vacation

What I did with my summer vacation, Part 1: Buffalo

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Long story short: what I did with my summer vacation was drive all over the damn place.

We had planned to take a trip to South America last Christmas, but it fell through. Since we had a bunch of saved up vacation, we decided it would be fun to plan a big trip; perhaps not as big as South America, but still. Eventually (partially for reasons which will be explained in Part 3), we settled on a trip to Maine.

Maine is a long, long ways away. And thus we found ourselves in the car with two small children, covering 2731 miles (and 991 pictures!) in 15 days.

We went into the car ride with our eyes open. It was going to be rough, and we were going in armed with every possible trick up our sleeves. We bought activity books and “surprises” from the Dollar Spot at Target. We loaded our MP3 players with audio books and fairy tales from Storynory (seriously worth checking out if you have kids! Hundreds of hours of classic stories from around the world, all for free!). I pre-made lists of car games to play and potential plots for made up stories (the kids never stop begging for stories). We even made a mixed tape (mixed cd?) of traveling music to jam too.

Overall, it went MUCH better than I anticipated. There were still crying meltdowns, redundant bathroom stops, and refusals to get back in the car, but a lot less of them than I feared. We used up every trick in the book, and then some, but I think it was well worth it, just because the driving really wasn’t an issue at all, and really didn’t dominate the trip.

Ready to drive

The first leg of the journey was to Buffalo, NY to visit some very old friends. Sara and Alexis were roommates freshman year of college, and if not for that fact, Sara and I most likely wouldn’t have gotten to know each other. But more importantly at this stage in our lives, our kids slot directly in the middle of their kids.

First off, 5 children under the age of 7 = crazy. I felt like there were children everywhere, all the time. The pairings from our point of view work pretty well: Evie loves to play with older girls, and Ollie finally gets a chance to play with boys for once in his life. Unfortunately, poor Jackson is kind of the man in the middle, since he’d rather play with the older girls and they’d rather make his life miserable for their enjoyment. There is also the fact that our kids have about the most opposite schedules in the world; ours ready to conk out hours before theirs but then waking everyone up at the crack of dawn, resulting in a lot of tired kiddos.

Mostly Evie just commandeered the entertainment center, forcing everyone to sit through multiple showings of current-favorite Annie and just discovered Barbie and the Pink Shoes. Seriously with this movie. Evie has not stopped talking about it for a single minute. I have to admit, though “Barbie and the Pink Shoes” sounds like the most godawful thing I could ever imagine, it wasn’t as bad as all that. It was mostly about ballet and Swan Lake (so you can see what Evie loves about it), and really not so terrible. But I swear, if I have to hear about it one more time, I’m going burn and destroy every copy of that DVD in the world.

Luckily, it wasn’t all Barbie and the Pink Shoes, we did find some time to sneak away to Niagara Falls and ride the Maid of the Mist.

Niagara Falls

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I had never been to Niagara Falls, and it was about what I expected. Maid of the Mist was definitely worth the ride. I was a little surprised at how much sort of “tourist junk” stuff popped up around it, but then again it seems kind of obvious in retrospect. Certainly the falls were intimidating, as were the furiously rushing rapids at the top (especially if you were, say, wearing a wedding dress!).

The other big thing we did in Buffalo was to go to the county fair.

This may seem like a silly thing, but it was so awesome. I have been wanting to take the kids to an old school-style carnival for several years, but we just haven’t made it to one. This was a legitimate as it gets, with barns full of prize animals, any kind of fried food you can imagine, and rickety, deathtrap rides put together by drunken carneys shooting screaming pre-teens hundreds of feet in the air. In other words, absolutely perfect.

We bought enough tickets for each kid to ride one ride, and Ayla immediately picked this ridiculous arial swing thing that *I* wouldn’t have ridden on. That girl is absolutely fearless, with a big grin on her face the whole time. Next up was Ollie, and he selected to ride “The Dragon”, one of those little kiddie roller coasters.

This poor boy. I don’t think he had any idea what was about to come next. He was the only one on the ride, and he looked so forlorn sitting there by himself. He wasn’t prepared at all, and he didn’t brace himself when it took off, so he spent the entire time pinned awkwardly in the corner by the g-forces. Sara said, “Did you hit your head on the bar?” and he said, “Yeah. It was soft.” He said he liked it afterwards, but he looked pretty terrified going around and around and around. I thought it was never going to stop. Finally, just when Sara begged me to tell the man to shut it down, it came to a stop.

Luckily, we had enough tickets left at the end to give him an extra ride on something more his speed.

Carnival Ride

Alas, before we knew it we were back in the car.

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The kids were pretty sad to leave, but we did happen to find the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, who just happened to be having an exhibit on Mo Willems. You want to talk about the perfect road trip stop! Aside from being a decent museum in its own right, it was something that the kids were really interested in, from the pictures, to the “pigeon” treasure hunts, to just doing the art activities. I don’t know how many Mo Willems books we have, but it’s a lot. Knuffle Bunny in particular we have read a million times, but Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus gets a decent amount of play. We also bought our first souvenirs of the trip: 2 pictures books and some Mo Willems pigeon fabric for as-yet-undetermined usage.

No more time for stops, though, it’s on to Maine!

Indy Mini-Vacation

/ Shane / 4 Comments

We took a little bit of an extended weekend last week and took a quick trip to visit my sister in Indianapolis.

Let me first start by saying that this is probably the most I’ve ever enjoyed my sister’s dog Luna. I love dogs, but I often don’t love that particular dog. My kids are usually terrified of Luna, and I can’t blame them. She towers over them, and it is very easy to get accidentally scratched or knocked over in her exuberance, to say nothing of slobbery smooches all over your face. The anxiety of the kids kind of rubs off on me. However, this time wasn’t so bad. I don’t know if Luna is calming down as she gets older, if my kids get less anxious as they get older, or maybe it was just being in Luna’s own environment, which was less stressful for all of us. In any case, I think everybody enjoyed Luna a little bit more this time.

Of course, the main thing to do in Indy is go to the Children’s Museum. It is *exhausting* going to that place. It’s so big, and there’s so much to do, but it takes a lot out of you.

Evie enjoyed drawing self-portraits:

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And we all enjoyed reproducing “American Gothic“:

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Sorry Rachael and Matt, I think Sara and Ollie did it best:

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Probably the most exciting thing for me was getting a chance to play Carcassonne. This is a board game that I have heard a lot about, but never had a chance to play. I have to say, it lived up to the hype. There is a lot of strategy, and I can see that each game would be a little bit different. It has a lot of things in common with other games that I like, with no obvious downsides (and you can play with only 2 players!). Plus, I won, so definitely that game is awesome.

The other best part was the awesome chocolate covered cherries Rachael made for me, which were the best I’ve ever eaten, homemade or otherwise. Therefore, I promptly forgot them in her refrigerator.

Evie found time to absolutely massacre Rachael in checkers, and we played a lot of hide and seek (and lots of hide Luna’s treat).

We took a leisurely Monday getting home, with several stops along the way including a stop at Purdue. The kids were pretty excited to see where Sara and I met, lived, and got married, and I enjoyed my trip to the APO office. I’m not sure why I get such a kick out of dropping in there, but it’s fun to see a place where I spent a lot of time, and to look at all the names and pictures of people I haven’t seen in a long time. It sure helps to have a friend of yours be the one in charge of the yearly scrapbook when we were pledging. Sara and I are well represented. And yes, I bragged to my kids about all the plaques with my name on them. (And yes Nathan, I showed them how you won the Friendship Award 6 times, no need to bring it up again in the comments!)

We even had a chance to stop in at Triple XXX and introduce Oliver to the Purvis burger:

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Cheeseburger + Peanut butter = Happy Ollie

The only black mark on our trip was totally our fault. We 1) forgot Ollie’s face steroids, and 2) didn’t bring Evie’s inhaler. This directly resulted in Oliver having a massive, itchy, sore face eczema outbreak, and Evie developing a reoccurring wheeze and cough. And with Evie having breathing trouble, this also lead to a pretty rough night of sleep for the 4 of us, which never helps anything. Sara even asked me if she thought we should bring the inhaler, and I said no. Lesson learned. The problem is that, even with the proper medicine at home, if you don’t nip these problems in the bud, it takes some time to get them back under control.

All in all a good trip though; hopefully Rachael and Matt enjoyed hosting us as much as we enjoyed being there (probably doubtful).

Birthday Season

/ Shane / Leave a comment

In the past week we’ve celebrated a 60th birthday, an 88th birthday, a 39th anniversary, and of course Sara and my 8th anniversary. We also have Evie’s birthday coming up in less than a month, and then Sara’s right after. Busy times!

We didn’t exactly do much for Tom’s birthday, but I have to say it was quite enjoyable nonetheless. Basically we just had a big meal with everybody, but it was so delicious and it was actually a lot of fun. We all pitched in to make it and then sat down to a big feast (steaks, grilled romaine salads and a grilled squash medley, followed by homemade ice cream). There’s not much I like more than just sitting and visiting (for example, while the ice cream maker is running), so I guess it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

And then the next day we found out that 60’s not too old for a little wheel chair racing:

It seems like we’ve been planning Grandma Lois’ 88th birthday party for forever. Sara said afterwards that it wasn’t really that much work, but I think she is forgetting because it was spread out over a long time. However, it was all worth it, because it turned out really well. There were lots and lots of people there, plenty of food, and no issues to speak of, major or minor. We were running around like crazy the day of, but it was all worth it because I think Grandma was really happy.

The day of the party was super hot (as was every day this summer), but Sara only had pants to wear. So she improvised by borrowing some clothes from her sister. She needed a belt to match, so she further improvised by using one of her dad’s ties as a belt. Seriously you guys, she looked like a super model! It was amazing. And hilarious, because you don’t usually see super models at your grandma’s 88th birthday party. So if you thought we hired a “booth babe” to serve the ice cream, nope, that was just Sara.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good picture of her, so I guess I’ll just put some other picture instead.

Summer Vacation

/ Shane / 1 Comment

We’ve been up to so much lately, I can’t fit it all in one post. Oh boy, where to even start.

We had some visitors from far off Buffalo, as Alexis and her three kids Ayla, Jackson, and Elliot stopped by for a few nights on the way through Chicago (unfortunately Gregory couldn’t get off work). We haven’t seen Alexis in years, and in fact, we had never met Elliot and they had never met Oliver. So it was really great to see them again.

Adding three more young kids to the mix with only one extra adult kind of added a surreal sense of bedlam to our house. There were kids everywhere! While us adults might have needed an adjustment period to get used to all the extra kids, the kids themselves did not, and were quickly playing together like old friends or cousins. I think Oliver in particular really appreciated having a few boys around his age to play with. Mostly he is around Evie’s friends, who tend to be girls and tend to be older.

After that, we again spent the 4th of July at Sara’s Uncle Randy’s lake. No tubing for me after last year’s debacle, but Evie and Ollie once again absolutely loved the water.

Evie did a little tubing and both did a little boat driving. It was very difficult to get them out of the water, but then again, it was difficult to get anybody out of the water considering it was sweltering hot even in the shade. I am happy to report we haven’t had any sunburns yet this entire summer!

Afterwards we stayed a few nights at Sara’s cousin Lisa’s house. Or perhaps I should say Lisa’s farm, since they are quickly moving in that direction. Since the last time we were there, they’ve added 2 pigs, about 10 kittens, and 2 baby goats to their already impressive 2 cows, 3 dogs, and half a dozen chickens. Word on the street is they’re getting ready to add about 30 more chickens!

I thought the baby goats would steal the show (who doesn’t want to feed bottles to adorable baby goats?) but the kids (and Sara!) mostly went in for the kittens. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a horde of kittens can literally float you away on a tide of cuteness, but we’re talking about bottle fed baby goats! We already have a cat at home.

Both kids were dying to hold kittens (who were very friendly), but Oliver needed some help in grabbing one. Once he had it, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. He just sort of squeezed it, forcing it to stay but not exactly petting it. This did not lessen his excitement about having a kitten in his lap.

However, if she had to pick one animal, I think Evie would pick teenage girls as her all time favorite playmate. Kaycee, thanks again, and double this time since you had Oliver tagging along as well!

Halbachs Take the South, Part IV – Alone Time

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Finally, it was time for Sara to go to her conference. I was sort of dreading this part of the trip, because it meant handling both kids in a strange city by myself. Although it was exhausting, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. The main thing was to keep out of the hotel as much as possible, since keeping them quiet for any length of time was out of the question, and having a routine certainly helped a lot.

Every day we would eat breakfast at the hotel, and then go to Discovery Place for 3 – 4 hours (for FREE — thank you reciprocating MSI membership!). We would eat a delicious lunch of PB&J (every day), and then Oliver would fall asleep in the stroller just when we were almost home. We’d get him into bed, and then Evie and I would play a few games of cards

and read books until I fell asleep on the floor. At this point, Evie would do “exercises” for 20 minutes or so (don’t ask me, I was asleep), and then wake me up to ask if I had slept long enough. In the afternoon, we’d find something to do such as go to ImaginOn, a fantastic children’s library. Finally, we hit up a delicious restaurant for supper, and go to bed.

Evie's gift to the children's museum

The hotel we stayed in was very nice. We specifically chose it because they had a suite with a separate bedroom, so Sara and I could stay up after the kids were in bed. It was really more of a business hotel, and there weren’t really any other kids staying there. Consequently, we were very recognizable (especially with all of our comings and goings throughout the day), and all of the front desk staff really enjoyed interacting with the kids.

The one snafu with the hotel was the parking. When we first pulled up, we found out it was valet, which we were unprepared for. It makes you feel a little flustered when you have to spend 20 minutes cleaning out everything from your car while a pair of valet guys look on and wait. Sara kept insisting we’d have to pay for parking and it would be expensive, but I kept denying it because the whole city seemed to be made of parking lots, and parking didn’t really seem to be at a premium. Well, she was right and I was wrong (first time for everything I guess), since after they took the car they informed us it was $22 a night. Yeowza!

Imagine my surprise when I got up to my room and opened the window to take in the view, only to see a parking lot literally across the street that was advertising $5 parking. Seriously hotel? I called down to the front desk immediately.

Me: “Excuse me, I just paid $22 to park in your garage, and now I see it is $5 to park across the street?”
Lady: “Well actually, it is $5 for only 12 hours. So really it’s $10.”
Me: “That’s seriously your argument? It’s still less than half the price!”

Now, they ended up being sort of right, because parking there ended up being something of a headache. We were right next to the arena for the Charlotte Bobcats, and twice they had a game while we were there. When that happens, the price of the lot shoots up to $10 for a couple of hours during the event. This lead to a couple times where we had to drive around a little to find somewhere else to park (we ended up finding a free spot just down the street), and then going and getting the car later at night and moving it back to the lot. So this did cause a little bit of a headache.

Maybe I was just being cheap, I don’t know. But when you consider that we were staying for 4 nights, and that you have to tip the valet every time you get your car,  I think we conservatively saved around $60. And really, it was the principle of the thing, you know?

Aaaanywho, we continued our string of delicious restaurants while in Charlotte.

Midwood Smokehouse – After just eating at 12 Bones, we were desperate for more barbecue.   Unfortunately for Midwood Smokehouse, we had just eaten at 12 Bones. Midwood Smokehouse was perfectly good, but it was more “polished” or chain-y somehow and just suffered in comparison. They did have bacon wrapped jalapenos, which certainly helped their case, but overall it just couldn’t compete at the end of the day, especially in the side dish arena. The barbecue was more than adequate, and on any other trip it probably would have ranked up there with some of the best meals of the trip.

Fern – Fern was a place that we just happened to see after leaving Midwood Smokehouse, so we ended up giving it a try. BEST. STUMBLE UPON. EVER. Fern was possibly better even than 12 Bones, but it is so hard to compare  a vegetarian restaurant to a barbecue joint. We ordered so much food that we thought we would never be able to eat it all, and then we proceeded to eat it all. If I lived in Charlotte, I would go to Fern every day and eat Buddha bowls with forbidden rice until I puked, which I would never do, because I wouldn’t want to waste it. My only regret is that I didn’t take them up on their half priced wine night.

Cook Out – This was the one place that I actually had plans to go to while in North Carolina. I became acquainted with Cook Out while Sara was going to school in Greensboro. It’s a fast food place, but the burgers really do taste like you cooked them out on the grill. They have cajun seasoning for their fries. They have over 40 flavors of milkshakes. And if all of that wasn’t enough, their burger sizes are “Small”, “Regular”, “Large” and “Huge”. You can legitimately drive up to the speaker and say, “I’d like a huge burger,” and you will get your wish my friend. I had plans to go to Cook Out multiple times, but it didn’t really work out, so we ended up having to go without Sara. However, the kids and I enjoyed it thoroughly without her.

Afterwards, it was time to head home. I mentioned the night we stayed in Asheville, and we also stayed at a place in Louisville that had an *awesome* pool. It was indoors, heated, and featured both an enormous shallow end where Evie could touch, but also an extremely deep end that was over my head. Finally, on the last day, we met Rachael in Indy and ate a very improvised lunch at her apartment.

And then we were home! Evie did fantastic in the car all the way down and all the way back. Oliver did great on the way there, but by the time we got to the end of the trip, he had pretty much had it with the car. There was a lot of howling. No matter how much fun we had on the trip, we were all glad to be back on dry land as it were, and ready to get back into our regular routines.