely beautiful rest stops to stretch our legs.
We had lots of fun at grandma's house, having campfires and s'mores, playing outside, playing inside, visiting a little zoo (where Carly almost got eaten by a goat: "Get away goat, I'm not your food!"), and checking out grandma and papa's chickens (which we'll probably be eating next time we visit). Indiana life is a good life. After Quinn experienced some initial fear, the kids also loved the doggy, Sammie, and the poor pup was the recipient of a whole lot of love. Lucky for her, she got a whole lot of dropped food in return. We missed daddy, but had a lot of help and fun distraction to help us enjoy the week without him.
One of the days we headed to Indianapolis to the big Children's Museum. Aunts Becky and Sarah joined us. It was a lot of fun, but it happened to be end-of-the-year field trip season so it was a bit too busy. Carly loved the carousel, but Quinn was totally unsure about it. John gave the Nile croc some love, Carly loved exploring and building Terracotta Warriors, Quinn gave big hugs to dino eggs, and we all enjoyed lunch.
On Saturday I headed to Indianapolis to pick Chris up. We decided to have a little day date and it ended up being most of the day. He was kind enough to let me indulge my inner history nerd, and we visited the war memorials, the Indiana War Museum, and the Capital building (which sadly closed an hour before we got there!). We also went to the Indianapolis Colts Grille, where Chris got a burger with two grilled cheese sandwiches as a bun, and stopped by the Chocolate Cafe so I could get a dark chocolate turtle as big as my face.
I was in heaven in the museum. See the flag with all those spots? An actual flag carried by an Indiana regiment in the Civil War. All those spots are covering bullet holes. And the Hitler head? Found by an Indiana soldier in Hitler's offices after the end of World War II. It had a bullet hole under the eye when found, meaning an angry German shot it after everything fell apart. Also see Chris looking at all the military patches. He has a thing for patches. Looks like I'm not the only nerd around here. #boyscoutproblems
It was the perfect week. I'm so grateful for my fabulous in-laws who so willingly take this crazy mom in and take care of my kids and turn a week without our man into a total party.
Long live the Hoosier State.
1 comment:
We Loved having you here!!!
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