Our Mini Vacation

Last week Haylie's daycare was closed all week for "cleaning", so I took off all week to spend some time with my girl. Rich, Julia (my niece), and Haylie took off for Louisville for a little "mini vacation". We spent the first day at the Louisville Zoo. Haylie got sooo excited when I told her we were going to the zoo...which I thought was hilarious because I really wasn't sure she even knew what a zoo was. We have a book we read called "Zoo Day" so that is really the only point of reference she had, and we had Never really talked about what a zoo was. Anyway, she sure was excited to go. We talked about all the animals we would see and she was most excited to see the giraffes before we got there. However, once we actually got there, she wasn't overly impressed with any of the animals. We went up to the giraffe area where they had a cute little baby giraffe and its mommy. I thought she would be sooooo excited--but just about as soon as we got up to the fence, she said "All done". She repeated this phrase of "all done" with just about all of the animals. Her favorite part of the zoo was the big playground they had. She could have spent the entire day there and cried when we finally pulled her off the slide to go see more animals!!

The following day we drove up to Santa Claus, Indiana to go to Holiday World. For those of you not familiar, it is a really nice little amusement park with a great water park included in the admission price. I had taken Julia there 2-3 years ago, just the 2 of us, and we had a blast. However, having a 3 year old and a 13-year-old together there at the same time, was not the best combo. Of course Julia wanted to rip and run and ride all the big rides, while Haylie had to ride the little kiddie rides, and Julia wouldn't ride anything by herself. So, I don't think Julia had the best of times and thought Haylie was holding her back. We tried to take turns with one of us riding with Julia, while the other took Haylie to a kiddie ride, but not always successfully. Anyway, I think we did have a good time when all was said and done, even if Julia didn't get to ride all the cool big water slides. Haylie absolutely LOVED the kiddie rides, however the whole waiting in line business was not her thing. She couldn't understand why she couldn't walk right up to the front of the line and get right on. We actually waited about 1/2 hour for one ride, but that was the last long line we waited in--Haylie was not happy with that long of a wait. Luckily most of the rides for her weren't that long.

We spent a total of 3 nights on the road and then spent the rest of the week at home, just me and my girl and her Daddy. It was nice to be able to stay home with her for a change--she really is a homebody and likes being at home.

I'm trying something new and doing lots of pictures on a smilebox video show. Here's hoping it works--enjoy the pictures!!

Happy 4th of July

Daddy in his favorite position but Lucy had other ideas!!
Cute picture of Haylie--horrible picture of Mommy

Haylie with Aunt Lisa

Miss 4th of July

Kisses for her new best friend

Posing with Lucy (and an asleep Julia in the background)

Say Cheeeeeeeese

We've had a busy July, so I'm just now getting around to putting our 4th pictures on. The entire family (Rich, me, Haylie, my mom, my sister Marcia, and Julia my niece) drove down to Charlotte, NC to visit my other sister Lisa. She just moved there a couple of months ago, so none of us had been down to see her and her new home. We left on Thursday before the 4th and stayed until the following Monday, so we had a nice long weekend. It's about an 8 hour drive, so it was Haylie's longest road trip by far. She did amazingly well. She is not one of those kids who immediately goes to sleep the minute you put her in the car seat. In fact she rarely sleeps in the car unless she is utterly exhausted. So that said, she was really well behaved both going and coming home with really no meltdowns. She played with her toys and sang and sang and sang. I think I've got a future professional singer on my hands. She now knows all the words to most of the church and kiddie songs, and actually carries a pretty good tune for a 3 year old.

We didn't get to Charlotte til almost 9 pm Thursday night, and then ate dinner after we got there, so didn't get to bed til late. Of course Haylie was all off her normal schedule all weekend, but still did pretty well. Lisa has a gorgeous new HUGE house, so there was lots of things and places for Haylie to run around and get into all weekend. They also have 2 dogs which Haylie just loved. She is hilarious around animals--she gets all excited to see them, but when she actually gets close to them, she squeals and runs back and says "Hold me, hold me". So it took a couple of days for her to actually warm up to Lucy, the little Papillion dog that they keep inside. As you can see in the above picture, she really loved Lucy and kept saying over and over "See Lucy, see Lucy" the entire weekend. In fact now that we are back home, she still says she wants to see Lucy!!! Their other dog is a german shepherd that stays outside--Haylie kept going to the windows, lifting the blinds, trying to see Ogie outside. Whenever we would take her out to see him, she squealed like crazy and wouldn't let you put her down.

We went to downtown Charlotte to watch the fireworks on the 4th. It was Haylie's first time to see the fireworks--Rich and I were on a cruise last year and my mom kept Haylie while we were gone and they didn't go see the fireworks. So, I wasn't sure how she would do with the loud noise. But she did great--wasn't scared at all. Actually excellent for a little girl who was petrified with loud noises when we first got her home. She wasn't really too impressed with the show. I kept saying "Look at that Haylie" and she'd just say "Yeah". She was more interested in crawling around on the blanket everyone was sitting on on the ground and jumping into every ones laps. I finally put her in her stroller and belted her in so everybody else could enjoy the fireworks. She sat and watched them for a little bit and then covered her ears with both hands saying "it hurts my ears". Luckily they were over soon after that.

But we had a really good time visiting Aunt Lisa, and hated to start the long trip home. Thank you sweet Lisa for a great weekend!! We did see the strangest thing I have ever seen on the road driving back thru the mountains of North Carolina. We passed a car that was towing a little trailer with--can you believe it--a coffin bungee corded on the trailer!!! It was kind of rusted looking, so don't know if it was used or occupied or what!!! It was a first for all of us--we were rolling we were all laughing so hard.

We just got back from a little mini vacation to Louisville and southern Indiana, but I'll put a new post on with the those pictures, so stay tuned...