Look who's talking

....but not yet walking! Oh well, that will come in time. I guess lately Natalie has been using all her energy on mastering her verbal skills. Her current vocabulary contains a whopping five words! She can say "that" (comes out like "Dat!" when she really wants something), "hi," "mama," "dada," and "mine." Sometimes we think she might be saying "bath" and "bah" for bottle, but it's possible we're hearing things.

Last week we took the kids to Indianapolis for a littel mini-vacation. We had a GREAT time! First of all, I need to brag. We made it to Indianapolis, drove around to all of the attraction, and drove home all on one tank of gas! Amazing. Anyway, the first day (Thursday) we left early in the morning and drove straight to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. What an awesome place. I went there several times as child, but could not really remember it. It is four entire floors of nothing but fun. The boys (and Harold) especially loved the DC Comics exhibit. They had an actual Batmobile that was used in the filming of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. They also really enjoyed an area called ScienceWorks. Matthew got to try the climbing wall there--it was his first time. I am proud to say (brag?) that he did better than the other three children who were in his session. He climbed the highest! I always knew we had a monkey on our hands.

On Friday, we visited the Indianapolis Zoo. I'm not going to lie, it was hot. Miserably hot. We tried to do the outdoor exhibits in the morning and then the indoor ones in the afternoon when it was hottest. My favorite? Definitely the dolphin show. I don't know why, but dolphins have this weird effect on me. I always get choked up around them. I think it's a combination of their beauty and grace, and their intelligence, but they are truly amazing animals. Matthew and Ryan really loved it as well. After the show we went into an underwater dolphin viewing dome. It was so neat to see the dolphins swimming all around us. In addition to the dolphins, we saw meerkats, penguins, giraffes, elephants, and a polar bear. And we ate ice cream. LOTS of ice cream!

On Saturday, we had planned to go to Conner Prairie in Fishers, IN, but the weather continued to be hot and we really didn't want to spend another day feeling sweaty and miserable. So the kids unanimously decided that they wanted to spend a second day at the Children's Museum. You will never guess who they got to meet--Batman himself! I will post pictures soon so that you can see this awe-inspiring encounter for yourself. ;)

If you ask the kids what their favorite thing about the trip was, they will probably say it was the hotel pool.

Needless to day, when we returned late on Saturday night, we were all exhausted. But it was so worth it. We had a fantastic time and plan to make it an annual adventure for our family.