Year 3: February 19th-20th, 2018: NCAA Hall of Champions

Monday, Monday.  It was a Monday.  Sort of.  Benaiah had the day off of school because it was Presidents' Day.  The local township schools typically have it off, too, but they needed to use it as a make up day.  That meant, that going to a local museum that purposefully had a "free admission" day to attract those families with nothing to do but had kids had home was actually not very busy.  The Children's Museum of Indianapolis was probably packed, but not the relatively small NCAA Hall of Champions Museum located near the Etiljorg and Indiana State Museums.  The NCAA museum has some great displays and information on collegiate sports, as well as a room for those honored in sports and some places to touch and feel some of the sports.  I'm sure it's a huge deal for those in the NCAA, but to us non sports folk, it's just a little museum full of little interesting things.  I just wanted to check it out because it's there and because well, March Madness is coming up, which was one my dad's favorite months of the year!  We always followed his school, UNC-Chapel Hill and cheered for them during the tournament.  I still do.  And it was a way to get out of the house on a rainy day.  And I got to take all 4 kids, which is a rare treat.

What isn't rare, because it's happening more frequently, is Abishai's 3 yr old temper trantrum, run away from you and scream self going crazy and becoming hard to handle.  I guess it had been a big weekend and it was one too many outings.  I didn't have high expectations of reading every sign so I didn't care if we had to exit quickly.  I think we spent maybe a little over 1 hr there.  You could probably stay that long or a bit longer if you were really interested and had lots of questions.  I think the kids did have fun.  They had some extra stations where you got to try some things run by former college athletes where you could get a card punched and earn a prize.  They were very, very gracious in giving everyone all the punches whether or not they did the activity, which I appreciated today.  The point of those kinds of "scavenger hunts" is to get you to explore all aspects of a place, but sometimes, that's impossible with a preschooler. Benaiah was a big help with him, chasing him he ran away.  We spent the rest of the day doing school, including Benaiah working on a diorama for English class involving hot glue and popsicle sticks.  Yippee!  (Or not in his case).

Tuesday was an at home day and it was 77 degrees F outside!!!!  So I made sure we spent a ton of time outside today.  It will cool off again tomorrow back to normal temps of 40's and 50's with tons of rain.  The kids spent 20 minutes outside this morning and then another 30-90 minutes late this afternoon.  It's hard to get the older ones to stay outside.  I measured our backyard so I can start walking and tracking it while Abishai is asleep.  I used to walk the backyard of our house in Beech Grove during naptime, too.  5 laps around the backyard is 0.5 miles.  Keturah and I also spent 40 minutes doing the winter dog poo clean up and now my back hurts from bending over.  But it's done.  Abishai was in and out with pj's or play clothes, shoes and no shoes, bike or no bike, and as happy as a preschooler can be to have so much freedom!  We did school of course, too.  The kids were grounded from electronics, so that helped us make the time to be outside.  I cut Keturah's lessons a bit short and whoops, forgot to go back over them tonight after supper like I had planned to.  She won't be able to do them until later tomorrow anyways because of gymnastics and an eye doctor follow up.

Meanwhile, the boys went to school and did their thing.  While the truck spent the day in one repair shop and is now at another repair shop getting fixed for a big sum of money. Great.  Not.  Not sure how that's going to fit into the budget, but oh well, here goes.  Oh, the start of the day was worse.  Way worse.  Abishai woke up and was in my room about 5 am.  Benaiah thinks it was when he got up at 6, but I think it was 4:50 am.  Abishai was restless in our bed and the dog was clickety clacking around so I let him out and back in and tried to lay down in the fireside room.  Well, the dog wouldn't settle AT ALL.  So I tried moving to the living room couch and that still didn't work.  Finally, I put the dog outside.  Then Benaiah came out of his room and flicked on the light!  I was so mad.  And by this point I couldn't get back to sleep.  Finally, Jared got up with Abishai and got him some breakfast and kept him entertained for a while and I finally fell back asleep for a little bit.  Jared brought in the dog and put him in the garage to keep him quiet for a bit, too.  Thankfully, I managed to move on and we had a great day, but it was a super frustrating way to start the day.  I'm not sleeping as deeply because I lowered the dosages of one of my meds that has the side effect of sleepiness.  It's for restless legs and yes, I can feel the restless legs again.  I just want to try and treat it a different way. And if not, back on the medication I go again for awhile before I'm ready to try to get off again.  My whole body feels off again, although I'm trying to stay strict on what I consume.  I just want to eat everything that everybody else can but I know if I do, I'll feel even worse.  And to add lack of sleep due to outside factors (and not my own stupidity of staying up too late) doesn't help.  But again the day redeemed itself and I'm very grateful for it.

Replicas of a basketball, peach basket, and handwritten basketball game rules from the 1800's.

Hall of Fame for extraordinary athletes that exhibit not only athletic skills but sportsmanship and leadership.  There's actually not that many here.  It's a very select list.

You could look up your school on this neat touch screen on a clear glass panel (pretty futuristic/movie looking) and find out if any of your athletes are here.  Well, there was one lady from UNC Chapel Hill up there from tennis.  So that's neat!

Gymnastics!

Two types of downline skis and one type of cross country ski.

Sorry, buddy, you can't play with these balls!  But I did learn that the basketball for ladies is a bit smaller than for the men's because they have smaller hands.  They play on the same size court though.

Men's and women's hurdles.  And Justin pretending to jump them.

The current champions from 2017.  I saw the University of Florida Gators three times!  Jared worked near there for about 3 months in 2006.  There was even a Wesleyan school up there.  Men's and women's sports of all kinds.

Go Tarheels!

I didn't get to read a lot about this statue but it looks cool!

The kids got to practice their free shows!  There were banners everywhere for all kinds of sports, too.

Justin made about half of his baskets!  Maybe we should get him back into basketball!  He's got the huge hands for it!  And nimbleness when he wants to be.  And he certainly is growing taller!

My camera was on the wrong setting so a lot of these pictures are darker than I want them to be.  But Justin did a great job with the ball!

The tennis balls were coming at you at 86 mph like a college athlete's serve would be.  And it was coming at you randomly so it scared us when it hit the plexiglass.

Three types of swords for fencing.  You could lift them up (but not out) to see how each one felt differently.  When we told Jared at supper he knew exactly what their names were.  Of course he knew that.  He knows everything, lol!

Justin trying on a fencing mask.

Then Justin and Keturah tried out their vertical jumps.  Justin's was a 12 1/2 inch jump!

Keturah had a 10 in jump!  You hit the pegs that swung out and that's how you could tell how tall your jump was.

This is a ski training machine.  Justin couldn't get it to move though.

Benaiah got it to move, but it was difficult.

Nice display of equipment and the different balls or pucks or discs in the different sports.  They also had a huge rowing boat hanging from the ceiling.

Running blocks.

Pool block for swimmers.  We won't supposed to jump off of it, but it kept little man entertained for awhile.

The differences in a hockey net and a soccer net.

And field hockey (?) net and a water polo net.

Soccer training, except Abishai wanted to throw the ball at the screen.  He did kick it too, though.  And then I tried to strap him into his stroller, which he promptly got out of.  There's no holding back this crazy kid!

The kids sat and played this trivia game for awhile.

Pole vaulting and javelin throwing.  Humongous!

Back at home, Abishai randomly pressed batteries to his cheek.  I guess he really is the Energizer Bunny now.

Yeah!  We went outside!  In our jammies and trike with a "grocery bag" for cars on front.

Cutie!

We borrowed a car from the parents, so Jared walked home.  Abishai is very good about not going into the street without permission, but of course he had to go get Daddy.

Daddy's turn with the new RC car.

77 degrees calls for things to start growing.

Very, very tired little guy hanging with his favorite person.

Cute boy showing off his new jammies from Grandma and Grandpa.

Oh goodness, this is a story!  So Abishai comes into my room saying "my motorcycle is down there" and pointing to under the house!  I was very confused and then thought, "did he get it down one of the open vents by accident?"  Nope, he had it "down there" at the bottom of the toy garage elevator.  Ok, then, you scared me for a few minutes!

Cutest little basketball player!  You have to remember that he was learning to crawl and walk when Justin took basketball on PEI.  We were there for most weekly practices, so Abishai got used to the court.  Plus, it's Indiana.  There's a lot of basketball going on here.

Outside the Hall of Champions facing east across the canal.

NCAA Hall of Champions

Downtown facing east.

I let little man outside first.  I found him like this picking off the bark from a piece of tree trunk.  #outdoorboy

They were so happy to be outside!  I'm not joking!  And Benaiah's classmates petitioned one of their teachers to take their class outside today.

So sweet!

Justin's idea!  He put one of his t-shirts on Abishai so they could pretend to have spikes on their backs like a stegosaurus using balloons!  Oh my goodness, we couldn't stop laughing!  Abishai totally looks like a hunchback.  But he hammed it up and roared and bounced into Justin and had a blast!

We didn't need the coupon, but it gives you more information of where I got the idea from.

Another random moment.  I was outside walking, Abishai had woken up, so the kids entertained him with this random thought of putting the balls in the bathtub.  I believe we did this at the condo.  They did put towels down inside the tub first to absorb any water.  Innovative kids!

Gorgeous day!

Abishai can now push the big tire wing a bit and LEAP onto the swing while it's moving!  He's 3!  Not 13!  Dude, slow down!

The kids and I finally finished this book!  It was SOOOOOOO good!  It's based on Bible stories from Isaiah through when Mary and Joseph escaped to Egypt with baby Jesus.  It includes a lot of Scripture and a very interesting storyline where these talking immortal animals help to carry out the Masters' plan.  I love reading adapatation of the Bible stories that keep me asking "hm, I wonder if they really thought like that?  How scared was Mary?  What was Isaiah doing and thinking when he wrote that?"  Of course, that stuff is speculation, but it helps to put the truth into perspective especially when you know the stories well.

It was very, very thick and took us months to read aloud together.  There's a couple of prequels to this one and several books after.  I just ordered the next book, which is Jesus' life through the first part of Acts, as seen by Handel's eyes when he was writing the Passion.  I read a book from Mary's perspective once that totally changed how I saw who Jesus was during his growing up years and when he was called and how he might have interacted with his family prior to ministry.  I can't wait for the next one!