Louisville Weekend

I can count on one hand, maybe, the number of times that Ryan and I have taken a trip "just because", to site-see and have, fun that didn't involve trying to visit friends and family. (Not that we don't like visiting friends and family, but we have a lot of friends and family scattered around the country, so we feel like we're constantly travelling, but trying to arrange schedules for visits, etc.) It was nice to have a chance to just have fun and play things by ear. Our main goal for the weekend was simply to "get out of Dodge." We were contemplating Memphis or Nashville, but eventually decided on Louisville, which is just 3.5 hours away. I had never visited Louisville, so it was a fun excursion.



The first day we went to the MegaCavern. It's a 17 mile cavern underneath Louisville that you can tour by being taken around in tram being hauled by a Jeep. It seemed like a good idea, until we started the tour and I realized I had just assumed the cavern was one of those caverns with stalagmites and stalactites; no, this was a completely man-made cavern, which means once you had been in the hole in the ground, it pretty much all looked the same. The tour owners figured they had to do something to fill up an hour of your time so they stopped the ride about every five minutes for a good 10 minute discourse. After about an hour of this I had a very squirmy two year old and a baby who was getting a little sick of being strapped to her daddy's chest in a baby carrier, even if it was a nice warm spot next to him in a rather cold cave. That all being said, Lilly remembers being able to ride in a "white truck" (the aluminum trolley we rode in) and that was enough fun for her.

The next day we decided to explore downtown Louisville. Unfortunately, it was pretty warm and muggy so I wasn't thrilled about being outside for a long period of time. We discovered a really large festival going on downtown on the waterfront that was a kind of "festival of the nations" kind of thing, with goods being sold by vendors from around the world. It was neat, but it was very hot and uncomfortable and trying to corral Lilly while carrying around a baby who kept crying put me on edge so we moved on fairly quickly, but not without first getting a nice view of the river.

Afterwards, we walked over to the adjacent Muhammad Ali Center (which I assume is a kind of community rec center downtown) and Lilly had fun running up and down the amphitheater seats. We walked toward the historic main drag downtown where there are lots of museums. We stopped for lunch at a nice little café. By this time, we had a tired mamma (who had come down with a cold, thanks to the beginning of the school year and germs running rampant), and a tired 2 year old, and a baby who needed to eat, so we decided to hit up the museums next time. We headed home and tried to take naps, (some of us more successfully than others.) Afterwards we got to take a dip in the pool. (Everyone except Abby, that is. :) )

We ran across quite the pimp-mobile (stationed next to a giant gold "David" statue) while walking downtown.

 

The next day was Labor Day and Ryan had seen an ad on TV about a church having a kids carnival. We decided to hit it up on our way out of town. We had no idea that this church is apparently in the top 10 churches in the country in terms of size. It was absolutely ginormous. I mean, I lived in Dallas, where everything is bigger, including churches, and this church had THREE buildings that each would be considered the size of a mega church in any other city. That all being said, I was very impressed at how the church mobilized to put on this festival. My old church in Dallas (Irving Bible Church) did something similar each year in our parking lot, so I know how much work it takes. We had a lot of fun, but it was pretty hot in the sun. Lilly enjoyed jumping in some bounce houses, and then making giant bubbles with the "Bubble Truck".

I think the key of learning to "vacation" with two young kids is to just keep expectations really low as to what you're going to accomplish. And that vacation doesn't equal sleep when you have little kids!