Betsy has had a bunch of week-long sport camps (they are offered free through the school district, yay!) - this week is bowling. The kids are also on their last week of four weeks of swimming lessons (not free, boo). Porter has been doing really well with the swimming lessons - I think if we keep at it, one of my children may actually be able to swim. Betsy, not so much. But that's all right - she's good at a lot of other things. We've also been cooking out a lot (and because this is Indiana, eating a lot of corn) and swimming in the neighborhood pool. And I just made zucchini muffins from the bounty of our garden. The really crazy thing is, the kids only have a month left of summer before they go back to school!
I think I mentioned in a previous post that we had gotten a membership to Conner Prairie, the local living history museum. I honestly can't understand why we hadn't gotten a membership - it's about ten minutes from our house (unlike the zoo which is allll the way downtown) and it's only $65 a year (roughly half the cost of the Children's Museum). I think we were thinking we had to wait until the kids were school aged so that they would appreciate it. Which is clearly crazy because two-year-old Amy loves it as much as anyone. She now shouts "Connerpwaiwie!" every time we drive by on our way to church. She's a little afraid of the animals in the barn, though (even the baby sheep, it was funny how she was hanging on to me for dear life).
One of the things they have added recently is this balloon ride attraction (it's tethered so you just go straight up and down, but it is really a balloon). Now, normally I am skeptical of the obvious attempts at adding revenue (I'm looking at you Indianapolis Zoo) but this is based on something that actually happened in Indiana in the 1850s, so I give them a pass. Back in the spring we got a thing in the mail for free balloon tickets with the purchase of a membership. And the balloon ride tickets are normally like $12 a person, so we wouldn't have done it if it wasn't free. We actually tried several times before we managed to go up - it's very weather dependent, the skies have to be perfectly clear with only a hint of wind. (Perhaps this is why hot air balloons didn't revolutionize travel the way they were all predicting it would back in the 19th century.) But we finally got our free balloon ride during Fourth of July weekend.
Look out, kids! You're going to fall out!
Just kidding, that wasn't the real thing. This is the real thing:
It's a pretty smooth ride, and even though I am nervous about heights, it didn't bother me at all. The balloon gets to a maximum height of 300-something feet. You can see all the way to downtown (granted, this is Central Indiana, so that's not that impressive) and we probably could have spotted our house if it doesn't have the exact same roof as every other house in our neighborhood.
Amy was a lot less frightened of the balloon ride than she was of that vicious, vicious baby sheep. "I go up in the sky," she said, and continues to say every time we drive past.
And here's me! Matt laid down on the bottom of the basket to get that shot. We've been back to Conner Prairie a few times - I thought the kids would be clamoring to go in the balloon again, but we explained to them it was a one time deal, and they seemed to accept that.
So, that's our summer. Pretty soon my sister Laura will be coming for a visit, and we will go to the State Fair, and then the kids are in school and the fun time is over (for them. For me, fun time is just beginning). How is everyone's summer going?
