Hometown Date: Christmas at the Seiberling!

One thing I've really enjoyed about our move to Kokomo has been the chance to go on fun hometown dates to places I'd never been before. We did several during the summer, but we had a chance to do a couple more last week, and I wanted to show you one today!

There is a mansion here in town called the Seiberling, which you can read about here if you're a big history buff. It was built back in the 1800's as a private residence, and has been owned by a handful of {equally wealthy} people over the years {And, I learned, for a short while, it served as the campus of IU Kokomo. Can you imagine? A whole college in one house?} It's now a museum that houses historical things about Kokomo.

I confess that being the non-history-loving girl, I would be unlikely to visit a museum, but at Christmas they deck the halls, the windows, the stairways, and everything else, so it suddenly held massive appeal for me.

You do have to pay to go on the Christmas tour, but they had a few nights when businesses covered the cost and it was free to the public, so we went on one of those nights. THANK YOU, First Farmer's Bank and Trust, for giving us a date night! :)

{I had wanted to go, but since Ryan was feeling so lousy, I didn't think we'd be able to. At the last minute, he said he was up for it, and some of my friends happened to be going that same night, so it turned into this big group outing!}

LOOK AT THIS HOUSE!!!

Yes. It has three floors. Isn't it so pretty!?!?!!?

I call this piece "Shaffer Selfie in the Foyer."

We don't rock mirror selfies.

Anyway. Here are some of the sights of the house. {There was also live music on two of the floors, and a voting contest to vote for your favorite room.}

This is what happens when the Shaffers visit a fancy establishment but cannot manage to take the Shaffer out of the visit:

And yes. That is a chamber pot. {The ladies working that room got a big giggle out of this moment.}

Back to the loveliness:

Look at that VILLAGE and the TRAIN! And if you look just ahead of the train, you'll see a police car that has pulled over a Krispy Kreme truck. LOL!!

Group selfie on the third floor!

Porch picture:

And at the house next door {which is also part of the museum complex}, they had snacks and SANTA!!!!!

It turned out to be a really fun night, and I was so thankful Ryan powered through the miseries of his cold to give me a beautiful memory! :)

 Linking up with Tamar!

Hometown Date: It's Fair Week!!

It's one of our favorite weeks of the year...fair week! Howard County has a great 4H Fair...one of the best around, I've heard from many people who attend multiple county fairs each year.

I was looking back at some of my posts from our other years at the fair, and we've had some fun memories and made good traditions, I see! The first year we went together, Ryan got me on the Ferris Wheel, which was a feat in and of itself, since I'm not a lover of rides. The second year was apparently all about the food...and last year, Ryan got roped into riding a crazy swirly ride with our friend Shawn's kids!

This year, the night we went called for rain, and it actually never came, but we were trying to hurry all night, just to make sure we had everything done in case it DID rain.

Ahhhh... a beautiful sight to behold coming into town!

Ryan's favorite thing every year is the LEMON SHAKE-UP!! We had his refill cup in tow so he could visit that place first!

{That's ice cream in my hand, and if you ask Ryan, he'll tell you he only got ONE BITE, but I assure you that is so not true. He got WAY more than one bite.}

My friend Amber walked around with us, and I did get my picture with her, but I am pretty sure she'd just prefer that I keep that off the blog, so I will, but I have to tell you how much that picture cracks me up because it was taken right after I got the ice cream, and I don't think I've smiled that big since our wedding day. LOL! I was a little TOO excited about that treat!

We ran into one of Ryan's co-workers when we visited the {fried} veggie place, and she let us sit with her!

We wandered through the livestock barn, because our niece was showing a hog this year and I wanted to see it, and on the way, I found this cow sacked out in a bowl of food. HA! This is my kind of nap!

When we finally found the hog, we also found our niece! She was excited to crawl right in and show us the ropes! I was excited to stay OUTSIDE the gate.

{Fun fact: Ryan showed hogs his whole growing-up life. I am sorry I never got anywhere near the barn back then! I tried to find a picture of him from those days, but was unsuccessful. He's probably happy for that!}

Anyway, by the time we made our way through the hog barn, we decided to call it a night and head home. Except...we got sidetracked. Imagine that!

When we were growing up {in Greentown, where the fair is held}, we loved going to the Comet Cone, and for those of you not from around here, that was a little local burger and ice cream place. It closed several years ago, and I always wanted someone to buy the building and resurrect the Comet Cone. Well, someone bought it and while they didn't bring it back as it used to be, they did remodel it and rename it! It's now called the Hydration Station, and we decided to stop by for coffee before leaving town!

Delicious! We just got fresh brew, but I had some caramel added to mine and it was pretty heavenly. And because we hadn't enjoyed enough treats, Ryan may have had a muffin with his coffee!

 I hope they do really well, because I would love to see a fresh start for a place with such great memories!

We took Amber home, and that was the end of our evening at the fair! The next day, while Ryan was at work, I went back to watch the actual hog showing adventure. That was completely new to me, because I wasn't a 4-H girl growing up.

Poor girl, she was SO EXCITED to do this, and then something got rearranged in the schedule and we all had to wait about four hours for her turn. I don't know if you've ever hung out in a hog barn for four hours {with kids} waiting for your turn, but it's quite an experience.

You do sweaty selfies:

You visit other pigs {this one was my favorite}:

You practice for when you get big and it's your turn:

You sack out in the back of the stroller with your cowboy boots on the wrong feet:

You do your prep work:

And FINALLY, you hear your turn called!

So I came home smelling like pig - not the bacon kind - and very sweaty, but I was glad I went and got to see a whole new side of the fair!!

Hometown Date: Kokomo Beach and Ribfest

Before I tell you about our hometown date, I will tell you that we were pretty slap happy on this week's podcast. Stay to the end...right in the middle of being spiritually deep, Ryan found a phrase he cannot pronounce, even after a dozen tries. And I left them alllllllllllllll in there for you. :) You're welcome.

 Click here to listen.

And now...on to our hometown date.

Two Saturdays ago, Ryan had the whole day off work and we didn't have any commitments to be anywhere. That never happens. So he declared it a day of fun, and I happily accepted.

It was about 95 degrees that day, so we decided to check out Kokomo Beach, which, for the record, has no beach. {Ryan said it used to be called the Sea Shore and it doesn't have one of those either!}

Kokomo Beach has a pool, a lazy river, a splash pad, some slides, and probably other things I never even found, and I will say for a city of this size, it is a very nice offering for the community, and on a 95 degree Saturday, the community responded well. We arrived shortly after it opened at 11 and waited quite a while even to enter. They were great to have some employees outside helping newbies like us know the drill of what to expect and some of the rules we'd need to obey.

{A sign that cracked us up because we are overgrown tweenagers.}

Ahhhh the maximum bather load.

By the time we got inside, all the chairs had been claimed, but we did manage to get a locker, which was really helpful for my peace of mind {didn't have to leave our phones and FitBits out in plain sight when we went into the water} and actually, we enjoyed our little perch on the grass under a tree!

{The view from our perch.}

 It was pretty calm {comparatively speaking} in the morning, but by the afternoon, it was packed with lines everywhere. There were lines to even get INTO lines or to get tubes for the slides and lazy river.

But in the morning? No lines. So Ryan took advantage and did a couple of trips down the slides. I stood with the moms and took pictures because slides are just beyond me. {Yes, I really am that boring at a water park!}

We did the lazy river too, where I sustained a skinned knee upon my exit. I am nothing if not graceful. {Eyeroll.}

And then we just rested and watched people for a bit!

They do have a food court there at the beach, but we figured it didn't have a clean eating section, so we got our hands stamped and went to Subway. {You can come and go for one price throughout the day, so they just stamp your hand when you leave, and you show your hand when you return!}

By the time we got back, the parking lots were full, so we parked forever away, walked through a park, where we paused to eat our food, and then walked the rest of the way back to the beach.

 We did hit the pool for a bit in the afternoon, but it was pretty well packed with families, so we didn't stay in long before we returned to people watching {me} and napping {Ryan}.

By mid-afternoon, we were ready to go, so we came home and took a nap, and then we went back out that night for the second hometown fun of the day: Ribfest! Ribs are pretty much Ryan's food love language, so an entire festival of them appealed to him! I always like to check out a festival, so I was up for it! Local restaurants set up tents and cooked ribs in huge smokers at the edge of the park, and there were all the other sorts of food vendors you might expect to find, too: elephant ears, kettle corn, lemon shake-ups...all of it.

They had some bouncy houses for kids, bands for the adults, and it was a good little evening of fun! {And it's a good thing we did the clean eating at lunch, because I think we majorly fell off that wagon at Ribfest!}

 We got chicken kabobs {after all that with the rib loving!!} and they were good!

They had standing tables around the park, so Ryan dragged one over beside some weeds so we could eat with a measure of privacy. And then he left to find corn on the cob. Came back with this:

{Yeah that's an elephant ear.}

Eventually he settled on more meat and a sweet tea, and I got a strawberry smoothie.

And that was our night! People watching from park benches, enjoying some treats, and having a great time in our very own hometown!