A perfect vacation!!

Several months ago Patrick and I set out to plan the perfect spring break. Should we go somewhere with beautiful beaches or somewhere with great history and museums? It didn't take us very long to pick a place, the most perfect place. A place with great adventures and endless hours of fun and giggles... the beautiful land of Kentucky to visit my brother and his sweet family. We had not seen them in almost 2 years and we were well due for a visit. From start to finish it was perfect, a pure delight!

Here are a few of my favorite things...

On the very first day we were introduced to the wonderful world of the Wii. Here Davey is giving Patrick some pointers on his golf game. It was all fun and games until the kids went to sleep and then it got vicious. The adults stayed up all hours of the night competing against each other with the Olympic games. I am embarrassed to say that my "Wii muscles" were sore for several days. It was awesome!

They also have a karaoke machine and we all ripped it up- singing at the top of our lungs until we were hoarse and could sing no more, but that didn't happen until about 1 a.m.

One of my favorite days was going to the girls' school. We met Emma at lunch time and got to eat with her in the cafeteria. Afterwards, we went to her classroom and met her teacher. She is an amazing student and poet. (I will highlight Emma in a future post) She is such a sweet little girl. We also visited Gracee and I even got to read a story to her class. It was so fun!

Making cookies with my "girlfriends". I'm almost positive we ate more than half the dough... yum!

Mammoth Cave is the largest cave in the WORLD!! Over 350 miles of cave, of which we explored about a mile and a half. Very cool!

Lions and tigers and bears... oh my. Actually, there were no tigers or bears, but there were plenty of other fun animals at the Zoo. We went into a bird atrium where we fed them nectar from a little cup. They flocked to us. We managed to escape without any extra birdie souvenirs on our clothes. That was a definite plus!

Our second favorite was watching the baby monkeys. They were so cute, we stayed there for a long time and they made us all laugh.

We took a break from all the animals and played at the park for a bit. I LOVE this first picture of Gracee. We were playing hide and go seek and she was counting when Patrick snapped this photo.

Best buddies... Davey instantly became Patrick's best friend. He called out for him all the time, "Patrick Star, where are you?"


We also had an evening at Chuck E. Cheese. We played tons of game, ate pizza and earned about a million ticket. The kids came home with some sweet prizes.

The Louisville Slugger Museum was another great place. We got to tour the factory and see how they make their baseball bats. We saw one of Babe Ruth's bats and even got to hit a few balls at the batting cages... a personal favorite of mine!

I don't have a picture, but I must mention one last thing. Before we arrived my brother challenged me to a 4 mile run. Patrick and I have been running, eh, jogging... ok we call it shuffling lately. We were up to a consistant 3 miles, but that was our limit. On our first run in Kentucky we kept with our limit and did an even 3 miles. But our next run, we did it... our 4 miles actually turned out to be 4 1/2. The rolling hills in his neighborhood made it even more difficult, but we did it! Thanks little bro. for pushing us to be better.

.
As you can see it was a fun filled, action packed vacation. We had SO much fun and were SO sad to leave. It has been all we have talked about since we have been home.

.
Dave and Marla, I cannot thank you enough for your hospitality and love! We miss you a ton!

We love you all so much!!