Skip to main content

July - Indiana Adventures

We started the trek to Indiana late afternoon on Thursday (6/29) and made it to Brendan and Whitney's by dinner time on Friday.  Tad was awake on and off most of the night, but Alexa and Tyler slept well in the car in their sleeping bags.
The kids were beyond excited to get to Brendan and Whitney's and play with cousins all week.  They have been begging to go back ever since we got home.
We spent Saturday at Yellowwood Lake kayaking and playing with the Sweeny clan.  We also walked down to the cemetery to visit Uncle Ben's grave.  The cousins all picked flowers to put on Ben's grave.

We spent Saturday night at the drive-in watching Despicable Me 3 with Brendan, Chase, Jeffrey, Carra, Caleb, Anne, Wylah, Corbin, Jonny, Michelle, Eliza, and Joy.  We left Tad and Erik home with Whitney.

We went to church with Bishop Brendan Sunday morning, took naps, and then headed to Tennessee to visit Todd, Melissa, and Dean.  It was so cute to see Dean's reaction when Alexa and Tyler jumped out of the car.  We spent the night there Sunday, had fun swimming together at the local pool Monday morning, and went to Nashville for delicious BBQ.  It was our first time in Music City and we were grateful for the chance to see Todd & Melissa while we were out east.

Tuesday was the 4th of July and we had a fun time with everyone at Brendan & Whitney's house.  Brendan got a zip line for his birthday, so he and Kyle set it up in the morning for everyone to play on.






We then spent Independence Day evening watching Ellettsville fireworks with Adam & Karen's family.

We took a tour of Jonny's work on Wednesday, joined by Adam & Karen's family.  We spent the rest of the day at Jonny's house, playing Spoons and Durak with the kids.  Alexa was invited to spend the night with Eliza and Joy and had a blast.

Thursday was Corbin's birthday and we met up at Children's Commons in Columbus to celebrate.  Then we headed to a buffet to continue the celebration.
We started the drive back on Friday and got home early Saturday morning.  We gave all of the kids Benadryl and it helped Tad sleep a little better on the drive home.  This is a gem we captured off the road in the middle of nowhere Iowa with a desperate 4-year old--
Uncle Adam even made the kids new bunny and Green Lantern rings from his 3D printer after we got home and sent them in the mail.  They LOVE them.
We had a fun 3-day Swingle cousin camp the next week, including a day of slip 'n slide fun, the Classic Fun Center arcade, and matching tie-dye shirts made by Emily.
Because July was the month of road trips, Kyle also took the kids to Nevada to visit Richard and Megan while I was at our annual convention for work the last week of the month.

All in all, July was a blur.  It was a fun, busy month and we were grateful for moments together in the midst of the chaos.
One final note is that Alexa is famous.  Kind of.  She was chosen for a scene in a new video for Thrive that was posted on our About Us page.  She loved the attention from the video shoot.  Here's the final video.  She appears around the 2-minute mark.  Despite the fact that they told her she could fake it, she ate handfuls and handfuls of broccoli during the 45 minutes we were filming.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

March 2023 - Tad the race car driver and Alexa the zebra

Tad turned 7 and we took him and his best friend Jimmy go kart racing for his birthday.   https://youtu.be/YiTkpefAa1M https://youtu.be/5VuMLJ5iPH8 Jimmy to Tad: When we grow up we should be racers!! Tad: Yeah, and it's good that we already know how to drive for when we grow up and have our own cars.  He got a fun sea animal painting kit from Grandma and Grandpa, a lego puzzle, and a set of Sonic puzzles.  We also got him a voice changing megaphone which he loves.   Alexa had a really fun Medieval Feast at her school after they finished studying the dark ages.  All of the kids got really into it and a lot of them made their own costumes, including Griffin.   Audrey hit the 3-month mark and suddenly refused to take a bottle.  She went 4 weeks hardly eating during the day so she went from sleeping through the night to waking up every 2-3 hours to nurse at night.  We met with her pediatrician and she was still nice and healthy in the 75th percentile for weight so we moved her out of o

December 2015 - Christmas in Indiana

Merry Christmas! We hit the road a couple of days after Granny's funeral to make the trek to Indiana for Christmas. The  kids did great the whole way.  I think it was harder on the adults!  We left at 4am and the first 8 hours were really bad due to wind and snow.  I-70 was closed unless you had chains and we were only a couple of hours in when we passed a sign saying I-80 was closed due to an avalanche warning.  Kyle screamed "Noooo!" and woke up the kids :).  We were so relieved to have Wyoming behind us!!  And we were very glad to have been driving an SUV with all-wheel-drive instead of our Toyota Matrix.  We got a new Mazda CX-9 only a week before the trip so that we can fit baby #3. We pounded out 14 hours the first day and then stopped for the night in Nebraska before continuing for another 10ish hours the next day.  The kids thought that sleeping in a hotel was amazing.  The weather on the drive home was clear and wonderful. although Tyler did poop h

July 2023 - Baby Ian

We had a blast at the Stadium of Fire Journey concert with Sara and Jason.  We also hosted a Swingle 4th of July party at our house.  Grandpa Swingle said that's the first time he's actually been able to light real fireworks in over a decade.  We decided we should make it a tradition to have them come up every year (or move here ;). Baby Ian was born and he is HUGE!  11 lb 1 oz.  Melissa's water broke at 7:30am, contractions started after that, and he was born at home with a team of paramedics with them in the outbuilding at 9am.   Fun fact: he was born on Ian Beagley's birthday and they share the same name. We spent an entire Saturday pulling down and cutting up dead trees.  We rented a wood splitter and went to town.  The kids were a big help.  We did our annual reading challenge to earn tickets to Lagoon.  Our rule is 1000 pages for every grade level finished, has to be during summer, and Alexa and Tyler both had to write a book report as well.  The kids did great! M