Trip to Muncie, Indiana

My mom had a family reunion in Muncie, Indiana and wanted someone to go with her, so she offered to pay for my plane ticket if I would come. Three days alone, doing whatever I wanted and only taking care of myself? Yes please!! I did a lot of sleeping, eating, and reading. It was heavenly. We also checked out this awesome botanical gardens/education center founded by the Ball family (the makers of the mason jars with the Ball name on the outside). It is a combination historical site with their family homes, educational garden, orchard, and decorative garden. We had so much fun exploring everything!

Diorama of all the historic homes and a history of who lived in them. Now they rent them out for events.

There was a lot of canning memorabilia since they are the makers of the canning instruction book and the canning jars. It made me want to learn how to can!

Gorgeous roses in the rose garden:

This spider decoration tricked me from far away! I wasn't sure if tarantulas were a thing in Indiana. Thankfully they aren't!

They had a little free library full of only children's books. I was in heaven! I ended up with two of them.

This was my favorite one ::)

We discovered a cherry tree! We picked a few and tried them, they were pretty sour. 

There was a really cool children's garden with tunnels made out of large pots and all kinds of digging equipment. They even had a child size potting shed full of child size gardening tools! It is kind of a bummer finding these things when you don't have the kids with you.

A garden tortoise:

My mom testing out the construction equipment:

You can also feed the Koi.

I found a painted rock! It is amazing how this has become a thing all over the country!

My favorite part was their little instructional garden. It was full of all kinds of varieties of plants and was so interesting! Their sign said that they made it to show just how much food you can grow in a small space. This tall vining plant is actually a kind of spinach! It said that it is heat loving (which is great for florida) and the fact that it will vine up means that the bugs won't get it on the ground, which is a big problem for us in growing lettuce type plants.

Asparagus! I have read about what asparagus looks like growing but I have never seen it before:

Watermelon. We have never been able to get watermelon to grow, so I am always amazed to see it:

Yellow squash:

An apple tree full of apples! I realized that I had never seen an apple tree in person before.

So I had to pick one and try it. It was delicious! When I told James about it later that night, he insisted I go back and pick him one and bring it home.

The next day we went back for their farmer's market and I had to buy some of these hot peppers for Anthony. One of them is currently the hottest pepper in the world, twice as hot as a ghost pepper! Anthony cut them up and dried out the seeds so that we can grow some more. He tried a tiny bit of it and said that it definitely was hot.

We also found this cool variety of tomatoes called pineapple tomatoes that, according to the farmer, are less acidic than most tomatoes and has less seeds. Look at how huge they are!

We had to stop by the garden again and get some more pictures for Anthony.

The park the family reunion was at had his beautiful creek running through it and people would kayak by. I really loved how beautiful the weather was, so cool and not humid at all.

While I was gone, Anthony's parents came and helped watch Rett and pick up James from school. At first they were just going to come on the days Anthony was working, but then they ended up staying the entire time I was gone. So Anthony never really got the "I have both kids by myself" experience, but they had a good time :) They went shopping at Sam's since Anthony's parents have a membership. Anthony sent me this picture of them having fun in the store:

Since this was the longest I have been away from the kids ever (5 days total including travel days), I needed Anthony to send me proof of life pictures to show me that the kids were being fed and cared for :)

Saturday Anthony was texting me in the morning (while I was still lounging in bed!) and I tried to give him ideas of what to do with the kids all day. They finally settled on taking them to the marine center to pet the sting rays and see the sea turtles.

Our hotel in Muncie was right next door to a Rural King. I had heard about this store before, but didn't know quite what it was. It turns out it is a mix between Walmart and Tractor Supply, so there was a lot of fun stuff to look at. They had a lot of baby chicks in the back of the store and I had to take a picture of these. They are partially pink! I have no idea why, when I looked it up I couldn't find an examples of that type of chicken having pink feathers. Maybe it is from a medication? Strange!

A pizza restaurant we went to had a fun way to order, each table had a red phone and you would pick it up and it would ring to the cashier to tell them what you wanted. I was so glad I didn't have to be the person to order through the phone. That is pretty much my nightmare, to have to sit there and talk in the phone and give someone everyone else's order while they stare at me.

The second day of the family reunion, they have a fun tradition where everyone brings a wrapped bag of something (like at a white elephant) and they auction off the bag. Then they collect the money everyone pays for the bags and use it to fund next year's reunion.

This is my mom's cousin (I'm not sure what that makes him to me) but he was the auctioneer, trying to get everyone to pay top dollar for everything :)

It was a fun vacation, but it was nice to get home. Anthony hugged me the hardest I think he ever has and kept saying, "Never leave again!!!"