The Indy 500 Parade

As I have said before, we in Indiana LOVE us the Indy 500. I proudly displayed the checkered flag on our house the entire month of May. We decided to go the Parade this year with 300,000 of our friends.

Our special friends and neighbors, Izzy, Oli, and their dad, Gavin joined us at the parade. The girls sat so still and watched the parade without making any trouble. They also drank as much water as I could give them because it was close to 90 degrees and we were sitting in the hot sun. There was a little breeze, but not much. It was just plain hot and the Italian ice stand near us was looking pretty good to those 3 girls. Too bad their parents are cheap. ( I also had a reason to wear my bedazzled race flag t-shirt)

The parade started with the Indy police parade squad. These are their actual patrol bikes, but we wonder what kind of time they have on their hands to practice stunts like these.

It was the first parade we have ever seen with giant balloons. The kids were impressed with each and every balloon. This balloon was sponsored by Window world. Window world also sponsored John Andretti driving for King Richard's team (thought you would like to know that, Henro).

And the Purdue All American Band. Love them. Slightly disappointed that they didn't play "hail Purdue". Since they took on the "American" role on this day, we still liked the John Phillip Sousa march and the giant drum. Boiler Up! A side note, there were lots of bands in the parade and every single one of them had on their wool uniforms. Most of the uniforms were black. Reminds me of the days when I marched in the Bryan Jubilee and ended up with heat stroke. And the High stepping Apaches were wearing shorts! Those poor kids. Hopefully some good band parents (Band-Aids) were squirting lots of water at these kids.

Elmo and Dorthy made an appearance. I think this was the girls' favorite balloon.

This was Annalise's favorite float because it featured a barn and cows. Remember, Winners drink Milk.

The grand marshals were the Butler Bulldogs men's basketball team. We also LOVE us the Bulldogs right now. We will miss you next year Gordon.

This is the princess float. To become a 500 Fest princess, you have to be going to school in Indiana. ( we aren't sure if you have to be born here). This isn't a beauty contest, but more of a scholarship thing that is largely based off of grades and community service. I can get behind that. Evie and Annalise are in training to be princesses. Also, the "queen" gets crowned by Mario Andretti, so that would be something to look forward to.

The drivers were all in the parade. We saw all our favorites including, but not limited to Sarah Fisher, Danica Patrick, Dario Francetti (and his lovely, glistening wife, Ashley Judd), a couple Andrettis, a bunch of Brazilians, and Graham Rahal (shown here). Old Graham races for his dad on Rahal-Letterman racing. Their sponsor is Quick Trim--a diet aid. Quick Trim's spokesperson is Kim Kardasian. Say what you will, but I think she is just as pretty in real life as she is on the TV. I DON'T think she should have been in the parade. That's just being ridiculous.

Favorite son and Daughter of Indiana--Jim Neighbors and Florence Henderson. Old Carol Brady was pretty off key when she sang God Bless America before the race, but Jim touched the hearts of many when he sang Back Home Again in Indiana. For what it's worth, I know more people who think that the pre race festivities matter more than the actual race. We also all love the jet planes that do the fly over at the National Anthem because they also fly over our houses 5 or 6 times in a holding pattern. Best part of May in Indiana if you ask me.

Here's Heilo, the pole sitter. He didn't bring it in for a win, but everyone loves him too. He's fun, small, and has a great accent. What's not to like??

Lots of Love surrounding this parade and the race. Can you tell that I'm slightly partial to everything involved in the month of May??

As I mentioned, it was hotter than the dickens out there. As soon as we started rolling in the traffic, Annalise was out like a light and slept almost the entire ride home (which took us an hour because of traffic).

Evie tried to sleep, but didn't. She did look cute trying though.

Strawberry Picking

On Friday, the girls and I made our annual pilgrimage to the strawberry farm. It's pretty good, I've only had poison ivy once. So I suited up in pants and wore gloves for picking. I figured that the girls would be ok since they weren't interested in getting strawberries in through the weeds.

We arrived early, but so did a bunch of other people. This was the 4th year we have picked at this farm and it was the most crowded that we have ever seen it.

Annalise had big plans to pick a bucketful. I think she may have eaten a bucket full.

Evie was initally very serious about her picking. She also wanted to take the green off all the berries. I told her it was ok to leave it on.

Again, Annalise doesn't let the cast slow her down and picked a bunch.

Andrew and his mom and sister came. Check out that outfit. we think he was wearing all colors of the rainbow except for purple. I especially like his socks.

Eventually, the kids got bored near us and took off down the row to see who could find the biggest strawberry. Who do you think won?

Our harvest turned into pie and lots of fresh eating for everyone. I think we may go back again to get our batch for jam. We also are close to having cherry harvest, so strawberries may get skipped this year.

Annalise's last day of school bike rally

On the last day of preschool, it is tradition for a bike rally to occur. The kids love decorating their bikes and riding around the racetrack.

Here's part of the pack of kids. Amazingly, there were only a couple of crashes.

The classes each got up and sang songs. This is Annalise's buddy Chloe. I wrote in an early post that Chloe doesn't speak much English. Annalise was thrilled when Chloe said her name.

You can see that the cast doesn't hamper her bike riding.

Annalise with her decorated bike.

Annalise and Miss Diane. Miss Diane lives in our subdivision, so we will see her at the pool a lot this summer.

Annalise and Miss Sandy. They were both so wonderful to Annalise and we will miss them this summer. Mom will miss the kid free trips to the grocery store the most.

End of Kindergarten

Evie is done with Kindergarten! Her class celebrated with cupcakes and juice boxes on the second to last day of school.

There was a lot of frosting on this cake. I'm glad that they ate it in the middle of the day to wear off some sugar before they came home.

Evie and her classmates. It has been a great year.

All the kids get to make a goofy face.

Mrs. Johnson, Evie and Miss Street. They are great teachers and Evie is really going to miss them!

Our Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Wednesday was community day at IMS. Last year, we took the Volvo for a spin around the speedway. It was thrilling. This year, I decided that we needed to take the Honda for a ride so we could have a complete set of prints.

On the way to pick Jim up from work, Annalise fell asleep in the sunny, hot car. She was pretty disoriented when she woke up in Jim's car at IMS.

Jim had the honor of driving around the track this year. He said it was much faster than running it.

Evie had to be threatened within an inch of her life if she didn't keep that flag off my head. She was full of questions and pretty much didn't stop talking the whole time.

Here's our view from the car coming out of turn four.

The finish line! (Actually, we learned from the Cliff Claven in the timing area that the official finish line is the middle of the yard of bricks, but there are transponders located 33 inches from the nose of the cars. So this line shows who's transponder crosses first).

Perfect for the Accord. Honda racing. Sign us up. Maybe we could get a more distinguishing paint job so we stop getting into the wrong gray Honda at Menards.

There was alot of stuff for kids. I didn't want to spend my very limited time at the track watching kids in bounce houses, so we made them look at car stuff. Check out Annalise's new favorite hiding spot. Nothing like a sweaty head kid scratching her fiberglass cast against your leg when it is 90 degrees out.

They raced hot wheel cars several times. There were real cars made to look like Hot Wheels cars, but we forgot to take pictures of them. One had 2 engines and 1400 horsepower, but it's top speed was only 25 mph because of the body.

Evie in a race car. Annalise didn't want to get it. She still preferred to stay entwined in my legs.

Winner's circle and look closely at the driver!

Mom and 2 very disinterested kids on the bricks in pit row.

This was Evie's idea. Love it. I'm saving this picture for when she becomes a 500 princess.

That's a big tire.

And some smaller ones.

On the way out, evie continued to beg to go on more bouncers. We refused, but we did let her cross the rope bridge that the boy scouts set up. She didn't fall at all.

The weekend summer started

We started our weekend with a trip to the farmer's market and a soccer game. It was a perfect spring morning that wasn't too hot or too cold. We bought some annuals to plant in front of the house.

After chasing some kids around the soccer field and running a couple of miles, Jim needed a nap before he cut the lawn.

As soon as he woke up, Evie cornered him. Evie has a book called "101 cool science experiments for kids" and reads it often. Mom is not into creating salt volcanos and such, but Dad is much more willing to set up an experiment or two on the weekends. This weekend's experiment was to see if we could cook a hot dog by harnessing the power of the sun.

The hot dog in it's oven. After about 2 hours in the sun, it's internal temp was up to 130 degrees and we deemed it safe to eat.

Evie enjoys her solar powered hot dog. Annalise had half, but we can't remember why she is grumpy in this picture.

After a delicious dinner of cedar planked salmon and grill asparagus, Jim asked the girls if they would like to camp out. So we had a campfire complete with smores and then everyone had a bath because everyone was stinky from soccer and campfire smoke. They found their lanterns and headed for the great outdoors. By the time the fly was zipped up, it was 9:15

Jim reports that Annalise was pretty tired and fell asleep almost immediately. She is still an early riser but managed to sleep in until 7:30!

Evie said the birds woke her up. Jim said that the ground is still hard and the traffic on 31 is still loud in the middle of the night. They all had fun and went out for donuts after they got up.

Summer arrived on Sunday. We tossed around the idea of going to the track for the second day of qualifications, but it was 90% humidity at 9 am so we decided to stay home and putz around. We finished planting the rest of the squash and cucumber and trimmed a few more bushes. The girls begged for the slip and slide, but since we have one broken arm already, they had to make due with the baby pool and a couple of squirt guns.

Later, Evie decided to catch up on some reading inside the 100 degree tent. Hot.

Parker came for a play date and was bossed around and entertained by the girls.

They all had a snack of a nice Popsicle to cool off.

And for dinner on Sunday, we ate from the garden! fresh broccoli and a salad with radishes. Yum.