Indy Zoo

We took the boys to the zoo this morning and it was a perfect day. It was warm with a nice breeze and not too hot. The park was not too busy either! The highlight of the trip was the train ride. Once we got on the train, Adam's mouth was in the shape of a "o" for quite a while! He was in awe. They really liked the dome under the dolphin tank too--the dolphins just swim all around you! But Adam really enjoyed the ducks. Yes, the ducks. There were ring-tailed lemers and flamingoes at the same pond, but they really enjoyed the ducks! They had a really nice cheetah exhibit, but they just kinda laid around. We just missed seeing the tigers though, it comes in a few weeks. The boys enjoyed the penguins alot too. They could swim under you and pop up on both sides of you. So it was fun to try and keep track of them.

Overall, it's a very nice zoo. But our little one here in Lafayette (which is free!) does a pretty good job actually. Alex wanted to know where the playground was when we left the zoo today. The one here is right next to a park that has some very nice playground equipment. :)

Adam in awe of being on the train.

at the elephants

rhino's

Sharks!

The ducks :)

Alex loved following this turtle. And yes, it actually moved all over!

Meerkats

More scrapers

For those of you who could care less about construction equipment, you should probably just skip this post. :) Here's more pictures of scrapers. They were really close the other day.

Here's some fun tid-bits of info about the ones we saw: They are CAT 637E's. They run about $600, 000 each. The "E" means that it's a nicer model---kinda like going from a Ford to a Mercury--it just adds money to the price tag. On any given day, there's about 20 of these sitting 3 houses down (among other equipment). And all of this info I got from Pete (Andy's bropther) who works for CAT and works on scrapers such as these. He works with the motors and their emissions. Thanks Pete, hopefully I got everything right!

This is a picture of the scrapers from our swing set.

Scrapers have the unique ability to attach and "train" together.

We got to witness it first hand. It was kinda fun to watch one of them get stuck and the other pull it out. Sometimes a bulldozer helped push. :)

Here's another picture of them hooked together.

Big dump trucks--something else to watch.

Scrapers!

I feel like we've been waiting all winter for some real road work behind the house. The concrete drain was a nice suprise, however not the dirt moving we'd been expecting. But today, we finally got to see some work on the road bed. Three scrapers, two bulldozers, and an excavator were moving tons of dirt all day. The scrapers moved dirt from one area and dumped it on top of the concrete drain and gravel. The excavator moved dirt all day too, but I'm not really sure of it's purpose yet. It just moved a pile of dirt and made another pile right next to the old pile. Hmmm. However, it was very close and he waved at the boys. :)

These first couple are the boys trying to fill Daddy's shoes. :)

This picture is on the back patio.

You can barely see the yellow of a scraper between the two trees and behind the pines.

Just gives you a perspective of how close/far the work is. :)

New Door

Our new door got installed today! The boys were very excited to watch the construction. Alex asked "What are they doing?" hundreds of times. You think I'm exagerating, but I dont think I am. :) We'll probably paint the white brick molding on the outside, but I'm just not sure what color yet. Alex keeps saying, "It's so pretty!" We still have to put the trim back on on the inside, but that will get done eventually. :)

Oh, and for those of you who haven't seen it on facebook, Rummel #3 is one the way and expected in November. We're hoping for a girl, but 3 boys would be ok too. :)

Trees

On Tuesday night last week, we had a pretty strong storm go through. It didn't last long, but it sure did some damage. Nothing on the house was damaged, but it took out about 10 trees. All the trees were on our south pine tree line. One of our large maple trees up by the house lost a good sized branch (last picture). We'll have to figure a way to get that off. Actually, we'll be working on cleaning this up all year I think. We have 3 or 4 trees that didn't break, just fell over with the roots sticking up in the air. So here's a few pictures. Most of these pictures I walked behind the tree line and took from the south side.

April pictures

So April has flown by but I dont have too many pictures to show for it. I took the boys up north for a few days since Andy had to work for 2 or 3 days straight it seemed. We stayed with Mom and Dad but did visit Andy's parents briefly for dinner one night. We kept busy with coloring eggs, hunting them, and building a fort (as you can see below). Alex carried every one of those pieces of wood from the pine trees in the background. Alex still talks about his fort and the flag Papa gave him. :)

Our other adventure was taking the boys rollerskating for the first time. It's been a long time for me too! Andy's cousin rented out a rink in Logansport for their daughter's birthday and family and friends were invited. It took some doing to get Alex out there, but Adam was more than willing to shuffle along with the crowd! Afterward though, Alex talked alot about how fun it was to skate. :)

Construction!

A month ago (has it been that long? whew!) Pete helped us install a new water softener. Alex did a good job of staying out of the way, but asked repeatedly, "Daddy, my turn to help?" Adam was just happy to be able to play in the basement. :)

The other construction that has been going on since we got back from Florida is behind our house. It's warmed up a bit and they sure have been busy. The new SR 25 has to go over a low spot and they were installing the draining system that runs under the new road. In the spring we can get some pretty serious flooding by our house, so they put in a good sized drain (I dont know what the word really is for this thing, so "drain" will have to do!). Semi after semi came by our house and took it back for a crane to lower it into place. Only one of those concrete pieces per semi. Yeah, they're pretty big.

After they finished the concrete, they spent a few days dumping gravel around the "drain". Dump truck after dump truck... A few dump trucks brought some large rocks/boulders to place on either end of the "drain". Probably so the dirt wont wash out? But an excavator scooped up the big rocks and placed them where they needed to go. And occationally, a train would go by. Adam loooves trains. He will stop crying, eating, drinking, playing, etc just to watch them or let you know he hears one. Needless to say when he's having a bad day/moment, I'm praying for a train. :)