Catching Up

First and foremost I want to say happy birthday to my father-in-law. As JoAnn would say HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPA! I won't announce to the world how old you are, but I hope you had a great day.

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Its been so long since I've wrote anything and so much has happened that I actually needed to look at a calendar to figure out what we've done. I can't believe how fast these last three weeks have gone by.

On the 14th we went with Daniel's parents and our niece Marley to Brown County to see Daniel's mom's side of the family. We were only there for dinner, but it was fun to see Daniel's uncles aunts and cousins and the next generation that is starting to grow. (And it was really fun to eat the ribs that Daniel's uncle made for everyone.) JoAnn being her shy self and not really knowing anyone there spent the whole time playing with Marley. Here Marley is showing her DS to Jo. I thought it looked pretty funny with the two of the huddled by themselves in the corner hunched over the DS.

The following Tuesday we made a trip up to Warsaw to see Matt and Britt and a few other people. We just went up for one night, but I have always liked the drive between Indianapolis and Warsaw. You drive through about 2 hours worth of farms and small town America. If it were longer than that I'm sure I would get tired of it, but it's always a peaceful drive for me. I probably like it even more because of all the memories I have of making that trip just about every weekend during the school year when I was engaged and would drive drive to Indy to see Daniel. There were many times when Britt and I would drive down together to see Matt and Daniel since they both lived in Indy and we always had fun during those drives. Moving on, it was a fun short trip. Daniel managed to meet with one of his friends who is trying to get him to go to seminary at Grace and coach high school basketball with him, play 9 holes of golf with Matt and one of his college coaches, have dinner with a guy about a possible job opportunity in Warsaw, and have breakfast with one of his former professors. I'm not sure how he managed to fit so much into such a short time. What did I do? Pretty much I sat and talked to Britt the whole time. It was great. Her is a picture of JoAnn and Addison who spent the whole time together.


One cute side story here...when we went to Ohio later that week JoAnn pointed to one of my baby pictures and said "Mommy look it's Addison, I want to play with Addison." I'm not sure I saw the resemblance, but JoAnn was convinced it was Addison and not me.

The next Friday, Daniel's sister Kristen and her husband Joel came to Indy for the weekend. Long before I found out they were coming home I had made plans to go to Ohio, but we were able to work it out so we could spend the morning with them. They hadn't had a chance to meet Isaiah so it was fun to introduce him to his aunt and uncle. JoAnn had a blast playing on the tire swing with Uncle Joel too.

This is a random picture I found from sometime in the last few weeks. It seems like the only way I can get the laundry folded without one of the kids unfolding everything lately.
I will pick up here later, right now its time for the little guy to eat.

Hot Air and Museums

This past Monday the neighbors had given a hot air balloon ride as a gift to their parents and they actually ended up leaving from right behind their house. So we quickly ate dinner and ran outside to see them blowing up the balloons and take off. I guess open spaces like this where the balloons can take off are somewhat rare so there were actually two balloons with a third that started to set up, but for some reason ended up not actually taking off. It has been so long since I've seen a hot air balloon and I don't think I've ever been so close to one, so it was sort of fun to see how things work. JoAnn just thought they looked cool, but was terrified when she saw the flame that was used to create the hot air. I don't think she would have been nearly as scared if it weren't for how loud they are. I don't think I ever realized how loud they truly are. So, any how here is a picture of the two that took off from right behind the house.

One of the things I've been dying to do was to take JoAnn to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. I have heard so much about it and it seemed like it would be pretty fun. I was going to do it for her birthday, but found out it was a little more expensive than what I wanted to pay and as it turns out the first Thursday of every month from 4-8 pm Target sponsors a free night. So, that was my answer. Knowing that Daniel would probably not really want to go, I asked Katy to come with me before she went back to school the next day. It ended up being so fun and I am so glad we went. I am extremely glad Katy was able to go since I don't think I would have been able to keep up with JoAnn and still take care of Isaiah by myself.

One of the big exhibits was a Barbie area. They had a ton of dolls from the last however many years and these were two of my favorites. The first one was Ken and he actually had a fro. Then the other Barbie was pregnant!


Here is JoAnn with Katy trying to talk to Barbie on the phone.

I think she was a little too young to do much with the Barbie exhibit, so we tried to find something she would like a little better.

This was the Egypt exhibit.

You can't really tell in the picture but she was terrified. She was pushing up against me so hard that I was almost falling over. So we went on and tried the science area. Score. She LOVED it. There was a ball machine type thing that she loved and just stood watching the balls go all around for a long time.

Next was a water way thing that had boats floating through it and you could place rocks and things in the water to change the flow. She loved playing with the boats.

Next to the water there was a house that tried to teach the kids how to have a healthy lifestyle. This is JoAnn with the "couch potatoe."

There was way more to the museum, but that is a quick shot. I'm hoping to go again on one of the free nights, but I'm going to wait until school starts to see if it won't be as crowded since it was crazy how many people were there.