Our first adventure to the Indianapolis Children's Museum

Last year at the ARC conference (http://www.arcind.org/), I bid on a set of Children's Museum tickets. With eveything that has gone on this year, we had forgotten about them until recently. Which is a good thing, they were going to expire at the end of this month. So we decided to go there this past Saturday....we should have know it was going to be one of those days! Even before we left the house Rachel was being more than her usual WILD. (We even forgot the camera, so the pictures enclosed here are not the greatest, but Kevin's phone did a pretty good job!) Overall it is a nice place to visit. The musuem has 4 different floors of exhibits. We started at the top and worked our way down....

As I keep mentioning, it is a Children's museum, so it is meant for little ones to get out of their strollers and interact with the different exhibits. So of course Rachel gets out and does well with these exhibits....

But this is where we start to loose her (literally some moments)....

Kevin and I both we chasing her every which way....but again it suppose to be interactive, so we were letting her go a little wilder than normal...but finally put it to an end when she let go of Kevin's hand and bolted in the opposite direction.

This is the last of picture time....

It was a good thing that at this point most things could be just looked at rather than touched all the time....She really loved the dinosphere and so before we left we hit the gift shop and found a great dinosaur floor puzzle by Melissa & Doug and Aidan got a little T-Rex finger puppet.

I think we decided that the Museum was a great place to visit once a year, but that investing in a membership would not be well advised for us until Rachel and Aidan are both a little older. Wish us luck next year when we take them again!!!

A beautiful fall day!

Again this weekend was full of wonderful weather and plenty to do! On Sunday we decided to get what leaves have fallen (no where near all of them) and fill our Halloween lawn bags and close the remaining summer things down (Rachel's sandbox, picnic table, etc). Rachel enjoyed playing in the leaves. It had not occurred to me until she was jumping in the leaves that we didn't get to play in the leaves last year as it was still miserably hot and I was just plain miserable! Here are some pictures of Rachel and Aidan in the leaves enjoying some time in the cool Autumn air.

Aidan did not like falling in the leaves, so its a good thing Mom was around to save him...

2008 Breast Cancer Walk

The past several years we have been doing the Making Strides Against Breast cancer walk. Kevin's work sponsers a team so we just participate that way...here are the past couple years walk pictures. Rachel has definately changed each year!

This year was nice: the weather was perfect! Nice and cool! We walked downtown past the Monument at the circle and the Scottish Rite Cathedral. We also ran into another family who uses the same sitter. Rachel was happy to see Andrew.

After our walk and our snacks we were all worn out...

but we'll do it again next year....anyone interested in doing our own team? How about "Save the Nunnies"??

Monster Masquerade Dinner

The local Parks Department was going to have a Monster Masquerade, an event for kids to dress in costume and have treats and games centered around Halloween. Unfortunately, it was cancelled due to lack of interest. Our friends Jan and Russell were going to take their boys to it too, and so we decided to let the kids get dressed up anyway and just met for dinner at Moe's.....here are some of the pictures....oh, you'll notice we didn't get Aidan in his costume, but he is festive in his pirate Halloween shirt.

Most recent updates on kids

As I eluded to before...Rachel is potty trained! She hasn't been in diapers in....wow, I cannot even remember when. We did have some struggles with keeping her dry at both home and sitters, but that seems to have been resolved with having the sitter give her the option of using the floor potty or the big potty. She is doing well and we cannot be happier to not have to change toddler diapers anymore!!

Aidan has been crawling for several month, which really surprised us as he went from rolling over to crawling/pulling himself up on things in about 2 weeks. He has gotten very quick as well. If anything hits the floor that he is not suppose to have, he has already found it! As you can see in the above picture he is wearing his teething necklace (Amber chips). I am in love with it and plan to get one for Rachel when she starts teething her 3yr molars! We keep it close to his skin and it has been a life saver! We don't go through as many teething tabs and he seems to be in much less discomfort. Hopefully we will be cutting a tooth or two soon!

Better late than never...

I am hoping setting up this blog will not only cause me to document what is going on in our ever hectic life in the Hammonds household, but also serve as a way to keep all of our loved ones up to date!



I probably should have done this a long time ago, but with everything going on...Rachel being fully potty trained (hoping saying it out loud doesn't jinx us), Aidan being fully mobile (probably heading to be my 9mo old walker), our jobs, trying to participate in greener living (getting foods from a local food co-op, shopping at the crunchy marts, natural cleaners, etc) it seems like keeping in touch becomes something few and far between. So with all that said, I guess starting this is better late than never!



With this blog, I also hope to put recent pictures of the kids. If you see a picture you would really like, let me know and I can send it to you via email or through snapfish.