Indianapolis - Day 2

Thursday was a true vacation day. We had nothing scheduled or planned. Just a day to do whatever we wanted. We slept in, went to lunch, did some shopping and saw a movie. We spent the evening sight seeing...although I'm not that impressed with the things/places Indy has to offer tourists. We toured the Capitol building, walked the canal walk and had dinner at a little cafe by the water. The immediate circle center downtown area was a fun and lively place.  All the hotels and restaurants are within a few blocks of each other and it makes for a busy happening place.  


I'm not at all impressed with the rest of the city.  Yes, they have a nice big race track but it's old. The city is old and pretty dumpy.  There was construction all over the city and every road we drove on seemed like it needed to be repaved.  There were also a lot of abandoned buildings.  The funny thing is that the city had a ton of statues and memorials to honor random events in history.  I felt like every block had a statue or memorial site of some kind.  If they spent less money on statues and more money on the rest of the city I think it would help.  I will get off my soap box now! I'm sure there are really nice parts of Indianapolis.


 I know you have to pay for parking in any downtown area of a major city although I was surprised that we had to pay $26 a day to park at our hotel with no in and out privileges. We thought we were pretty clever (and we turned out to be) when we decided to park in the meter parking on the street by our hotel.  It ended up only costing us a few dollars a day since we were gone during the majority of the daytime hours.  We did have one little hiccup which came in the way of a parking ticket on Friday morning.  They start charging for parking at 7:00 am and we forgot to set the alarm to get out there and put money in the meter. Ricky made it out at 7:08 am but we had already gotten a ticket.  Good news...the ticket was only $20 which was still cheaper then parking in the structure.  Once we got in the routine down and we didn't see any more tickets!

 It's tradition for us to see one, or several, churches when we vacation. They are all so unique and different and fascinating to see. This trip there were quite a few within walking distance of where we were staying so we explored all of them.

This is the inside of the church in the picture above. I really liked the dark wood on the beige walls. It was very dramatic looking and very eye catching. 

We didn't get to go inside this one. From the outside I think it's one of the prettiest churches I've ever seen. It looks like a castle from England. We walked all the way around it hoping to find an unlocked door but no such luck. Bummer. 

The State Capitol Building. 

 Inside the capitol. 

 A meeting had just adjourned when we arrived so we didn't get to see much of anything spectacular happening while we were there. 

 The little cafe we ate at was at one end of the canal walk over looking the water. 

 We walked about halfway down the trail. There were some cute apartments on one side of the water and a sidewalk on the other. Given what we had seen in the rest of the town, this was a nice little area.

 This sporty little car is what got us around for the week. 

Indianapolis - Day 1

Ricky is a fan of motorcycle racing. He specifically likes the MotoGP circuit which only comes to the United States twice a year. He's said for a while now that he wanted to go to the Indianapolis race so we finally decided to make it happen. My mom flew down to stay with the boys so Ricky and I could have some time together. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't also really want to go.  While watching the races seem to give me some anxiety, I still enjoy them. I've learned a lot about the riders, bikes and tracks so it gets more interesting to me as the seasons go along.  
Wednesday was a travel day. We spent the day in airports and on planes as we made our way to Indy. We checked into our hotel and grabbed some dinner before heading to bed. 

Logan and Grammy.

Grammy took Lincoln to school for a few days while she was here.

 Our hotel

We had a nice little connection and ended up with a beautiful suite. This was the view out of one of the bedroom windows.  It was pretty beautiful at night.

Signs that Logan is Growing Up

I've noticed this last couple weeks that Logan is definitely in the toddler stage and growing up fast.  He's not quite two but the tantrums have started.  I'm pretty sure we've entered the terrible two's. Here are a few things that caught my eye recently...

 He started picking his nose.

 He picked out his own Little Einstein pj's.

 he puts on everyone's shoes (and most often they're on the right feet!)...

 There's the attitude.  (He still looks sweet though.)

he climbs up and walks across the entertainment center if I'm not looking.  I only got a picture of him sitting.  He also stands on the smallest indentation of the trim on our kitchen cabinet doors and pulls himself up to see what's on the counters. 

Everyday he says several new words. He is a picky eater unless it has to do with sugar. He wants to go everywhere with mom and dad and he tries really hard to play with Lincoln, even though he loves to push his buttons. He also has quite the comedic streak in him.  I can't wait to see what that will bring as he gets older. 

I love you sweet boy!

Conversations with Lincoln

When we change Logan's diaper, recently Lincoln has been very interested in watching, specifically wanting to see the poop.  I'm a little concerned about this so I decided to see if I could get some answers.

Me: "Why do you want to always see the poop?"

Lincoln: " Because I want to see it."

Me: "Isn't it gross and stinky?  I think it's yucky.  I don't understand why you always want to look at it. How come you always want to see it?"

Lincoln: "Because I'm going to be a poop doctor."

**************

Tonight we were out in the backyard and the wind started to pick up as a storm was rolling in.

Me: "Okay, we're going to go inside in a minute because a storm's coming and it's getting windy."

Lincoln: "Mom, you better get Logan or he's going to blow away."

After a few minutes I started to see the lightning and hear the thunder.  

Me: "Lincoln, I see lightning so it's time to go in."

Lincoln: "No, I want to stay and touch the lightning."

Me: (not really thinking about what I was saying since I was trying to clean up the toys in the yard) "No, if lightning touches you it will kill you."

Lincoln: "It will kill me?"

I went on to explain that it would hurt him really bad and he would have to go to the doctors if lightning touched him, etc.

As we were walking into the house Lincoln pauses.

Lincoln: "Mom, quick, come look at this cloud."

I looked up and sure enough it was a dark gray storm cloud. 

Lincoln: "It's gonna kill me."

Okay, I learned my lesson. I have to watch what I say. Everyday I'm reminded of that...eventually I will learn.  After he said that I went into damage control and tried to talk through what that means and clouds won't kill us, etc.

This is a self portrait he had to do for school.  I think his writing is really good for his age but I don't really have anything to compare it to.

A Child's Prayer

This was Lincoln's prayer, all on his own, in it's entirety...

Jesus Christ, thank you for cars.
Please make our car bigger, like a monster truck.

Lincoln's First Day of PreSchool

Lincoln has been going to a structured daycare program three days a week for the last year.  We call it school but it technically was child care, although they have lessons, focus on letters, numbers, writing, etc. Last week he started an official preschool program through our school district.  While his vocabulary and sentence structure is really good, his pronunciation of certain letters has qualified him to be enrolled in the speech program.  He is at age level for all of the letters he is supposed to know but for the ones he can't pronounce properly (sounds for r, l, ch, sh, y, etc.) he doesn't substitute it for the common sound.  Common being the sounds other 3 year olds would substitute it with.  Instead of yep - it's wep.  Instead of Logan - it's Wogan.  Instead of teacher - it's teetser.

We're really excited that he is in a class with 10-12 other students, with two teachers and a speech therapist.  He only goes for 2.5 hours a day, four days a week.  I think it will be a really good transition for him into kindergarten.  It's set up like kindergarten.  They have a structure including, lesson (activities based around the sound they are working on) snack, recess, show and tell, etc.

I attended a meet the teacher night, there's a PTA, the whole nine yards.  It was a little weird to think that he's old enough to be going through this.  Next it's kindergarten, middle school and high school.  He needed to have a full size children's backpack so we went shopping for a backpack and school supplies.  It was a little surreal.  I'm a mom. I have a child in the school system.  When I was young I dreamed of having a family and being a volunteer in my kids classes at school and that time is here.  It's funny to say but sometimes I pause to realize that this is what I wanted for all those year and I'm now living that. I won't say it's been easy or that my boys are angels but it's my life. I have a quote on my office wall that I really love.  It is something that I'm trying to do better at so I posted in it big beautiful letters.

"Enjoy this moment, for this moment is your life!"

 Logan seemed to be just as excited about all of it as Lincoln was.

 The motto in our house is that brothers are best friends!

 The first day he used his old Diego backpack but he later picked out a new Transformers backpack with Bumblebee on it. 

 That smile is precious.  He was so excited to go to his new class. Lincoln has never been afraid to be away from us, to go to a new place or struggled to make friends.

 He's tall enough to look like he's going into kindergarten but it's crazy when I remind myself that he's really only 3 1/2!  

We had to have spikes for the first day.  Unfortunately since I was on my trip the two weeks before school started we never got him a haircut but we've since taken care of that too!

Tucson Trip - Day 10

Our last day of sectionals we played against The team from El Paso, Texas. They were 1-1 so we knew we had a good shot at winning. I struggled quite a bit with my backhand (which is normally my strength) but I was able to play well in the other aspects of the game. The heat had been a big factor the first two days but it didn't seem to effect me as much by the third day. We played our best match and won in two sets, 6-4, 6-2. Our team won again 5-0 which meant as a team we were undefeated for the weekend. We were named sectional champions and will be going on to play for the national title in October.
As a team we grabbed lunch and headed home. I have to admit that it's really nice to get a break every so often and have some time to myself. On the other hand 10 days away from Ricky and the boys was really long and I missed them a lot. I was really excited to get home to see them. It was fun to give them their little "surprises" from my trip that I brought home for them. All in all it was a successful, fun, memory filled trip!

The team before our day three match. 

Stacy and me watching and routing on the rest of the team after we finished playing.

It's hard to see our little trophies because they are glass but they say Southwest Champions!

Tucson Trip-Day 9

Saturday morning we played the Tucson team. They had won their match the day before so it was an important match for us to win. Luckily my partner and I won our match in two sets with scores of 6-0, 6-4. I don't think that they were easier that the first team we played I just think that my partner and I played better. Our team won the overall match at 4-1.
We spent the afternoon at the pool and that evening was a luau for all the players. It was fun to hang out with the girls and dance but I missed Ricky. He is a really supportive husband and kept the boys that entire time.

 Team before our day two match.

 I played with Lenore all three days. We had never played together before so all things considering I thought we made a great team!

 The team after our day two win!

 Lisa and me at the luau. 

 Stacy, Trisha, Deb and Me.

Our team with coach at the luau.