Mini-vacation.

The husband and I decided it was time for some concentrated family fun, so we took the kiddos on a "mini-vacation", as Brooke keeps calling it. Indianapolis was the destination of choice this past weekend - short drive, plenty to do with the kiddos, & inexpensive. Plus, we have some college friends that live in town, so we got to spend lots of time visiting with them!

First stop? The Indy Zoo! While it's no Cincy Zoo, the kids loved the chance to see some animals up close. Well, not really that close, but as close as our minimally-exposed-to-animals children could handle. Joe was certainly fascinated by all the of the animals whose sounds we keep teaching him. He especially liked the very noisy "ba-ba-boons". Brooke was mostly excited about navigating the map, which meant she quickly became besties with our friend Mark who also had a zoo map. She kept telling us which way we needed to go next (which is so very typical of her - always worried about what comes next rather than soaking in the moment at hand.) Other than the dolphin show, their favorite part of the zoo was probably the playground. And, quite frankly, that was perfectly fine with us - this trip was all about them and letting them explore & have fun!

We are so fortunate to have a very incredible network of college friends, and our Indy friends are no exception. Mark & his wife Kristen invited us to their home, planned a great kid-friendly dinner, and even indulged our children in several games of Duck Duck Goose. The kids warmed up to them very quickly! They had so much fun playing at their house and having a yummy ice cream treat :)

After a pretty terrible night of sleep in the hotel (thanks to a really bad cough for Joe and nightmares for Brooke), we headed out to the Indy Children's Museum. Though their tiny attention spans didn't keep them at one activity for longer than 2 minutes at a time, we managed to fill 4.5 hours with fun at the museum. If we had let him, Joe would have spent the entire day coloring at an easel. He also really seemed to enjoy the Hot Wheels exhibit (like father, like son!) Brooke's favorite things were the giant water table and the schoolhouse where she got to pretend to be a teacher. (p.s. you'll notice in these museum pictures that our children flat-out refuse to look at the camera anymore...sigh...) We were all terribly exhausted when we left; the kids slept the entire 90 minute ride home when we left!

It was really, really good for us to get away as a family. Our kids are best behaved when they are by themselves, just the 2 of them, so they were pretty great while we were gone (with the exception of Grumpy Joe who made an appearance at dinner thanks to his cold.) I'm so glad we did it and I hope these "mini-vacations" become a much more frequent thing for us.