Indiana Vacation Part 2: Of kids and kitties

As for the second part of the Indiana vacation...

After meeting up with knitters, it was time to meet up with friends and relatives. Hubby's brother came down from Michigan with his daughter and her two kids. There was Little Miss Energy, a.k.a. Madison, who dragged me all over the yard calling, "Come here, come here, come here!" Eventually we convinced her that there were swimming gorillas in the creek behind the house, and she convinced herself that she saw one. If she has nightmares about gorillas, it's our fault. Sorry.

And her baby brother, Mr. Nonstop Motion, a.k.a. Logan. At mealtimes he trots over to the table, opens his mouth like a baby bird, takes whatever is offered, and trots off again, returning in moments for the next bite. I kept looking for the wind-up key his back.


Hubby's other brother lives in DeMotte. With both brothers we drove up to Merrillville to visit their father's gravesite and find the graves of several other family members. You'd think a visit to a cemetery wouldn't be very exciting, but two little kids can always find something to do, like run the old-fashioned pump to get water for the flowers.

Look at that smile. Isn't he a cutie-bug?

What's remarkable about this picture is that all three brothers are together in the same place for the first time in something like a couple of decades.

Sweet mum-in-law Loretta made sure the grass was pulled around the headstones.

Sadly, not long before we left on our journey, my mother-in-law's kitty died. She'd had the kitty for many years, and was quite broken-hearted about her passing. But she wasn't kitty-less for long. Hubby's brother found a litter of kittens under his porch and was in the process of rescuing and finding homes for them and for their mother, a sweet girl who was probably abandoned. The kittens were probably eight or ten weeks old, shy and unused to people, but sweet-natured. Two now reside with my mum-in-law. Here is the lovely Miss Molly, a tan-and-black-and orange tabby, who thought a teddy bear's lap was a nice place to nap:

And here is her brother Max (at least, that was his name when we left -- it may change), a perfect little tuxedo cat:

The two of them together. So hard to get kittens to sit still long enough for a decent picture!

Miss Molly was warming up enough to cuddle with me before we left, and Max was getting used to being petted. They'll be fine.

One of Hubby's high school buddies came down from Wisconsin and between them they had a scheme to get some of their old friends together at a restaurant. The scheme went off pretty well, except for one fellow who was out of town, so they had four old friends and some family members together for the first time since their college years. We also had dinner with Hubby's uncle and aunt who live in a nearby town. Alas, I didn't have the camera out for either event!

And I knit. And knit and knit and knit. We did a lot of relaxing, so I had the luxury of knitting time, and by the last day of our trip I had my Tidal Wave socks all done:


And promptly started on a new pair of socks, the Coriolis pattern from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters, in Berroco Sox. The wool isn't as soft as other sock yarn I've been using, which might be a result of the dye printing process. I hope they'll soften up with washing. I ended up ripping out the first start on the whirlpool toe, as well as starting and ripping back the band that twirls around the sock after playing around with different ways of doing the increase. What you see here is what I had done at the end of our flight home:

Our flight home left Indianapolis airport at 7:00 in the morning, so rather than get up at two in the morning and try to drive there, we drove down to Indianapolis the evening before and got a hotel room. We were just a few blocks from the state Capital building, which was closed since it was a Sunday and evening besides:

The hotel was in the canal district and sure enough, there was a canal for which the district is named. We could see it out of our window, and took the opportunity to walk along the canal when we went seeking a restaurant for dinner. As the canal walk had more pedestrians and better lighting than the streets above, we were even safer walking there, though the area we were in was pretty safe already.

The next morning we showered, dressed, and staggered off to drop off the rental car and catch the shuttle to the airport. Many hours and three time zones later, after grabbing a quick pseudo-breakfast at the Indianapolis airport and a quick sandwich in Salt Lake, we arrived home in Portland -- at lunch time. It's time travel. We don't bother to figure it out. We eat when we can when we're in transit, and eat when we're hungry when we get home, then go to bed and get up on normal time.

And now we're home. We picked up the cats at their cat hotel (the cat round-up there was only slightly easier than the round-up we had trying to crate them to get them there), fed ourselves at a restaurant downtown, and now we're sweltering in 100+ degree heat, waiting for the air to cool down enough to open the windows. The kitties, once they settled down, were happy to see us.