South Bend Indiana - College Football Hall of Fame

Our hotel adventures including using one of these to get all of our stuff up to the rooms - the kids loved playing on them!Our family vacation this summer included our road trip out to Maryland. Our first stop was South Bend, Indiana. We wanted to see the College Football Hall of Fame and it was totally worth going. So much Texas stuff and an actual museum worth seeing!

This was the football field outside the building.

Spiral staircase leading down to the museum.Footballs and how they have evolved over the years.

My favorite picture in the Heisman trophy room:

Watching college football movie and images in a big theater made of stadium seats

Drew and a giant football

Me and Dilan in the Heisman trophy room next to a painting of Ricky Williams

Drew leaping off the stadium bleachers

David standing next to the typical size of football players and their respective positions

This room was very interactive having all sorts of athletic tests for you to do that a football athlete has to have: this one was the vertical jump.

go David!

Look at my precious cheerleaders! This room was the mascot room and it played all sorts of fight songs - of course, we had the Texas fight song playing while we were in there!

Vince Young's jersey!

Colt McCoy's many awards last year

Drew imitating a kick

University of Notre Dame

One of our stops was to see the University of Notre Dame. Seriously, it's in the middle of nowhere and not as "cathedral"-like as I was expecting. Maybe I was thinking too much of the actual Notre Dame in Paris but still, it's just a regular university that was put on the map because of it's football program. That being said, it is still very cool to be there in person, probably even more so for an actual football game. We saw "touchdown Jesus" which is the picture of Christ you can see behind the stadium at one end in which he looks like he is signaling a Notre Dame touchdown. We also saw a statue of Lou Holtz as well.

Statue of Lou Holtz

"Touchdown Jesus"

Notre Dame Football Stadium

Kirtland, Ohio

We stopped off in Kirtland, Ohio, on our road trip to the east coast. Because it's smaller and probably gets less visitors, it was not as family-friendly as Nauvoo. If you have small kids, this is a hard one get to see everything, but I was grateful we saw what we did.

The church's historic center has a tour schedule and we started off with our group but had to withdraw when things got to tough with the little ones (okay, more specifically our 17 mth old). But we saw the movie on Kirtland and then toured the N.K. Whitney store. We saw all the other buildings but didn't go inside and once your group goes in, they lock the doors and you can't come in and out like Dilan was needing to do. But it was interesting overall and a lot like Nauvoo.

Then, we went to the Community of Christ's center so we could tour the Kirtland temple. Once we figured out it was an hour long tour and knowing the kids were hungry and tired, we just decided to move on and only see the outside of it. I'll have to go back one day!

summer kitchen

The creek below is where church members got baptized during their time in Kirtland.

Kirtland, Ohio temple

Moving week...

We are without internet for the next week due to our move to Maryland... so I'll be back on (hopefully) starting Tuesday, July 13!

Summerfest 2010

For our last weekend in Wisconsin, we decided to check out Summerfest. It's huge here and is known all over the country for the amount of music played on several different stages. We took the kids and it was quite warm so we only lasted a couple of hours but it was fun. There was some "interesting music" if you want to call it that and then some popular stuff being played on bigger stages. We mainly walked around and settled in the kids' area where Drew played on some bouncy slides and then both kids played on the playground. Dilan found a slide she loved and she did it over and over again. We ate bratwursts right by the water and there was quite a nice breeze there. All in all, it was a Wisconsin experience!

Brusha brusha brusha...

I bought Drew this Thomas toothbrush some months ago to help with him learning how to better brush his own teeth. He's been to the dentist last year and this year and gotten rave reviews with no cavities. The hygienist told me last year that you should really help your kids brush their teeth until age 5 and up so I have. But since a new baby is coming and Drew is starting kindergarten, we've been working on becoming more independent. He does great with this toothbrush! So much so that Dilan took an interest and really likes to brush her teeth this way too. So, we headed off to the store to buy one for her. The only one they had was one that you could design yourself with stickers and such. It turned out so cute! And we had enough stickers to put Drew's name on his toothbrush as well (mind you the colors are pink and purple but oh well!).

Waukesha Historical Museum

Yesterday, we went to the Waukesha Historical Museum. We wanted an outing for the kids and a free one at that (on Wednesdays for Waukesha County residents). The building is neat and some of the exhibits are interesting but it's small and you may spend a half hour there at most because the kids are running around and you need to corral them! Still trying to figure out what to do here that we haven't done yet before we move in a week or so! :)