"if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room"

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

worn out ...

As I said in the last post, we have visitors with us this week end. All three grand kids are here, Nicholas (7), Avalynn (5), and Olivia (4) while their Mom (our daughter Amanda) travels to Illinois to help a friend move. Their father, Ryan is working all week end and instead of him having to bring the kids every morning we decided it would be best, and easier, for them to just stay here.
Early Saturday morning we had a thunderstorm roll through and wake Rudee and I up. The storm wasn't too bad and only lasted a short while and we were back to sleep. The kids never even stirred.
You might wonder where we sleep everyone. Nicholas takes the couch and the girls get to sleep on a pallet made of blankets on the floor. I guess it is not the perfect place for the girls but they like it and seemed to sleep just fine. Me, I wouldn't be able to walk straight for several days and would be stiff and sore for another month at least :-).

The weather was very overcast and it looked like it may start raining again at anytime. I suggested we take a road trip and we decided to visit the Indianapolis Zoo.
Rudee loves the Zoo. I could really care less, but it seemed like a good way to entertain the kids so off we went.
Indianapolis does have a nice zoo and it is worth a visit if you are in the area. We started out at the Dolphin Pavilion where there was a free show starting in 15 minutes. The pavilion is a very large building with a large pool where the Dolphins live, work and play. They had a nice 30 minute program where we learned about bottle nose Dolphins and watched as they jumped, played and did tricks. We all enjoyed the show.

The Zoo is laid out in such a way that you follow a tree lined, winding path that takes you through the different displays. We saw a large number of exotic animals and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Olivia kept wanting to see the Monkeys, of course they were near the last display but she got her wish and was really excited to see them.


We all boarded a small train and took a ride through the Zoo and got to see some of the animals from the train as well.



Nicholas got to feed a Giraffe and we all got to touch a shark. YIKES, 1,2,3,4,5 yep still got all my fingers :-).





One thing that bothered me was they had an area smilier to a small amusement park with several rides including a small roller coaster. What's up with that? Do people really come to the zoo to ride carnival rides? To me this was kind of disappointing and looked more like just an effort to reap as much money from the visitors as possible (yes the rides cost extra) and took away from the "zoo" type feel of the place.
We spent about 4 hours touring the displays and were all getting pretty tired by the time we headed to the exit.
The rain never came and it started to clear off on the drive home. Once back at the 5er we decided to just veg out in the air conditioning. We ordered a Pizza for supper and ordered up a movie through our Wii/Netflix connection on our TV.

Sunday morning it was my turn to cook breakfast. Well actually Rudee did a lot of it and I kind of took over half way through. Rudee and the kids had French Toast with bacon. I made myself an egg Mcmuffin.
The kids stayed entertained watching cartoons on the TV most of the morning. Shortly before noon we headed to the pool for a swim. The water was a little on the cool side but they didn't mind and spent about an hour swimming and playing. They all really enjoy the water and never want to leave but we did have to feed them before their Mom showed up :-).
Amanda arrived shortly after 1:00 and things really settled down. Rudee and I just couldn't believe how quiet things were in our little home on wheels :-).

Since it was a pretty day we decided to take a motorcycle ride and ended up in Lafayette, In. Rudee had gotten a $10 gift card to use at Red Lobster so that's where we had dinner. We shared a platter with crab legs and shrimp scampi and were both stuffed when we finished.
We thought about stopping on the way home for an ice cream but neither one of us had any room left for desert so we just enjoyed the evening ride home.

Things are getting exciting at work. They are integrating us onto the parent companies computer system so I have been taking a lot of on line training. We go "live" on September 13 and during that week they are sending us for a week long training in Ohio. Rudee and I both have Friday the 3rd and 7th off so this week will be my last full week of work until after training.
We are not sure what we are going to do over our long Labor Day week end. We are going to take the bike somewhere but have not figured out just where yet. We are leaning towards the Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia area but this seems to change daily. I'll keep you posted.








1 comment:

  1. Sounds like you had a great visit with the "grands". One of these days I'll be able to go visit mine.

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