Went on a little road trip last weekend. The initial motivator was an old theatre friend's wedding in KY. That's only about one and a half hours from my in-laws so we planned to invade them for Saturday night and Father's Day morning.
The wedding was on Sunday, so we headed down around 6 am on Saturday. We stopped in Louisville (about fifteen minutes from Rick's parents in Indiana) so the kids could go to the Louisville Slugger museum/factory. It was a fun time for the kids (and Rick.) The kids loved their miniture sluggers, which came with the tour of the factory.
The coolest part for me was the walk TO the museum from the car. We passed one of the shop windows where I noticed a young man writing on a card and holding it up to a girl in the window.
Suddenly it connected for me that I had seen this girl on one of the morning tv shows the week before. When I saw the story I didn't pay attention to where she was and never imagined I'd accidently walk past the store a week later!She is an artist who has been living in a store front window for a month as an art project.
She only leaves the window to shower and use the restroom. She eats, sleeps and does art work from the window. She has 8x 6 index cards and markers sitting by the window so passersby can write messages and questions to her. She then responds by writing backwards with marker on the window. (An impressive talent she said inspired the army to offer her a job.) She took a picture of the kids after we took a picture of them with her. Went to her site 
today. One cool thing about the site is you can hear what music she's listening to. It was very quiet writing to her from the street! Pretty cool. I watched as she walked from her window to the street for the first time in 3 or 4 weeks! I am sending her an email later to let her know how much we enjoyed her project. I wonder if she knows how many lives she touched. I don't think the kids will ever forget chatting with her. Life is art that's for sure...or I wouldn't spend so much time writing about and photographing mine for this blog!
After the museum we had dinner with Grammy and Pops, then left the older hoodlums (ie kids) to spend the night, while we stayed at a hotel with Anna. Grammy was sad we didn't stay there, but how often do we get to stay by "ourselves" (that is, just with Anna) anywhere?
The wedding was beautiful as well. It was pouring down rain before we got to the church. Then it stopped for the rest of the day (they had a reception at a park with a pavillion, but if it had continued to pour it would have been disasterous.) The bride was absolutely georgous. My friend chose well. And the reception was beautiful with the pavillion sitting right on the edge of a huge gorge.
On the way back we stayed at a hotel around Cincinnatti to break up the drive. All the kids swam for an hour or so (including Anna in her new suit!)
And then my husband, and both daughters passed out (all self pro-claimed solar powered people- when the sun goes down they go with it.) My sons and I turned out all the lights, laid down backwards with our feet at the headboard on the other queen bed, and watched an independent film about a cross dressing farmer on PBS. The boys were put off at first. But as the show went on to really be about how this young farmer had lost his family farm piece by piece in the 80's, only to gain it back piece by piece through co-opting friends in the past few years, they really liked it. It was a nice Zen moment as we laid there snacking on mini-oreos and having our own little pj party. With the blending families this past couple years, we don't have much time for things like that anymore. 
Noah was the next to go out leaving Tanner and me to stay up into the wee hours.We made it back in time to get all older kids to their other parents, and settled down with Anna who was thrilled to see her jumpero
o,crib and changing table again. She is a homebody just like her mom.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day weekend!
Z
