What I Learned in July...

I've learned many things over the past month. I'm not sure any of it could get me through a round of Jeopardy, but I did learn. And among the things that found their way into my noggin, I present:

1. Not all star cookie cutters are created equal.

Back at the first of the month, I made star shaped sugar cookies and frosted them in red, white, and blue, and then arranged them on a sheet in the shape of a flag...for Ryan's work carry-in. I used my mom's old star cookie cutter that I inherited somewhere along the way, and I learned that the skinny little star spindles are next to impossible to smoothly scrape off the counter. I promptly hopped online to find a star cookie cutter with fat little arms for future use.

2. I don't know what the parts of a star are called.

Those pointy things that stick out from a star. What are they? Arms? Spindles? Points? Limbs? Rays? Branches? Do they even have a name? My internet research indicated that aside from talking about a starfish, there doesn't actually appear to be a universally recognized term.

3. Dry erase tape is a thing.

Did you know this? I saw it on Pinterest! Rolls of tape that you can write on like a dry erase board. STOP. EVERYTHING. I love it.

4. Red Robin got its name...

...because the owner of the original restaurant liked to sing "when the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along." Apparently the original restaurant started as a tavern named after the owner (Sam) but he added the Red Robin part because of the song. When they began franchising it, they dropped his name and just called it Red Robin.

5. The curly girl method of hair care...ever heard of it?

I follow an Instagrammer who started talking about trying the curly girl method on her hair. I had never heard of it, so I did some research and learned it isn't new, but it's still new to me. It's for people who have some curl or wave to their hair and is a process of changing how you wash and condition to bring out the curl and make your hair healthier overall. I don't have curl, but I do have a decent wave to my hair. I've considered toying with it just to see. The Instagrammer (who, granted, has curlier hair than I do) had some pretty impressive results.

6. There are some really beautiful spots right here in our own county.

Ryan and I drove down some back roads of our very own county this month, on our way to our friend Brent's concert. We had NO idea some of those really beautiful spots even existed right here in our own county. Who knew? Also. WHY DIDN'T I TAKE A PICTURE OF ANY OF THEM?

7. There is such a thing as a sweat index.

Like a heat index? But a sweat index. Ryan read about it during the crazy heat wave a few days ago. I told him I'm not sure what all the specifications are for it, but my personal sweat index is always at 100%.

8. Genuflect is not a person.

Ryan's boss was talking to us about The Lion King and said something about the word genuflect being in that movie. I don't know the movie very well (I've seen it several times, but it's been a while and isn't my favorite movie) so I had no idea what he was talking about. He brought it up again the next time we talked, and all of the sudden, I remembered that word being in one of the songs in Aladdin. "Genuflect, show some respect, down one knee." My entire life, I thought Genuflect was a person in the movie, and the genie was yelling at him to show some respect. And this month, I learned that the word genuflect means to get down on one knee to show respect. You know. Like the line right after it in the movie flat out says.

9. You can buy disposable bags to pee in.

I thought about shouting out to the person who taught me this, but I'm not sure she wants public recognition. She posted about it on Instagram...how she sent her husband to the store to buy barf bags for their upcoming family vacation. Mountains + kids = potential sickness. He and the store employee couldn't find any, but they did find some disposable bags for men to pee in when out and about, so he came home with those. I hunted online (and already dread how this is going to affect my based-on-recent-search suggestions) and discovered you can get sort of a one size fits all version. I'm not gonna lie: these would be so handy when we're out and about and there are NO options for a bathrooms. And for me, NO options include port-a-potties. I can't handle them.

10. I might be a tropical storm this season.

My mother says it's typecasting. No comment. Not being a lover of storms, I am not sure I want this to come to pass, BUT, Ryan did get to be a winter storm earlier this year, so it feels kind of fitting that I should get to be a storm if HE got to be a storm.

Singing New Songs

It's podcast Tuesday, and we have a new Ryan-word for you this week! Take a listen!

Listen here

A couple of days ago, in the comments, Tracy was kind enough to say something about how much I get done every day. Believe me, this summer has not felt like my most productive season. I've been busy, but it's felt a bit more like hamster-wheel busy, just trying to stay afloat and meet as many deadlines as possible. I cringed at some things that fell through the cracks and felt guilty about things I should have made more of an effort to accomplish but just...didn't. 

Even though the return of the school year doesn't affect me personally anymore (since I'm not driving kids to school or volunteering in a school office), it seemed like a most splendid time to restart my outlook on my days and try to be more productive.

Please don't confuse productive with busy. I don't need more busy work. I just need a handle on my days and a chance to feel accomplished at the end of the day.

I decided to go about it by using a different day planner layout for my weekly lists. Ironically, I'm using the pages of a teacher's lesson-plan book. I'm categorizing my days into the lines intended for subjects, and writing in each square the things I need to accomplish in that category. My hope is that viewing the specific areas of my life will help me balance my days a bit better, so I'm not spending all my time doting on one area at the expense of the rest. 

Everything about yesterday felt new. I started a new online Bible class, taught by a new-to-me person, and I stored my class notes in a new folder on my computer. I tried out two new recipes and found a new shirt at the Goodwill for half off. (And bonus: the shirt actually looked brand new.) I made new sugar scrub for the shower and edited a new podcast.

I even tried a new little something in my day. I'd read an article (which I may post in the Saturday Six, because it really made me think) about returning to the simplicity of making time in each day to sit on the porch. So I sat on the porch for about twenty minutes before Ryan came home from lunch and used the time to (are you ready for this?) READ.

As I scrolled through Instagram yesterday, my friend Sarah Forgrave had posted Psalm 98:1, which says, "Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him." 

Yesterday felt like a new song. A new song of a new start. I sat down at the end of the day, fully satisfied in all I had accomplished. The day had been busy, yes, but it hadn't felt like a hamster wheel of busy work. It felt like a good day's work balanced with a good day's rest. 

This part of the year can make us feel a bit stuck, I think. Unless you are on the brink of a new school year, this isn't a season of new. It's a season of same and possibly mundane.

But if you purpose in your mind to have a fresh outlook, and if you sing to the Lord a new song, I think you'll find that He is indeed doing marvelous things in and around you. New things, even. Things worthy of praise. 

Sing a new song with me? 

Our Fun (and Free!!) Date Night

To talk about "Kokomo Beach" to people who aren't from here feels very misleading to me. After all, it is missing some key components of a beach - like sand and a large body of water. But it is a nice pool/water slide/splash pad fun place for people to spend time on hot, sunny days like we've been having in abundance lately! 

Ryan and I don't go often, because we don't have kids, and it really tends to make more sense for people who do. But this past weekend, we got a chance to go free, so of course, we went!

Kokomo Beach is open to the public during the day, but sometimes in the evenings, businesses will rent it and make it available to their people, free of charge. So last Saturday, the hospital rented it and employees could come and bring their families. He's an employee and I'm family!!

The day had been crazy hot, and the evening was very pleasant, but when you left the water, it was a little on the chilly side! 

Ryan wanted to start out with the slides, and he didn't even have to wait in line! Straight up the stairs and down the slides. I stood with all the moms to get pictures. Ha!)

We headed over to the lazy river, which is pretty much my only speed at places like this. I'm such a killjoy. Ryan did take a few spins in the river with me, but he also got out and got the phone so we could have some proof I was there.

He got in the pool to hang out with some of his co-workers, and I sat and talked to one of our friends that happened to walk by. (She was on mom-duty and not swimming that night.)

He wanted to do the slides one more time, so of course, I had to get some video! (That ladder is so tall!) 

We stayed for a couple of hours and had so much fun! 

The Shafferland Shuffle

What a great and fun week! We accomplished a lot, but we also had fun and got to spend time with friends, so it's a win!

* Last Sunday morning, I spoke in a Sunday School class at one of my friends' churches. We weren't able to get any speaking pictures, because we all sat in a circle and it would have been a little awkward to have Ryan snapping pictures of me sitting next to him. HA! But we did get a picture outside the church after it was over! We really enjoyed our time there, and then our friends took us out to lunch, and we had a great time talking with them for a couple of hours. We had a storm roll through that afternoon, but it cleared up by evening, and we took a walk. My hair was straight when we left home! Hello, humidity!

* Ryan got to see his grandpa for a little bit on Monday, and he got this great picture of the two of them together. I think it's pretty exceptional! I tried out a new Dashing Dish recipe - a blueberry crisp/cobbler thing. It was so good! Braeya just got water. :)

* I spent some time writing on Tuesday and it was one of those writing sessions that was great, but when I was done, I had to take a nap, because it took absolutely everything out of me. That night we met up with one of my WBCL friends and her husband and had dinner together. We ended up talking for two and a half hours and had NO idea that much time had gone by. We hadn't seen them in several months, so it was a good catch-up meal!

* Phoebe came to stay with us for a few days this week, and she arrived on Wednesday. We hung out at home, went to see Ryan at work, went on walks, and did some quality control while Ryan worked on painting the spindles on the deck. I'm telling you those things must surely multiply during painting. It doesn't look very big until you pick up a paintbrush.

* I was on the run from morning until night on Thursday! I had a morning meeting, an afternoon meeting, and that night, I went back to Cross America to host another service project for our church women. I missed Ryan while I was gone, but we had a great time working on mailings at Cross America. (And Ryan and Phoebe had fun at home without me.)

* Phoebe's (human) brother got married on Friday, so we did a little photo shoot gift for him. :) She ran errands with me and went on some walks, and Ryan and I had a nice little low-key date night on Friday night.

* Yesterday morning I finished up the first level of some online classes I've been taking, and I organized all my notes in a binder. It made me SO HAPPY. It was Phoebe's last day with us, and she was all snuggly, which I didn't hate at all. And Ryan's work rented out Kokomo Beach last night, so we went over there for a fun (and free) night of swimming!

The Saturday Six

One.

Earlier this year, when I was looking for some DIY recipes for non-toxic cleaners, I happened upon this website and subscribed to their emails. They have some really helpful ideas on everything from health and beauty DIY products to cleaners to even diffuser blends. If you haven't poked through the ideas here before (and you like oils and non-toxic stuff), check it out! You might find something useful!

Two.

One of the things in our house that people comment on the most (besides our stone wall) is our burlap curtains in the kitchen. I actually bought them when we lived in Marion, and we did the overhaul to our kitchen over there. You should know that when I say "curtains," I mean I actually just bought a wide roll of burlap (half price) at Hobby Lobby and strung/wrapped it around the curtain rod and let it hang at each end. Even though our kitchen windows in this house are an entirely different size, the length of the pieces worked once again, so I brought them over and kept using them. For whatever reason, people really seem to love them. If you aren't sure about burlap or how to use it, here's a pretty helpful post to give you some suggestions!

Three.

You Ohio people have been holding out on me! You have butter sculptures at the state fair?? I had no idea! This is pretty fascinating!

Four.

This post says it's for kids, but it can just as easily be for adults. Remember when April the giraffe was having her baby and everyone kept her webcam feed minimized so they could keep an eye on her? Well, if you just find peeking in on animal life relaxing, here's a whole list of ideas. Some are from zoos and some are from out in the wild. The bear one was my favorite. When I visited, there were half a dozen of them in the water, and one was fishing! The only one that doesn't appear to be active anymore is the panda one. Jellyfish? So relaxing. :)

Five.

Typically I don't link to recipes unless I've tried them, because I surely don't want to steer you wrong. But today I'm making an exception to my own rule because I can't imagine how this could be wrong. A Snickers-variety Rice Krispie treat!?!?!!?!!? SIGN ME UP!!!

Six.

We have new neighbors living right next door to us, and we had the chance to meet them for the first time this week. This weekend, I'm making up an official housewarming gift to take over, but I have to show you this idea I found on Pinterest, which now I know I can use for them. Well. In all fairness, I'm making my own spinoff of this idea, so I can customize it a little more. But hopefully it gives you a good idea for any new neighbors of your own!

Christmas in July

Don't be mad at me! I know...it's summer. Not Christmas. But I've been knee deep in Hallmark Christmas movies all month and gleefully loving every minute of them! (In full disclosure, I haven't kicked back to fully watch one, but I've had many rolling in the background while I work.)

But even though it's July, Christmas is coming, and it's good to plan ahead. I have a few ideas for you today.

FIRST: 

Source

Unless she ends the sale before you have a chance to read this post, Lindsay Sherbondy over at Lindsay Letters is running a 20% off sale for all her Christmas art. (She hasn't announced an ending date for the sale.)

I love her art. I first learned about her back when Shaunna Niequist published her book Bread and Wine. Lindsay did the lettering for the cover of that book, and I ended up interviewing her on Mid-Morning about her art. For a while, she had a brick and mortar store in this really cute little town in Wisconsin, and Ryan and I stopped there on our way to one of my speaking engagements a few years ago. I had the chance to meet Lindsay in person and get some of her art for our home.

I particularly love this nativity sketch, and she also has a handful of pieces that include lyrics to beloved Christmas songs. (For most pieces, you can choose if you want an art print or canvas, add framing if you want, and select different sizes, so the prices very widely.)

SECONDLY:

Ever Thine Home is running a sale on one of their ornament sets: His Advent Names. I believe this runs through the 28th. While this particular set is not one that I own (yet), I do own five sets of their ornaments, and I love them all so much. They are made of quality materials, are a generous size, and work together to make a beautiful, God-centered Christmas tree theme.

This set of four ornaments is normally $35, but with this sale, they're $24. (Totally worth it in my opinion.) We have lots of trees here in our house, once Christmas rolls around, and my tree filled with ornaments from Ever Thine Home is one of my favorite additions to the lineup. I will always, always recommend their products!

(The photo above is our tree with their ornaments.)

FINALLY:

I told you after Christmas was over last year (and it was no longer a spoiler) about the gifts we gave our family members, in an attempt to give them experiences rather than stuff.

Yesterday, my parents finally went on their Christmas excursion. I was SO PROUD OF MY MOM for documenting it well from start to finish. Seriously. My work here is done. I've taught her everything I know. She took pictures of the places they went, the food they ate, and they even made it INTO some of the pictures.

It was as much fun for me to read about their fun day out as it was for me to plan it last year before Christmas!

So if you're looking for a gift idea for someone (or all the someones) on your list this year, I highly recommend the adventure-planning idea. It's a keeper!

Celebrating the Wins

Today may not be an anniversary or even a monthiversary, but I haven't written about marriage for a while, so I wanted to pause today to do just that.

We are coming up on seven years of marriage in just a few months, and that feels crazy to both of us. How have seven years flown so quickly? (I guarantee you seven years of singleness didn't move like this.)

Something else that seems crazy? Marriage is still so much fun. Such a gift. Back in my single days, married women used to tell me that once the honeymoon (whether literal or figurative) ended, marriage was just such a chore. So much work. Drudgery, even.

I declared it wouldn't be so for me, but inside I feared I might be wrong. I mean, after all, it hadn't been just one or two women who wared me of the fading joys of marriage. There were many who banded together to assure me the happiness would fade. Maybe they were right!

But as we approach this seventh anniversary marker, I am grateful for the wins we've enjoyed as a couple. I want to share them with you, not to boast in any way, and not to gloat over those who do face struggles in marriage. I share them in hopes that they will encourage you (whether or not you are married right now) that marriage really can be enjoyable. (Fun, even!)

1. We choose to spend time together. (A lot of it.)

We decided back in our dating days that we wanted to spend as much time together as we possibly could. Understandably, that got much easier once we were married, and it continues to this day. It's pretty rare for us to choose activities that keep us apart. (That has actually been one of the strangest parts of working with the women's ministry at our church...going to things that don't include Ryan.)

Do we receive strange looks? Sometimes. People don't always understand why I don't usually participate in girls' night out or why Ryan doesn't go hang out with the guys. We aren't opposed to the occasional time apart like that, but for the most part, we just want to do whatever we're going to do together. And almost seven years in, I feel like that's one of the reasons we continue to enjoy being together. It's what we know!

2. We make our own adventures. (Out of everything.)

You see the official adventures here. The county tours and weekend getaways and occasional vacations. Those are fun! But we've also come to realize that we make everything an adventure. I saw this spilling over in the pages of the scrapbook that just came in a few weeks ago. It was the book of our first three months of the year. Life wasn't easy in that quarter. Ryan's mom was in her final weeks of life, and we spent all our spare time visiting her and helping to care for her. Ryan's work hours were long in those same weeks, and our weather was a special Indiana winter treat. We don't care to go back and relive those weeks, but as I relived them on the pages of the scrapbook, I noticed that we had done everything we could to make the hard days adventuresome in our own rights.

We grabbed (and documented) quick coffee dates whenever we had a few extra minutes. We made the evenings at his mom's as exciting as we could - for ourselves and for her. Grocery shopping became an adventure, because it was a piece of normal life in the middle of chaos. I was so proud of us when I looked at those pages. We found adventure in the hardest season we've ever lived. While I don't wish piles of difficulty upon us, I do hope we never lose our desire to make an adventure out of the mundane.

3. We're growing toward the Lord. (And each other.)

Back in my single days, I learned the analogy that you've probably seen: the triangle of God/husband/wife. Picture a triangle, and write God at the top point, and then husband and wife on the two bottom points. If you take your two index fingers and draw upward from husband toward God and wife toward God, you'll see that as each one draws closer to the Lord, they simultaneously draw closer to each other.

It has been one of the greatest joys of my heart this year to see Ryan maturing in his faith. It's not that he wasn't before. But the months of his mom's illness, death, and his subsequent grief have matured him in much faster ways than I had seen before. And I'm not sure if the cause is the same for me, but I have noticed a bigger hunger in my own heart this year. And it is most definitely true that as each of us pursue that deeper relationship with God, we are growing closer to each other, too. We have great conversations about the things we're learning in our personal study, and we're able to encourage each other even more than we did in the past.

4. We show up to support. (Even when it takes us outside our comfort zones.)

Even though we do so much together, we still are two very different people with two very different personalities. Ryan is still the naturally outgoing one who loves his workouts and hands-on service. I'm still the reading and writing nerd who loves encouraging people and staying heavily encased in a personal safety zone.

But we do our very best to support the other in our passions and dreams. When Ryan wanted to do the evangelism outreach with our church at the county fair, the very idea made me sweat. But I signed up with him, went along, and bumbled my way through alongside him. When I declared I wanted to write the Bible study for our small group this fall, Ryan showed up to read the sessions as I wrote them and to enthusiastically tell people of my goal. I helped him paint the deck and he didn't grumble when I told him we were going to spend an afternoon at a classic car museum. (And we both had fun with both those things!)

All our together-time doesn't mean we deny each other the things we love the most. It just means we learn to love each other's worlds.

5. We dream. (All the time.)

Life calls for hope, doesn't it? When we don't have hope and dreams, we don't have much to propel us forward. And so we purpose to dream together...often.

We dream about careers we'd love to pursue together. We dream about living in an RV full time. We dream about places we'd love to visit. We dream about projects we want to do here at our house. We dream about ministries we'd like to be part of someday.

We dream while we take walks. We dream in the car. We dream when we can't fall asleep at night, which is like once a year for Ryan. We dream when we're excited and we dream when we're stressed and need to remember that life exists beyond that day's stress.

Dreaming matters. And dreaming together is twice as much fun.


And there you have some of the things I consider to be our best wins in these first almost seven years of marriage. We haven't done everything right or perfectly, but I think we've made a fine start to this beautiful life together!

Pet Phrases

You know there's a holiday for everything, right? Like the crazy, obscure holidays that cause you to wonder why a holiday was even thought up in the first place?

Well, when you work in radio, those holidays come in awfully handy, because they give you conversational fodder. (This I know, because National Frappe Day fell on the day Ryan proposed to me, and I delayed my own proposal by too many minutes by talking frappes with Lynne.)

Apparently yesterday was National...excuse me, International Yadda, Yadda, Yadda Day, which prompted my former work buddies on the morning show to talk about favorite and least favorite phrases. I read through the whole thread on Facebook, because I wanted to see what people loved and hated! In truth, I wanted to see if anyone hated what I hated or how many hated things I say! (You should also know I'm second guessing every word I type in this post, for fear it's one of your least favorite phrases.)

So here were some of their least favorites that I agree with wholeheartedly.

* It's painful when someone uses the word literally for emphasis. The funny part (for me) about this comment was that I'm friends with the person who said that, and she thanked me the other day for using the word literally correctly in one of my own Facebook posts. I try hard not to throw around literally when I don't mean it. "I was literally dying." Really? Because you seem pretty alive right now!

* It is what it is. (Several people mentioned this one.) That may be my all-time least favorite phrase, and my mom LOVES IT!!!! So did Ryan's mom.

* When a person keeps saying you know throughout a conversation. It's not the actual phrase you know that bothers me, but it does bother me when someone keeps repeating a word or phrase and I start to notice it. Because as soon as I notice it, I lose the whole content of the conversation, waiting for the next time they say the phrase. It's like when you notice the faucet is dripping and then that's all you can hear.

* Thanks in advance really irks me. Depending on the usage, I agree. If someone asks me to do something, and I agree to do it, and then they say thanks in advance, it doesn't bug me. I feel pre-thanked and am pretty sure if they're conscientious enough to do that, they'll probably post-thank me after I do it, and I'll feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But if a person says to me, Thanks in advance for picking this up for me, I feel a sense of obligation to do what they've asked, because clearly they already expect it. And then I just resent the whole thing.

* I know how you feel. I used to say this one, but as I've gotten older, I have tried to stop using it. Even if I have walked the same road as the person I'm talking to, I probably don't really know exactly how they feel, because no two people feel the same thing - even about the same thing. I try to use my own experiences to relate to how other people may be feeling, but I try to make a specific point of saying "I may not know exactly how you feel, but..." Example: I was talking to a friend the other day who is experiencing anxiety in her pregnancy. She waited a long time to have a baby, and she worries something will go wrong. Obviously I've never been pregnant or had a child, so I don't know how she feels. Not exactly. But I remember my days of dating Ryan and all the anxiety I felt in fearing God would lead him to end our relationship like my previous relationship had ended. I know what it's like to long for something and fear you'll lose it. So I do know a measure of how she feels in the realm of that kind of anxiety. But do I know exactly how she feels? Nope. And even if I had been pregnant at some point and struggled with anxiety over that baby, I still wouldn't feel every emotion she's feeling in the way she feels it.

* We're going to unpack this Scripture passage. I don't have strong feelings toward that specific phrase, but it does remind me of one I have come to bristle at when I hear it: He makes the Bible come alive. Scripture flat out says that Word of God is living and active, so none of us can make it come alive. I used to say the whole phrase about someone making the Bible come alive until I heard someone point out that no human can do that, since it's already living and active, so I stopped using that one.

Now...for the ones I say that made the list:

* Have a good one. The person who didn't like it said "A good what?" I guess when I say it, I'm leaving it open for the hearer to have a good whatever he or she chooses! Limitless possibilities.

* Awesome Sauce. I don't actually say it, but it is Ryan's nickname for me. (Hope the person who hates it isn't reading today! If so...I'm sorry!)

* No problem...in place of you're welcome. I know it's not the right phrase, but I confess I say it sometimes.

* Right?!?!  Gulp. I do use that one quite often.


So how about you? Least (or most!) favorite phrases?

Cars!!!

It's podcast Tuesday, and we have storytelling versions of our weekend and milestones...take a listen!

 Listen here

Ryan and I aren't really car people. I mean don't get me wrong: we love cars. We love owning one and using it to get around - and we especially love the air conditioning in it on days like this one. But we aren't car enthusiasts. We don't go to car shows or know much about the history about old cars or any such thing.

So when I told Ryan that one of the big activities to do in DeKalb county was going to a car museum, he raised an eyebrow. I told him I knew it wasn't really our thing, but I thought it would be good for us to broaden our horizons and try.

Well, we spent two and a half hours inside that museum, so I think it's safe to say we found it to be fun, despite not being car people. (I only drive that point home to say to you that even if you aren't a car person, I really think you would find this a fun place to visit.

It was a big blessing to us on a day of trying to find inside activities to find a big old air conditioned museum to visit! If you do go, you should know that there is an admission fee...and it's $12.50 per adult. (We thought we definitely got our money's worth from it.)

So if you're not familiar with this museum, it's called the Auburn Cord Deusenberg Automobile Museum, and it pays tribute to the auto industry right in that very area. (The Auburn Auto Company was founded back in 1900.) They made all kinds of vehicles through the years before ceasing production in 1936. They eventually transformed the building into a museum to showcase old cars, and that brings you up to speed with what we visited! (A full timeline of the company can be found here.)

We took tons of pictures...you could be here all day looking at them! Aren't you glad I'm not going to make you do that? :)

I'll show you a handful of the pictures we took of the cars, but I'll also show you some of the fun we had.

We decided cars (much like houses) of yore were so character laden. Every single one had such unique features.

So THAT'S why they call them trunks...

Bars in cars...

Fascinating dials and knobs:

(Ryan thought it looked kind of like an airplane inside!)

Sometimes backseats need their own windshields:

Lovely reflections:

We each picked out our favorite:

Pretty nice of us to come dressed to match them, wasn't it?

All these cars were on the big, first floor showroom. We tried to get some pictures to show you how impressive that floor was!

Photo credit for the panoramic goes to Ryan. He did a great job!

We went on to other rooms to check out more fun things - and there were photo opps up there!!

And there were more cool cars!

We found a typing station with an authentic old-fashioned typewriter. I had to play.

Indy 500 cars of old and new varieties:

We even found the Haynes Apperson car display - which featured Kokomo cars!

Ryan sneaked into the official museum family photo:

And he took one more panoramic:

We had such a fun afternoon there. We learned some things, saw cool old cars, and enjoyed every minute. We highly recommend!