08.24.13 (Saturday) - 9 hour drive to Smith Mountain Lake. So we stopped in Charleston, WV's Clay Center for a science break.







08.23.13 (Friday night) - Dinner on the Deck at Trader's Point Creamery - Indianapolis, IN. All sorts of awesome.





08.23.13 (Friday morning) - Holiday Park - Indianapolis, IN. Sometimes you need to put your feet in a river for awhile.











08.22.13 (Thursday) - Indianapolis Children's Museum. I've always wanted to fly to Egypt.

At night we camped out in our suite's living room and watched Project Runway for two hours, the girls said it was the highlight of their summer.



08.22.13 (Thursday morning) - Murphy.







08.21.13 (Wednesday night) - Back at the hotel room, after a LONG, FUN day.





08.21.13 (Wednesday late afternoon) - Crafty.





08.21.13 (Wednesday afternoon) - Finally, a good picture of me with the kids (thanks mom!)











08.21.13 (Wednesday) - Conner's Prairie (Indianapolis, IN)- This place may be the highlight of T's summer - he enlisted to help Civil War soldiers.



08.20.13 (Tuesday night) - Hotel room magic (Homestead Suites at the Crossing).





08.20.13 (Tuesday afternoon) - The Indianapolis Museum of Art. My kid can rock some glasses.







08.20.13 (Tuesday morning) - The Indianapolis Museum of Art with Grandma T. The kids said the statue looked "like a mom", then they hung all over her.









08.19.13 (Monday) - Nine hour drive to Indianapolis, so we stopped in Columbus, OH at COSI Science Museum, which is apparently the Disney World of science museums. We especially loved the "old days" streets.

On chronic illness - "To be sick in this way is to have the unpleasant feeling that you are impersonating yourself. When you're sick, the act of living is more act than living. Healthy people . . have the luxury of forgetting that our existence depends on a cascade of precise cellular interactions."

- Meghan O'Rourke, The New Yorker (August 26, 2013)

. . . .

Article on a man who donates forged art to museums - "[Mark Landis] thinks that he has given work to small museums that couldn't afford it, so that people who wouldn't usually encounter such pieces can see them and be broadened. This attitude accords with the earliest philosophies of American museums, which often presented facsimiles of European sculpture in the form of plaster casts. At one point, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had the third-largest collection of plaster casts in the world." 'Initially, there wasn't the mission among our museums that you needed to have original works of art.'

- Alec Wilkinson, The New Yorker (August 26, 2013)

08.18.13 (Sunday afternoon) - I made T some playdough and the girls joined in, they all sculpted with it for over and hour. Just when you think your kids are too old for something . . .







08.18.13 (Sunday) - Lazy day at home, trying not to stress too much while I pack for a 10 day vacation. That magnet car has become T's absolute favorite toy.





08.15.13 (Thursday afternoon) - VA Museum of Art for lunch with Grandma. I love when P can't stop using her hands to talk.









08.15.13 (Thursday morning) - Science Museum of VA in Richmond. Giant bubbles and an Imagination Playground = happy kids.







08.14.13 (Wednesday afternoon) - Marbeling at Grandma Margie's house. T loved it so much he went through all Margie's paper.



08.14.13 (Wednesday morning) - Lately P keeps putting together railroad tracks for T. They don't always go anywhere but he seems to love it.