We made an impromptu trip to Indiana last week to spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law and our sweet niece and nephews out there. And oh boy would you believe it that the cousins had an absolute BLAST together? Shocking, I know ;)
We had been talking about making our way out there sometime this summer, but the opportunity arose to head out there earlier, and we decided to make this the time we went.
We left around 10:30 on Saturday morning, and for a 12-hour drive, I'd have to say that the boys did FANTASTIC. Granted, we mostly alternated between books and the tablet or phone watching $17 worth of Blaze, Paw Patrol, Barney and Dora, so that was a fun treat, right?
We stopped for lunch in Clear Lake, IA and then were lucky to optimize on nap time before stopping about five hours later for supper at Qdoba in Peoria, Illinois. After supper, we took some time off to play at a nearby park that overlooked this cool bridge.
We didn't make it to Dan and Sarah's in Noblesville until 11:30 their time (10:30 our time), and mostly just went to bed. Our home for the week:
The next morning was Sunday, and we enjoyed a restful morning together playing together and catching up a bit. It didn't take long for the kiddos to get outside to explore.
I was thrilled to finally get loads of snuggle time with my newest little nephew (who is now SIX months old), Andrew. (If you recall from our family GTG last month, I was sick and didn't want to pass it to him)
I'd really like someone to tell me when it was, exactly, that my eldest nephew is now able to ride an ADULT-sized bike??!?
During the week, we took approximately 10 trips to the park down the street. And what should have taken approximately 5 minutes to walk ended up taking approximately 15 minutes every time because this was our mode of transportation:
And the kiddos rode them like this:
So basically, they could have gotten there faster if they had hopped on one leg the entire way. haha :)
Bubbles were also a BIG hit for the younger kiddos, even when it ended up being something like 50 degrees and drizzly one day.
We were seriously just waiting for the Emergency Room with these crazy kiddos as high on life as they were! I think I say that every single day with my own boys, but add in five other crazy, high-energy kiddos, and it's a recipe for disaster. Just not today, thankfully!
I am fairly certain that I have THE most beautiful nieces in the world :) Hannah Joy is the only girl in the bunch of ruffians, and she is pretty much going to be the best babysitter in the world, I think. She and Kendrick were just adorable together, and he LOVES her.
And how has it taken me THIS long to notice the striking resemblance Jacob has to his Grandma Ruth? (Especially noticeable in his profile)
Uncle Mark had no problem keeping his eye on the gamer crew downstairs. The second to last day we were there, Eli said, "I don't want him to be down here. He likes to tell me what to do." lol The boys sort of broke Cashel in, although I think he was mostly just holding the Wii remote.
It blows my mind that my eldest nephew is practically a man now. I mean, he probably needs another 10 years on him, but it FEELS like it. He's only a head shorter than me at this point, which doesn't quite seem right.
This little goofball graduated from preschool while we were in town. I love his contagious smile with those cute squinty eyes :) I couldn't believe that the last time we were in town visiting these guys, Eli was two weeks old! My has he grown! He'll turn SIX in August!
I had the privilege of taking Eli to school on his last day of preschool, and while he grimaced at me taking pictures of him, I got 'er done!
I just loved getting to know sweet little Noah better on this trip. We usually see him when he's out of his element at the farm in Humboldt, and as is usual with toddlers being out of their element, they aren't quite themselves. Noah was an absolute joy to be around, and we had so much fun walking to the park and doing underdogs. I wish I could have captured the joy in his face when he was swinging, because his giggles and laughs were just so contagious.
One of the highlights of the week we were there was that we got to make it to one of Jacob's baseball games. (Again, HOW is he old enough to be playing real, full-fledged BASEBALL?) He had a bit of a rough time hitting, but the team pulled out the W!
Another highlight was taking the younger kiddos on an excursion through the nearby "jungle" to look for tigers.
With seven kiddos in tow, you don't typically just decide to go pretty much anywhere, so Noah and Cashel were super excited two of the days to go for a short ride in the car. Once, I took them to the grocery store (I know. Thrilling.) The boys thought it was some sort of incredible adventure, and I think Cashel was mostly mesmerized because he had never in his entire life seen such an enormous grocery store.
Another time, I took these two on a trek all over town to pick up various pizzas. And you would think that with two toddlers who are pretty much no longer napping during the day, I would be smart enough to realize you don't take those particular two toddlers on a car ride all over town at 5:30pm. It ended about as can be expected:
Thankfully, we were miraculously able to still get them down to bed by 10pm, but it wasn't pretty.
We left on Thursday afternoon around 4pm to make our way home. It was a LONG drive home, and we ended up splitting it into two days. We drove into this gorgeous sunset on Thursday evening before we stopped for the night in Iowa City.
We pulled out even more stops on the way home, and pretty much vowed we wouldn't allow electronics for the rest of the month after this.
We were so glad we could make it to visit Dan and his sweet family for the week. We're going to try to make this happen more than once every SIX years from here on out as we miss these guys. We were so pleasantly surprised with how well our boys did with the traveling, and hope to test the waters again before too long. I think it's safe to say that Kendrick wouldn't mind more traveling ;)
