good friends, good places

The original plan for when Daniel had to go back to Indy to defend his thesis was that he was going to go by himself. But, I just couldn't imagine staying here in Columbia while he was going to be so close to our friends. We made the 10 hour drive in my grandmother's hand-me-down car. The car ride there was harder because the girls didn't sleep as much as we were hoping and daniel and i were very tired. I had run into a curb and had a flat tire on Friday right before taking the girls to a ballet at a theater downtown. That added a little stress to our day and put us on the road a lot later. Anyway, we made it to Indy and the drive was well worth it. I enjoyed every single minute of being there. Even though the kids hadn't seen each other in about 5 months they acted like we had never moved away. It was very cold there the first couple of days so we didn't play at the parks like we were hoping. We did get to spend a day at the Children's museum and walked around the mall that was so close to our old house.



Arianna and Drew were so cute together. I was trying to get a video clip of them up on the blog but I'm having trouble with it. They were riding the horses on the carousel and reached out and held hands. They were always together, holding hands and playing together. I even caught this shot of Arianna with her arm around Drew waiting for our turn on the carousel.


I'm sorry that I didn't get a picture of the grown ups on the trip. Claire and Val were so sweet and put us up in their basement. We got to hang out over at Shael and Tom's house a lot too. Daniel was working most of the time. It was bad timing for him because he would have loved to sit around with us but he was so busy finishing his semester. Don't worry, I had a lot of fun anyway. Claire and I went out for a glass of wine one night and we all just had a great time hanging out. It is so nice to spend time with other families. We shared meals, helped clean up after each other and played with the kids together. The time went by so fast. I am so thankful for those families. Good friends are hard to find and I hit jackpot when I moved to Indy. I have to keep reminding myself that I was there for over 6 months before even meeting them. It takes even longer than that to really get to know someone.

We really miss Indianapolis. It is such a cool town and Columbia doesn't seem to be quite so great, yet. At least it is warmer here and we are only 2 hours from the beach and 3 hours from the mountains and an hour from our family. Oh I almost forgot to mention our lunch at Shalimar (Indian food). It is my favorite restaurant of all time. They have a great buffet and we would ride our bikes there almost every Saturday. They treated us to a free meal the day we moved. Anyway, they remembered us and it was the best meal I've eaten since I left! We ate there twice and the second time the waitor was waiting for us with our drinks ready! He saw us getting out of the car and got the girls mango juices ready!