Mag-E-Rama (Part II)

We had planned on doing a lot of fun outdoor stuff for Gran and Papa's visit, but it was raining most of the time. So instead, on Saturday, we went to the Indianapolis children's museum which, at five floors of colorful exhibits, bills itself as the largest children's museum in the world. It was actually quite impressive - Maggie agreed:




There were many cool things to see, but Maggie was sold as soon as we crossed the sky walk from the parking garage into the museum. Here, she saw a huge banner on the wall that she quickly pointed out to Papa:




The banner was designed to alert all 2-4 year olds to the presence of the Dora exhibit on the second floor. Here is a picture of Maggie with Dora and Boots.




In addition to Dora, there were tutorials on how to subdue hostile reptiles:




How to walk up steep inclines with no hands:







How to operate power machinery:




How to use pouring sand to generate turbine rotation:




And how to make 3-story artwork that requires dedicated teams of employees to clean regularly:







We also rode the merri-go-round:




But mostly, I think Maggie just enjoyed hanging out with her grandparents









And eating Gran's shrimp and potato stew.


Also, Maggie has officially progressed into the next level verbal communication. Her newest favorite 5 word sentence is: " I want to do it," which she doesn't hesitate to use whenever we try to help her with anything these days.

Stay tuned. We will have one more post detailing Gran and Papa's visit very soon.

Mag-E-Rama (Part I)

We have had a very eventful week. In addition to the cavalcade of tornado warnings, we also had a potluck dinner at Maggie's day care, and Gran and Papa came for their first Illinois visit. In fear of an otherwise eminent sensory overload, I'm going to split these events into several different posts. Topics to be covered include (in no particular order): potluck dinner, random photos from around the house, Easter morning, Indianapolis Children's Museum, and Weldon Springs State Park.

Potluck dinner at Maggie's daycare. The following picture shows the major cast of characters - an Illinois Rat Pack, if you will. From left to right (Conall, Peter, Brian, Maggie, and Ella, with Leo in the foreground).




When I ask Maggie who her friends are, these are always the names she says. As these following pictures show, I think there is some legitimacy to this. Here is Maggie and her BFF (best friend forever), Ella.




Ella and Maggie are usually two of the first kids to show up in the morning. This morning when we dropped Maggie off at school, she started to cry (she had been spoiled by Gran all weekend). Ella walked up to Maggie and patted her on the back to make her feel better.

Here is Maggie with Conall - they are two of the youngest kids in the class.



Here is Leo, whose parents are from Italy.



Leo must be a sweet talker, because in this picture, Maggie is trying to hold his hand.


Finally, here is Maggie with Peter.




Here are some random cute pictures of Maggie that I took one evening.








I'll post another update shortly, with plenty of pictures from Gran and Papa's visit.

Easter egg hunt

We realize that it is a week early but, due to the unpredictable weather in Illinois this time of year, we opted to play it safe and have our Easter egg hunt today as we had more glorious Sunday weather. After giving Maggie some pointers on how to elbow weaker kids out of her way, we unleashed her into our overgrown (and kind of pretty) front yard.



The frenzy continued for several more minutes....









Finally, it was time to sit down and sift through our egg collection.













Here are a few pictures of our neighborhood and of some tulips in the park.









Here we are enjoying the swing at Hessel Park.



Here we are trying to leave the park.



Check out the motor on Maggie's coupe. I wonder if I could install one of those on my truck?

Kickapoo State Park

This weekend, the temp got up to about 80 degrees and it was really sunny. Here in town, the dogwoods and japanese magnolias have bloomed and spring is here. We decided to explore our surroundings a bit now that the weather has taken a turn for the better. So, we drove about 20 miles to the east to Kickapoo State Park.

Here are few pictures of the park, which straddles the Little Vermillion River and has many little lakes, gently rolling hills and tall hardwood trees. Most of the trees were still without leaves, but I'll bet that it's really nice in the autumn. It looked to me like prime hunting territory - especially for squirrels and deer, and perhaps even ducks. While there, we saw a lot of canadian geese and even some wood ducks, but I couldn't get any pictures of them. On the drive in, we also saw several nice sized white tail does (much larger than the central Texas variety). We hung around for a few hours because Maggie seemed to be really enjoying the outdoors.



















































Mom and dad are coming to visit in about a week. When they get here, maybe we'll take off in another direction and explore a little more.