Sometimes last minute plans turn out GREAT

Sooo - this summer we had grand plans to finally make it to Miami and visit with David's Brother Andy.  We haven't been to see Andy since Amy was in diapers .... Amy, the 7 year old, the one entering 2nd grade in a about a month ..... Yeah, it's been a while ..... In fact since we last visited Andy became a father.  His son, Enzzo, is entering KINDERGARTEN in the fall and the girls have never met him. So I decided it was high time we went down there.

But then .... life happened

There was all sorts of "talk" at David's work and our life was sort of on hold there for a bit.  Then, on top of that talk, Ceva announced they would be taking over the shipping down in Nashville and we thought David might need to be there for a meeting or two and there was no way he was going to Nashville without me so again, life was on hold.  On top of that there was all the business with our tree which was finally repaired and saved but it cost us close to $800. And right after that - the lawn mower broke ....

Between money issues and time issues, it looked like we were not going to go anywhere this summer.

So when David tells me he finally has a weekend free from work and he suggests maybe we should take a short trip somewhere, like maybe Indianapolis, I jumped at the chance and.

He found out Wednesday he wouldn't be working so Thursday we started talking about the trip.  We looked at hotels and such Friday night but never really settled on anything.  At bedtime I had the girls set aside pajamas for our trip and had them pack their little overnight make-up kits with toothbrushes, hairbrushes and such.  (can I just tell you how much I LOVE the fact that they are old enough now to do alot of their packing on their own) Saturday morning David booked a hotel while I finished up the packing. Then I took the girls to a birthday party for one of Allison's classmates. After the party we drove by the library and dropped off books that were due and then we headed home.  One last quick run through the house to make sure we had everything and we were on the road around 1pm.

We drove straight to the Indianapolis Children's Museum but when we went to pay for our admission, the guy told David the museum was closing in an hour and a half. This Museum is HUGE.  It is supposedly the largest Children's Museum in the US and it gets rave reviews from parents and travel shows.  We decided 1.5 hours was not going to be enough so we asked what their Sunday hours were and decided we'd come back Sunday.  We found our hotel but then decided to drive around a bit and see what there was to see in Indianapolis.  Our first stop was Lucas Oil Stadium. 

It was RIGHT behind our hotel.  None of us are huge Colts fans but c'mon - who doesn't love Peyton Manning?  And Audrey used to be a Colts Fan when she was little.  She liked their helmets - she called them "The Horse Shoe Prints" and always cheered for them.

After that we checked in to the hotel.  It was Homewood Suites and it was the perfect size for our family. The kids were in love and would have probably been happy to stay put and order pizza. (and in their defense it was rather warm and muggy outside and they had been on the go since they woke up) But we were on "vacation" and it just isn't truly a vacation unless you force the kids into some sort of touristy activity so we changed clothes and headed out.  There was a Hard Rock Cafe about 2 or 3 blocks form our hotel so we hiked it there.  It was OK but probably would have been better if their AC had been working.  We all felt rather warm and then saw the AC repair man come by our table and aim some sort of meter/gauge thingy at the vent right by our table, shake his head, and then walk off ..... Oh well - at least we got a picture:

After everyone had a bath or shower we got the girls settled in for the night.  They were in hog-heaven I  tell you! Audrey especially loved the room set up and asked if we could come to this same hotel again for another trip.   It was a pretty nice and Homewood Suites is a part of the Hilton chain so we can still rack up points and maybe one of these days actually get a free room somewhere ......

Here they are munching on popcorn and watching a movie on "their" TV:

Sunday morning we loaded up on the awesome free breakfast and then dragged the kids on a little walking tour.

After that we headed to the museum. 

If you ever get a chance to go  to the Indianapolis Children's Museum you should definitely go.  It is awesome. I think we were there for 3 hours?  Maybe more?  There are some pictures from the museum here. And we still didn't see everything.  I am truly tempted to buy a membership.  It's a little over two hours away so it could be just a day trip. 

All in all it was great trip. Downtown Indianaplois is wonderful. The atmosphere reminded me of Austin but with more shopping.  Plenty of good restaurants too; a nice mix of national chains, local chains, and independent. I could defnitely see us going back for a longer stay and I could also see it as a nice Girl's Weekend destination.  And if we ever found anyone we trusted to watch the kids overnight, it would be a super fun getaway for David and I.