Weekend Trips

We took a few day trips this weekend. On Saturday Martin and Anja spent some time together in the morning and came home with flowers for everyone because Anja wanted to get flowers for Greta. How sweet is that?! When they got home, I was making strawberry shortcakes for a cookout at my cousins' house, which was very laid back and fun, and where my sister and I played that cornhole/bags game and lost. I also ate some of that really amazing marshmallowy fruit salad stuff that is a staple at every pitch-in. That stuff is amazing.

On Sunday we went up to Fair Oaks Farm, where we'd never been before! On the way out of town we intended to go to Once Upon a Child and pick up a new carseat for Greta. Not only had she long outgrown her infant seat, but the blasted thing has a broken handle that is so annoying to deal with that it makes you not even want to ride in the car at all. And on top of that, she hated the thing and unless she was sleeping would scream for an entire trip, no matter the length. So, in order to survive a car ride that was more than an hour, we NEEDED a forward facing seat and had been putting off the purchase for long enough. However, when we arrived at OUAC, we found they didn't open until noon. So we just went to Target and got a new one. It's just like Anja's, except a new model (of course) and it has butterflies instead of flowers. She was very pleased with it for a little bit, but then she and Anja decided to switch and they've been switched ever since. So this picture may be the only picture ever of Greta riding in HER carseat.
Oh, and there is our beloved Cook Baby riding between them!

So, Martin is a member of this Indiana gun owners forum and so he does a lot of trading around with the people on there. In a roundabout way, the reason we were going up north was because I made him buy a rifle he had no intention of buying because it had a squirrel on it. It is seriously the cutest gun I've ever seen!! And how could he say no to his wife actually telling him to buy a gun!?? So anyway, instead of going up by himself (boring), he took us along, which is how we ended up going to Fair Oaks Farm.

Fair Oaks was pretty fun. We didn't ever see any real cows because we didn't make it that far. We spent a lot of time going through the museum-y part of it, then we spent A LOT of time playing outside. They have lots of these big fiberglass cows all over the place and Anja enjoyed filling their nostrils with rocks. She also enjoyed sniffing every flower on the property. Inside they have a little tiny playground where no one else was playing and the girls loved that too. It was really nice to have such a tiny area inside, and then outside everything is really spread out so they can run and frolick and always be in sight. The day was a great success with minor upsets, including me spilling our drink all over the floor, me spilling our other drink all over the table, and Greta having some serious bowel issues, but in the end it was a very happy day. And thanks to weirdo Martin and his pocket knife screwdriver, now all the wall activities in the Fair Oaks indoor play area are better secured.

Then on Monday, Martin's trading took him down south, and he took us along on that little trip too. We were going to go to this place called Leonard Springs Park in Bloomington, but the guy Martin was meeting up with advised us to head back to McCormicks Creek instead. He said Leonard Springs Road was a pretty rough part of town. So, we backtracked a few miles and ended up at McCormick's Creek, where I had never been, thanks to Martin's crappy graduating class who RUINED EVERYTHING FOR MY PERFECT CLASS all the way through school. Ugh, we missed out on so many field trips because after dealing with the nutcases in his class, none of the teachers wanted to go on the trips again.

Here is Anja on the tire swing:
Greta was still having some digestive troubles this day too (they have cleared up now) which meant we couldn't go far from the car (and diapers), and she was kind of grumpy. But we found this playground that had a cool bridge.

I can't believe how un-babyish Greta is getting. In this slide picture she looks like such a little girl! She's really started talking too--she says "shoe" in the same way Anja always has, except she makes the most hilarious face ever when she says it. I'll have to try to catch it on camera sometime.

And what would a roadtrip be without a little drama? One of our back windows is kind of broken and it slips down every once in awhile. Yesterday, when Martin shut the door, it slipped down. This wouldn't have mattered much, except we knew it was going to rain. So as the winds were picking up and we were getting ready to leave, McGyver--I mean, Martin--rigged up these "shims" to hold the window in place. A piece of advice to all you single girls reading this: Marry a man who carries a pocket knife! And if your man doesn't carry one, they make great gifts!

It was a good thing he fixed it too, because we drove right into the storms. By the time we got home, they had stopped and it was just rainy so we played outside in the rain for the rest of the evening.

A very good weekend! It's always hard to welcome back the work week. But at least tomorrow is already Wednesday!