Chase and I didn't travel home over the holidays this year. I definitely think we regret it. While we did have a lovely Christmas just the two of us, we really missed our family! Plus we had a lot more traveling just on the weekends to do in January and February, and if you've ever done much traveling from the west coast for just a weekend trip back to the midwest, it's exhausting!
Super excited to see family! First time since our wedding!
Despite the long travel days, we had an AMAZING time in Indiana hanging out with my family. When we arrived, my parents and niece and nephew met us at the airport. Logan and Kinley were so cute when we got there! We got huge hugs and screams! After a quick snack of airport crackers from my purse, we headed to our first planned event!
My best friend Liz lives in Bloomington, IN now. I can't even begin to thank her enough for how much she did for our wedding due to her location. She is an amazing best friend and I am thankful for her every single day! I can't wait to be her MOH in June! She's also always willing to drive a long way to see me whenever I make it back to Indiana. It is so nice of her to take time out of her busy (very busy) schedule to drive to Indy and meet us for dinner. Luckily, my family also loves Liz and her soon-to-be husband Nic, so we all meet together! The kids were great. We were at the restaurant for a total of 3 hours or so. It did help that I bought them some fun treats to keep them entertained. We all had a great time! I don't have a picture from dinner, but I do have a picture of Liz and I back when she came to Portland in December. I was bad and forgot to blog about that trip, it was awesome though! Here is the run down. We spent almost the entire trip just talking. Nonstop talking. We also enjoyed some delicious beer, did some shopping (we are the best shopping partners..), and went to the Japanese Gardens in Washington Park! Love when I get to spend time with my best friend.
Back to our Indiana trip. After dinner we headed straight to Connersville. It was really nice to have everyone back at my parents house. I really wanted to open presents (I was so excited for the kids...) as soon as we got home, but the kids were pretty tired from the car ride so we waited. Chase and I were really excited for them to open their presents...Kinley got a doll stroller and Logan got a grocery cart full of goodies! They both love pushing toys, so these were perfect. Their big gift was a Plasma Car. If you've never heard of it, it is like the little push carts we used to play with in gym class. I heard about them from my sister in law, Courtney, who got our niece Edee one for Christmas as well. The best part is that it goes up to 250 lbs, so we could all ride it! Logan was unsure at first, but once he saw all of us riding it around he loved it! It can turn on a dime so it is even house friendly. Here is a video of Logan riding it today! I love how he "pretends" to not know where mommy is and then rushes to find her. Too cute.
Despite the somewhat bad weather in Indiana, we headed to Cincinnati, OH to the Great Wolf Lodge. We all stayed together in a huge suite. It was perfect! Logan was more than ready to swim as soon as we walked in the door of course. He was a little afraid at first oddly. He wouldn't let me put him down into the water. He quickly got over his fears though once he realized there was a huge jungle gym to play on. He enjoyed dumping water on the people below. I don't think he actually realized what he was doing, but he enjoyed pulling on the ropes and turning the wheels. Once he realized he liked going down the little kid slides, he never stopped. I know my dad has some videos...I'll find them and add them later. It really worked out perfectly though that he loved the slides, my parents stayed over in the kid area watching Logan go down the slides over and over and over again while the four of us went and road some of the bigger slides! We had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures from our trip. I didn't get very many good pictures because I didn't really want my nice expensive camera around all that water...
After a full afternoon at the water park, we had some delicious pizza and beer back in the room. After dinner we headed down to the arcade to check it out. We played a game of mini bowling...aka..Logan threw a lot of little bowling balls down the lane. He loved it. Logan and Kinley were getting tired, so keeping them busy wasn't so easy. He had to do it though because Chase and Kent started in on the basketball game and didn't want to stop! They won enough tickets to get Logan and Kinley each a little prize though. We had fun!
We had such a lovely trip to Indiana. We can't wait until we can get back again!
