Our spring break

We had a fabulous spring break, although it's gone entirely too fast (but then, doesn't time off always go too quickly?)!  This was the first time in five years that both our school district and my husband's district have been off at the same time.  We had to take advantage of it!  In order to keep things within our tight budget, we decided on a trip to Indianapolis.  We set out Wednesday morning, and the kids were amazed that we arrived so quickly.  After all, any other trip we've taken was AT LEAST four hours, and we were at our destination in two!

Our first stop was the home of our 23rd President, Benjamin Harrison.  I was especially excited about this, as he is a fellow Miami grad.  That tour took about an hour and then we checked into our hotel.  Normally we prefer to stay in a Residence Inn because it gives everyone a bed (even if it's a sofa bed) and there is more than one TV.  Not in the budget though, so we stayed at a Cambria Suites.  Shout out to them...the room was AWESOME!  There was a good sized sitting area with a couch, chair, and desk, and then there was the sleeping area with two double beds.  Since we were planning to do lots of sight seeing, it was perfect.  After dinner the kids did some swimming, and everyone was in bed early for our adventures the next day.

We decided to visit the Indianapolis Zoo.  Of course since it was spring break week, it was absolutely packed.  I'm also pretty spoiled, because Cincinnati has a great zoo.  Everyone enjoyed seeing the animals, but we all agreed, we have a pretty good zoo right here at home.  After the zoo we decided to drive around downtown a little bit and decided to walk into the state capital building.  We were able to watch some debate in the Indiana State House of Representatives and even was able to watch them take some votes.  We are such Social Studies geeks in our house!  As we were heading out, Andrew mentioned that he would like to know where the governor's office is located.  A gentleman heard us and took us to the inner chambers of Governor Pence's office.  While we were there, the governor walked out of his meeting, and we were all introduced and got to shake his hand.  WOW!  I'm not sure the kids understood what a big deal it was to get to shake hands with a state governor, even if it isn't our state!  After dinner there was a little more swimming, and the kids, even though they were tired, had some trouble falling asleep after all the fun.

On Friday we visited  Conner's Prairie.  It's an interactive "museum", but more like a living history site.  They had a camp set up to replicate the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, and then we toured Wm. Conner's house and barn.  The barn was the highlight for Thomas.  Some farm babies had been born recently and all were available for petting!  I wasn't sure we were ever going to get Thomas out of that area!  They also have an area that is a re-enactment of Captain Morgan's raid on Indiana.  It has a theatrical experience where the visitors are in the store and we get to experience the "raid".  That was definitely Thomas's least favorite part, and I don't think Catherine was a big fan either.  The final section is a prairie town in 1836, and all the characters "live" there, so they "know" nothing about our modern conveniences.  I think the kids were a little confused when they told one of the characters that we were from Ohio and the person exclaimed that it must have taken us days to get there.  We had dinner on the ride home and everyone tumbled into bed very, very tired.

For Andrew and I, this was the very first trip ever we had taken that involved only the five of us.  Every single other trip has involved going with others or visiting others.  We aren't complaining at all, those trips have all been wonderful and we wouldn't trade them for anything!  At the same time, we commented that it was also really fun to be able to do what we wanted when we wanted, and if plans changed it didn't matter...no one else was effected.  We absolutely had a blast!  Because of the timing and exorbitant costs of scout and sporting camps this summer, we were thinking about not taking a family vacation.  Now however, we realize that we are only going to have this time with our kids for so long and then they will be grown and on their own.  We are hoping we can squeeze in an expensive quick trip somewhere, sometime...we love making these memories with our kids!