Ha…. I snuck in a week and a half off.  Its actually hard to kind of get your mind back into the correct mindset for writing again.  I had a great time lately.  My family and I headed down to Indiana for a bit of time off. 

For my long time readers I live in Wisconsin.  So we occassionally head down to Indiana to visit with some family.  This is probably my first vacation for a while.  I have this bad habit of taking some vacation time to do work around the house.  Nothing like burning a week of vacation setting yourself up for moving from a desk job to working around the house lifing 100-200 lb stones.

But hey.. last week was all about some time off with the kids and wife.

Of Travel with 2 year olds

Kids by the age of 5 can generally be entertained on longer trips.  You can hand them a PSP/Nintendo DS/DVD Player or something and for an hour or two you can keep them distracted.  Some more digitally tuned kids can probably be kept interested for 4-5 hours.  I can tell you at the age of 5 mine did NOT like to be on something for 5 hours straight.  My 8 year old however did great.  He just entertained himself for almost the entire trip.  I’m not a huge advocate of using digital baby sitters, but I remember how bad it used to suck being in the back of a cold minivan in the middle of winter for 6+ hours on the way from Pennsylvania to Indiana… not one of my favorite things to do as a kid. 

2 however… two year olds DO NOT handle long trips well.  Overall she was a good kid, but unlike older kids, two year olds typically will not be entranced by a DVD for a couple of hours.  My two year old likes to move around a LOT.  She’s a super active kid.  So she watches movies in like 5-15 minute chunks followed by a good bit of running around at home.  I’m also not about to hand a two year old a little mini computer with a touch screen so she can throw it on the ground when she’s had enough.

So as you can imagine, you sit her down in a car for 5 hours where you’re strapped in and can’t move??? yeah… well overall I shouldn’t complain.  She did really well, but intermittent times of shrieking can wear on your nerves.  Especially when the 2 year old refuses to sleep.

On Amish Destinations

Our first stop of the trip was actually a family reunion.  This year we had it planned near a town called Shipshewanna in northern Indiana.  We have a relative who lives right near there.  It was nice.  We got to see some of the Amish culture and the kids got to experience one of those small but important things in life.  The hotel we stayed at had an option for all of like $10 a night extra to have a “family fun suite”… what that translates into is that the kids get bunk beds.  Which we all know is a million times more fun than having to sleep in a big double of queen size bed with your brother/sister(s).  Plus the most important thing when you have three kids… mom and dad get a room with a door.  Woo Hoo!!! Party time!

So the kids got to enjoy themselves running around with their cousin as well as seeing a bunch of horses, buggies, and just generally playing for fun.

On Indianapolis and Museums

As a tack on to the rest of our vacation we went down to Indianapolis to visit with my wife’s family down in Indianapolis.  That’s always a good time.  They’re good people and there’s enough going on that it keeps the kids moving and entertained most days.  Plus any day you can get your kids to spend with their great grand parents is a blessing.  We have no illussions about our grand parents on my wife’s side of the family.  I actually already have no grandparents left.  So my kids only great grandparents are left on their moms side.  So every chance they get to remember them is a blessing.  Its not something that will last forever.

For anyone who’s never been down to Indianapolis, if you have kids, you really should make time to go to the Children’s museum.  Its probably one of the best ones I’ve ever been to in the midwest.  While we got there, we got the chance to see the Tutankhaman event that was there.  The kids were of course thoroughly bored through that portion, but as you can imagine, when you take them up to a big huge pool of water where the kids can play with boats and streams and rocks and running around pretending to be an animal while sliding down slides.

Plus my kids are huge fans of the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon.  They had an exhibit on that where the kids dressed up like jedi and clone troopers and got to just mess around a bit.  But overall, the kids just had a very fun time running around wearing themselves out.  If anything that’s probably the most fun I have on vacation.  I love watching the kids get really involved running around playing and just having a really really good time.

On Recreation and Return

So I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I don’t have a lot to report on the raiding front as I just got back late last week.  I have a few things brewing, but expect to see more of my posts clustering around being written on the weekend.  My job has shifted a bit at work and I just can’t spend the time during the week I used to.

I actually got back in town last week on like Wednesday, but I just didn’t log into WoW at all until almost Sunday.  I finally promised myself I’d finish up Bioshock (which I did… only 5 months after I started the game…).  I also spent a bit of time playing Galactic Civilizations 2.  I’m a huge fan of the 4x Space genre, but I don’t play it often as I have a hard time getting away from the “one more turn” syndrome.  I realized one night it was 2:30 AM before I finally stopped playing.  Oops…

So I’ve been easing my way back into the game.  I’ll get back into full swing soon again.

One Response to “Vacation Time: Starman Does Indiana”

  1. 6:40 am, 21 March, 2010 р.
    Luigi Fulk says:

    There are quite a few laptop manufacturers that also recognize the need for higher RAM which is why there are some which offer upgrade worthy versions where you can increase the RAM to about 2 GB also. This is not only possible but also becoming increasingly common in the world of mini laptops.