My Thoughts on Indiana

1. No offense, Indiana, as I am sure you are a delightful place to live, but as far as visiting goes, you are pretty much dullsville.  Since tourist attractions not involving racecars or steakhouses were not abundant, I made do with my own personal tourist attractions (meaning: Utah doesn't have them yet)-- H&M, Trader Joes, and Panera Bread (3 times, by the way, we are hardcore like that.)  We also got doughnuts at pretty much the best--if not scariest--doughnut shop ever. 

That's Reo chowing down...Okay, so I guess maybe Indiana isn't SO dullsville, since it contains so many of my favorites.

2.  Another plus?  While strolling through the local Borders, what should I stumble across but this...

That is my sister, Emily Wing Smith's, brand new book, called Back When You Were Easier To Love.  Clearly I thought this was pretty fancy. and I recommend you stumble across it yourself at your local bookstore.  Or Amazon... I told you, fancy.

3. The speed limit in Indiana seemed to max out at 55 miles per hour.  This irritated Reo to no end.  Regardless of the fact that we were usually being led astray by a faulty GPS, through major construction zones, usually while raining, driving the bohemeth the 18 year old boy at the rental car place thought it would be funny to give us, and we really had no business going any faster than 55 MPH anyways, he would have none of it...

Also, if we had been going faster, we wouldn't have seen this random/inappropriate license plate.

4.  I will say, Indiana, you can throw a mean graduation celebration, making all the other craziness well worth it.

Reo was so excited to graduate he turned into some sort of cross between The Flash and a vampire in the Twilight movies while getting his diploma...Hopefully the professional photographer fared a little better than I did.

5. Despite the fact that I can count on no hands the amount of time longer than 4 hours that Holden and I have spent apart in about 2 years, he didn't miss me at all (most likely because he had an entire household of aunts, uncles and grandparents catering to his every whim).  This enabled me to not feel one bit of guilt at leaving him behind and soaking up all the Reo-time I could (we even saw a movie, the first we saw in the theatre together since Wall-E.  That's 2008, people.)  I forgot how easy it is to kill a whole day when you aren't running on a two year old's schedule.

Oh, and before you get too excited for me, the graduation celebration was a bit premature for the Manning household, as Reo still has an entire quarter of school left.  But the end is in sight and soon I will get to remember what Reo looks like in the daylight!