Indiana Road Trip!

We are really good friends with Mike (my brother) and Lacey, and they moved to Indiana almost three years ago, and we have never yet been to see them in Indiana.  We've meant to every year, but there's always another trip or family reunion or something.  So this year, we decided that our number one priority was to go and visit Mike and Lacey in Indiana.  We took the girls out of school for the week, and started driving.  Since it was two days driving there and two days driving back, we had to go for a week to make it worth it.  We left town Thursday at around noon and arrived in Indiana about 9:00 Friday night.  You also have to factor in that we lose two hours going to Indiana.  I was terrified for the drive, but it actually wasn't bad.  The kids did very well (I thank the Lord for such wonderful kids who are such good travelers), even the baby--who I was most worried about.

We stayed up late visiting with Mike and Lacey, and the next day, the fun began! They took us to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis and it was FANTASTIC!! It was so interesting and kid-oriented with lots of hands-on stuff and fun play areas that were also educational.  It was absolutely perfect for my kids! It was like Disneyland in that every detail was exquisitely planned for, and visually pleasing as well.  So awesome! We stayed there all day and I'm sure if we had had another three days to spend there, we wouldn't have been bored.  There was so much that we didn't even get to.

And this is just in the lobby! Before we even entered the museum proper, Mike showed the girls the "green screen" in the little library they have there and they had a great time playing with that.  They just stood in front of the green screen and looked at the monitor, which made it look like they were in a forest, or walking along a sidewalk. That was Claire's favorite part of the museum.

 The first section we went to was the dinosaur land!

Digging for dinosaur bones!

My little paleontologists!

A huge thank you to Mike and Lacey for getting us a HUGELY discounted price! You guys are awesome!

My kids could have spent all day in each one of these areas. Hallie said all the dinosaur stuff was her favorite part of the museum.

Playing with dinosaurs

And dressing up like dinosaurs! This place was seriously designed for kids.

Even Shae Shae tried on some dinosaur mitts :)

Train time!

Lacey chillin at the train depot.  Claire loved being the ticketmaster and selling me tickets.  The whole museum was designed for interactive play.  So fun!

More trains.  The kids could crawl in those little tunnels...

And they did!

Hallie and Claire are part of the display! Part of the tunnel went up into the center of the train setup.  Too cute.

Rebuilding one of the warriors.  It was a fun life-size 3D puzzle.

We did it!

Laying on the rotating couch and looking at the cool blown-glass shapes in the ceiling!

They were pretty freakin awesome!

And the blown glass tower that transcended through the center of all the floors of the museum.  So cool! 

I know our faces are a little dark, but look at Shaelyn!  She's loving it!

At the water clock.  This was a very clever piece of engineering.

 After this, we had lunch and then went to the bear country section, where they had play areas specifically for babies and a nursing room for "mama bears" and their cubs.  Shaelyn loved the baby area, and my older kids loved creating clay faces on plastic heads and discovering all sorts of fun toys and activities. Then we went to the gecko exhibit--they had lots of geckos in displays, like at a zoo, but they also had some fabric ramps and velcro pads that the kids could wear on their hands and feet to walk like a gecko.  They had places with night vision goggles to show what geckos see in the dark.  They had everything you could think of and lots more that you couldn't think of!

We love the children's museum!

 Then we went up to the top floor to the science exhibit.

Waterworks! We spent a lot of time in this section, because it was really cool.

And Shae continues to enjoy herself.

Experimenting with locks and mills and water flow.  Very fun!

As you can see, Daddy and Uncle Mike like it almost as much as the kids!

I didn't get any pictures of it, but we also rode the carousel there, and I took Shaelyn on it.  She absolutely LOVED it! The second the music came on, she started grinning and bouncing up and down vigorously on her seat and then she started trying to sing with it.  Oh my goodness it was so cute! Mike took Kallie on and he said she had a very similar reaction.  Apparently the carousel is the place to go for babies! We walked through the maze of mirrors, too.  Awesome.

Last, we went to the Egypt section and rode in the "plane" that took us to Egypt.  It was pretty cute.

Another 3D puzzle.

Can you see Claire's Egyptian bracelets? She made them at the Egyptian jewelry station.

Making patterns

Claire's pattern

Putting together a mother-of-pearl inlay puzzle.  Very cool.

And Evie cashed it in.

As we were getting ready to leave, Hallie, Claire, and I walked around the outdoor garden in front of the museum.  It had models of the seven wonders of the world.

Chichen Itza

The Taj Mahal

The great wall of China

The sphinx

And the pyramids

The Coliseum

And the Parthenon.

Ahhhh! The dinosaurs are loose!

This place is so cool!

We love the children's museum!

Goodbye, Children's Museum!! Thanks for a super fun day!

And that was just Day 1!!

The next day was Sunday, but since Claire and Evie weren't feeling well, and Hallie didn't want to go to church in a strange ward without them, just Shaelyn and I went to church with Mike and Lacey.  My kids all had a touch of the flu here and there throughout the week.  It seemed like every night we had someone throwing up or Shae blowing out of her diaper with diarrhea.  The yucky parenting moments.  :(  Thankfully, they were still able to do all the activities we wanted to do, and they didn't feel awful ALL the time. 

Shae asleep and Evie not feeling well. :(

Sunday was also Lacey's birthday so we had a little birthday celebration for her with Cody and Camille Cutler in the evening.  Their little boy, Jaden, is Evie's age, and their little girl, Brielle, is Shaelyn's age.  It was cute to watch them play together.  Although Brielle is big for her age and Shae is small for her age, so Brielle seemed like a giant compared to Shae, lol! Shae and Kallie, on the other hand, were about the same size.  They were so cute to watch together!

Cousins! Haha, I love this picture!

On Monday we took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and they loved it because it had a playplace.  We loved it too, since we don't have any Chick-Fil-As in Wyoming.  We also went out to eat at Olive Garden for dinner--yum!

Shaelyn trying a lemon for the first time

After the initial shock, she liked it!

We love Olive Garden!

Tuesday, Lacey took me and the girls to Brielle's first birthday party.  It was so cute and fun!  Then when we got home, it was time for us to clean out the car...two days of traveling had left it in pretty bad shape.  It was so gross.  The worst was the teddy graham casserole.  Some child had put teddy grahams and chocolate chips and marshmallows in a cupholder and then later another child had poured a bunch of water in that same cupholder.  Then it sat there getting baked in the sun for a couple of days.  Ick!  It was also hard because we had to take everything out of the car to clean it.  But it felt great to get it cleaned! 

We laid out all our stuff on this blanket while we cleaned out the car.  Hallie and Claire babysat Shae for us.

Haha! Identical expressions! I love it!

 More cute cousins!

Yes, we are teething!

Silly babies!

And Wednesday was our last full day in Indiana.  We packed it full of fun, though.  We walked to the park, and everything was so beautiful and blooming!

Dandelions! Also known as "wish flowers" in our family.

Cute Kallie!

This trip was the first time the girls had ever seen a weeping willow.  Once discovered, weeping willows became their new favorite tree, so this one was just begging to be explored.

Claire being a goose.

They loved the weeping willow so much we had to get a family picture there.

The geese were as common as the ducks there.  But if you got too close, they would hiss and flap at you.  It was funny to watch them!

Pretty girls!

Mike and Kallie!

Finding wildflowers!

Look at those gorgeous trees!! Fabulous!

We love springtime!

Picnic at the park!

 That evening, we barbecued our favorite pork tenderloin.  Mmmmm!

Cuties!

The grillmasters

I'm a lucky girl!

 And that night, we went over to the Cutlers' for a fire and s'mores.  So fun! Before it got dark, the kids had a ball playing in the kiddie pool in their backyard--as you can see, Claire is particularly stoked! It was great to see them and visit with them again before we left. 

 And Thursday morning, we said goodbye.  We drove the six hours to Nauvoo and spent Friday and half of Saturday there before driving home.  Here's the cousins saying goodbye!

Thank you Mike and Lacey for a wonderful trip! We sure love and miss you guys! 

Pictures from Nauvoo coming up next...