We made it to Indianapolis! After being on the road for about a week and a half, we arrived at Jathan's parent's house. They had a sign and streamers welcoming the grandkids, specifically "M", but they did add the other three to the poster board in smaller letters. It was quite the welcome, none the less.
During our stay in Indy, the kids got a lot of grandparents time, playing outside in the big yard, and riding bikes. "M" learned to ride her bike without training wheels while visiting the grandparents. Paige has been into Monopoly and had heard stories of how much Grandpa liked to play, so that was something on the agenda that they were able to accomplish.
Besides seeing all the family and friends, I was very much looking forward to the kids catching lightening bugs. I had really hyped it up. Around here there aren't any lightening bugs. Growing up it was something I looked forward to every summer. The ritual of getting your jar with holes poked in the lid, getting sprayed down with Off, and then making the mad dash into the yard once you saw the first flicker. Our jars would be full of them. We would put them on our nightstand when we went to bed and watched them light up as we fell asleep. Of course in the morning we would wake up to a jar full of dead bugs, but that was fine with us, we were ready to do it again the next night. I couldn't wait for the kids to experience this. So on one of the last nights in Indiana, we were going to catch lightening bugs. We got the jars, we sprayed the kids, we were out and waiting, and then nothing. Once in a while we saw a flicker, but it was usually too high to catch or across the yard and we couldn't find it once we got to where we thought we saw it. The kids were getting frustrated, I was frustrated and between four kids and three adults, we ended up with 2 lightening bugs that wouldn't light once we put them in the jar. I was crushed, probably more than the kids, but they were pretty disappointed. So that dream didn't quite get fulfilled. As of now our kids do not share my excitement over lightening bugs, but we tried, and that was that.
During our time in Indy, we were able to connect with several friends from both Lafayette and Indy. Thank you Jared, Becca, Dave, Whitney, Brad and Carrie for taking the time to come over to visit us. Thank you also to Anissa for hosting us for a play date and Chris and Heather for having us over for dinner. It was so good to see familiar faces during our time there.
Believe it or not, I didn't get any pictures of the kids with their grandparents. I spent most of my time taking video, so the time is recorded, but not to put on the blog. Oh well. I am also finding it hard to figure out what to put on the blog, because most of the pictures have "M" in them. I started to try to crop her out, but I hate doing that. So anyway here are a few pics of our visit with friends.
Eventually our time in Indiana had to come to an end. We were thankful for the time we had with family, but it was nice to get back home.
This time we didn't have any plans to stop and see anyone on our way, so we made reservations in NM for a night of rest. We left Tuesday night and arrived at our motel in NM on Wednesday afternoon. It was a long time in the car, but we made the most of it with books on CD and just enjoying the landscape once we could see it in the morning. We stopped in Texas at one of their rest areas and got a kick out of seeing their Texas shaped BBQ's. It was a pretty stop and I got a good picture of the girls. After I had them stand a little ways in the grass to get a good shot, Jathan pointed out the sign that said to stay off the grass because of rattlesnakes. Yikes!
The kids decided that "Cars" was the theme of our travels. They loved all the Route 66 signs, so when we got to our motel in NM, they were thrilled when they discovered we were actually staying on Route 66. We even got to have dinner at one of the original diners.
On Thursday, we headed out again. After a bit of time in the car, we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. It was a nice little park to stop for a time to stretch our legs and see a few sights.
After that stop we started for our last long leg of the trip and arrived home early Friday morning. Oh it was so good to get to our house and get to sleep a few hours in our beds.
We had a great time traveling, but the old saying is definitely true...
There is no place like home!
Sounds like you had a fun trip! Our family had a similar 'stay off the grass because of snakes' story: we were traveling across the states and stopped at a rest stop to stretch out our legs for a bit. We were running around in the grass and playing frisbee when a kid asked us if we had seen the sign warning us to stay off the grass because of snakes. Oops!
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