Urban Exploring - Fountain Square

The sporadic blogger returns.  Been a while.  Since I've been blogging over here for a while about my trip to Tanzania next year and my adventures as a beginning jogger, this blog has been a bit neglected.  Labor Day found us down one kid as Rachel spent the holiday with a little buddy and her family.  I have been very busy shooting photos lately and really needed to update my own kids photos.  For some time I had wanted to find a wall of graffiti to use a a backdrop.  Not the scummy run-down stuff but the stuff done by the talented individuals wielding spray paint.  The Painter crew had been down to Fountain Square to do some duckpin bowling over the weekend and I saw a photo of Hayden in front of the stuff I was looking for.  I did a little research and discovered that Subsurface Indy 2013 was this weekend and there was walls and walls of graffiti art in that area.  Score!

So Dusty, Aaron, and I loaded up in Stevie (our Dodge) and headed for the Fountain Square area which is a neighborhood just southeast of downtown Indy.  We struck out on restaurants. Most were either closed because it was Monday or because it was a holiday.  But we scored on the graffiti.  In fact, there was still several people working on a wall in an alley.

Not every kids gets to say that his sophomore photos include graffiti....it's how we roll.

I couldn't resist.  I needed one myself. :)

There were so many walls within close distance with every range of color imaginable.  Too bad it's a little bit of a drive for me, but I'll be back.

We ended up downtown for lunch and on the way back to the car Aaron spotted a candy and soda shop on the circle called Rocket Fizz.  We left with a bag of taffy.  Next time we'll pick up a bottle of the off-beat soda.

But NOT this kind! 

Michigan Camping

Our 4th of July holiday was spent in St. Joseph, Michigan with the Painter & Bohrer crews for a 3 day camping extravaganza.  Heather, Sarah, and I had spent time cruising Pinterest to come up with some fantastic camping meals.

 Our 1st evening we attempted a pizza roll that was cooked in foil over the fire.  The Pinterest photo we was working off of was this:

And after wrangling 4 of these over our fire....this is what we ended up with.

While I'm not sure you can call it a wild success, it was not too bad....and made for a lot of fun and laughs!

The weather was beautiful and even though Lake Michigan bordered on frigid everyone had a great time on the beach with sandcastles, playing in the water, and several spirited rounds of bocce ball.

And then there was the "I hate to be cold and wet" person who was content to read his book in the shade.

The Fourth was spent in St. Joseph.  Silver Beach was CRAZY crowded.  But after braving the beach front crowd for a little while we had our fill of ice cream and settled in on the hill overlooking the beach to watch the fireworks.   Got to take in a patriotic concert and cheer on a crowd of our proud veterans.

After the beautiful sunset it was time to wait for the show...and wait...and wait.....  Fireworks began at 10:50!!!!  OK, so St. Joe, you put on a good party, but why so late?

Our campground had a pie eating contest for the kid campers.  Our bunch cleaned up...literally! 

And then there was the Pinterest find that actually worked!  Glow stick bowling.  Only we forgot the ball and  had to invent a new game.  Glow stick potato bowling!

Summer's here

Time for late summer nights, bike riding, and hanging out on the cul-de-sac until the sun goes down.

Pathetic!

Or choose one of these words:  sad, feeble, inadequate, lamentable, paltry.  Take your pick, because they all describe my blogging efforts as of late.  There's almost been a 2 month gap!  So here's the last 8 weeks in a nutshell.

• Dusty and I attended a wonderful Compassion Advocate's conference in Chicago.  Came away inspired and ready to do something big...more on that later.
• Rachel was an Eagle MVP student for the 4th quarter
• Aaron finished his first year of high school and is now heavily lobbying for driver's ed
• Rachel was one of the class winners and participated in the 2nd grade spelling bee
• Dusty continues to work like a madman
• Rachel turned 8 and got her ears pierced
• We completed another year of Awana

The last 8 weeks in photos.

Easter Fun

Since we left for vacation at 0'dark thirty the day after Easter, I didn't get a chance to post any Easter photos.  So lets back up 10 days shall we.  We had a wonderful morning at church followed by lunch with a bunch of friends (thanks Shelby & Jen).  Dinner was at our house with Mom and Dad and Daniel.

Our yearly after-church Easter photo

After lunch there was an egg hunt for the kiddos.  Actually "hunt" is a loose term....more like an all-out sprint to scoop up as many eggs as possible!

Even some of the adults got into it.  Here Carol is taking advantage of a momentary wind gust that compromised Heather's egg grabbing ability

Rachel found the golden egg and earned herself a dollar

All this was followed by the basketball game where a group of 40-something men pretended they were 20 years younger. :)  See the 14-year old in pink?  See out-shot all of them!

And Shelby, our generous host, tends to get a little demonstrative when heckled by the spectators!

Some of the rest

More random shots from Colorado

From the US Olympic Center - This is the distance of the world record for long jump.  Aaron is at the take-off point.  Rachel is at the landing!

Can you find the train going down the mountain?

End of the tracks!