Louisville (Part 1)

Ok I know I have been neglecting this, but we are right in the middle of one of our big travel spurts, and Susie and Rach are both on July 1st deadlines for major projects.

I am going to try and get you at least partially caught up before we head out again.

Around the beginning of the month, we headed to Louisville, KY for the annual Advanced Placement reading where Susie reads AP exams for 8 hours a day. It's not much of a vacation for her, but Rach and Jackson got to have some fun. Plus we always get to see friends who we only see a couple times a year.

One of the new traditions since the reading moved to Louisville is to attend a Louisville Bats baseball game. This was Jackie's first minor league game. He made it till the 7th inning before we had to take him home.

We were very much mourning the loss of our friend Dan, who couldn't get off work to attend the reading this year. We left an empty seat in the pictures in his honor. Still, we soldiered on and had a blast hanging out with Kelly and Staci.

It was absurdly hot in Louisville, so Rach and Jackie were stuck in the hotel a lot. We took practically half our house with us, but we still ran out of things to do by mid afternoons.

We did find an indoor, baby-friendly attraction within walking distance on the third day when Rach and Jackie went to the Louisville Science Center.

There was a children's room with lots of play things that Jackie loved. First he played in the space ship. Here he is ready for take off.

Then he played bus driver. He loved to turn the steering wheel, but he could only reach it when he was on mom's lap. We sang "The Wheels on the Bus," of course.

He also kicked back on the airplane. You can't tell this kid is a frequent traveler, can you?

The only area outside of the kids room that Jackson really loved was the Gemini Trainer that they used for the astronauts to practice on back in the day. He could have sat in there for an hour just pushing buttons and flipping switches.

In fact, we had such a great time there that we decided to go back the next day! The science center was the only thing that kept us from going stir crazy until Nana and Pawpaw showed up.