22- Indianapolis Visit Time

A few weeks after that I got a much-relished chance to visit Indianapolis- it was a multi-faceted trip to visit family and friends. My friend Colleen drove down to see my cousin/her friend Michelle, and I hitched a ride. We got to stop in Carmel to visit my friends Dave (of recent Utah-ND football game mention) and Christen and their son Andrew.

I also got to hang out with my sister Jenny. We went climbing. Its her new obsession in the past year and she goes up to three times a week, so I thought I'd check it out and see how good she was. I'd been a couple other times elsewhere. (Incidentally, as I'm writing this, six months later, I just finished climbing with her again and my hands are pretty sore.)

So anyway, Jenny showed me how it was done. Here's her hanging from one of the overhangs and on her way to bailing out to the ground. (You can climb up to the 10-foot red tape line without a harness).

I got some good shots for Jenny to post on Facebook.

(I just climbed over this thing again today! But they changed the handholds). You can see Jenny has got a pretty good idea of what she's doing. I think she should get a chalk bag for her hands, but apparently she doesn't like the dry chalky feeling. I however don't like the sweaty-hands-slipping-off-the-handholds feeling either...

After she relinquished and bit the mat.

She was nice enough to get a shot of me in my lame attempt to scale a wall.

Yeah this 45 degree wall is basically impossible to go anywhere on.

The main event of the weekend was that Michelle had decided to take her kids to the Ringling Bros. Circus that was in town. Of course Colleen and I went too. I had actually never been to a circus. It was pretty amazing at some parts and the tickets weren't too expensive for being at Conseco Fieldhouse where the Indiana Pacers play. The kids enjoyed it (though I think I enjoyed some parts more than they did because they didn't realize how amazing it was ).

Beforehand we were able to get down to the court area because they had a kids interaction thing going on before the circus. There were a couple guys on stilts (picking up kids all the way up there- no way I'd EVER let my kid up there) and they had an elephant that was painting.

During the show we saw typical circus things like a lion tamer (technically tiger-tamer) in a circle of metal mesh, with a whole TON of tigers around him including a white one. They didn't do anything super amazing, but good lord, the guy was standing in a circle of tigers!

These guys were ridiculous amazing. I saw guys like this in the street in Morocco (who were equally as good, unbelievably). This was the most incredible acrobatics I've ever seen (though the same as I'd also seen at Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas). This is what it looks like- a guy holding his entire body up on one arm, on top of another guy's head. Unreal. Doesn't look possible. But they did it.

Here was a guy standing on a motorcycle that was driving up a tightrope.

Aidan wearing a circus hat someone else left behind.

The arena aftewards- some giant trampolines.

Conseco Fieldhouse also had a giant basketball.

DuPont Circle in downtown Indy had a nice Christmas tree...though it was basically streams of lights strung up to the top. I like downtown Indy, but its kinda small too.

The best part of the weekend really wasn hanging out with the kids though. The Sutton kids are some of the best in the world, and Olivia is positively adorable, when she's being good :) They were painting their nails- it was Emily and Olivia's birthday parties.

Livie enjoyed her princessy cake.

Her and her blonde hair and her blue eyes are just unbelievable.

She has a Cheshire Cat smile. Got it from her daddy.

Olivia also got a Dora the Explorer tent. Which she loved.

Cute kids. And a bald guy.

The next morning when groggy Livie was eating her cereal.

And later that day when we were playing piggyback rides around the house. (I took a similar picture just this afternoon, six months later, as I was in Indy again).

Aidan always hasta make sure he gets his turn too.

Being that it was Christmastime ish, there were plenty of Christmas lights to see. This was the "Colts House" near my cousin's place. We drove over to check it out. WOW. There was a short line of cars in the cul-de-sac outside their house. They even had a thing where you could donate money for a charity!

They also had one of those ponds that yuppie suburb neighborhoods had- and it made for some nice reflections.

The end. While I was down there in Indy I asked people about any possible jobs or girlfriends floating around. They were of no help. I did have a meeting with the President of the Indiana AIA (American Institute of Architects) who happened to be a good friend of my dad's. He didn't have any jobs either, but he was nice and a good connection and also took me to lunch :)