Dear 1964 Ford F100 from California with "no rust" that's for sale in Kokomo,

I think we're meant to be together.  You're surface rusted hood and roof are nothing compared to the rusted out basket case classic trucks roaming around here in Central Indiana.  If I can find a way to get my 1976 blue scrap heap ready to sell before you're gone, I just might drive up there and get you.  I'm trying to talk myself out of it, but I'm having trouble talking any sense into...me.  Maybe someone will come buy you and save me from spending a big chunk of my savings on something that depreciates, let alone a truck that could probably get it's own AARP card.

Cordially,

Marcus Dugan

pics

at Jamestown Nature Park, looking for dandelions

We like going outside and all, but Indy has the biggest Childrens Museum in the world. 

playing in the water at the Childrens Museum

Anna LOVES the water clock.

McCloud Park

playing in the rocks

still playing in the rocks. 

One of Anna's favorite past times.

Anna and Daddy picnic

wagon upgrade.  The little solid push mower tires it came with didn't do so well on trails.  The wagon needed to be more nature park-ready. 

ready to go off-road

playing in the sand at Ellis Park

So many parks, so many "adventures," not enough time to write about it all

Almost every day during the week, I take my little Anna Rose on an "Adventure."  Sometimes, we go to a park.  Sometimes, we combine it with a trip to my office or going out for lunch somewhere cheap.  Sometimes, especially in iffy weather, we go somewhere like Lowes (her favorite store - especially the garden section and the lighting section with the chandeliers and the disco ball) or Frazee Gardens (not to buy anything - they charge a 100% mark up over full retail on most things because they know their wealthy shallow clientele will unwittingly pay it).  And occasionally, I'll take her to the public library, another one of her favorite places (she gets so excited, she won't sit still for a book, but that's another post for another day).

But our favorite kind of adventure always includes a park.  

So far this Spring/Summer, Anna and I have been to McCloud Nature Park, Scamahorn Park (Pittsboro), Ellis Park (Danville Park), Williams/Blastoff Park (Brownsburg), Arbuckle Acres Park (Brownsburg), Pleasant Acres Nature Park (Jamestown), and Washington Township Park (Avon).  I thing I'm gonna start posting some ratings and descriptions of them all so we can remember which ones are the best...and if anyone ever reads this thing, they might benefit as well. 

In the spring and early summer, every time we headed out to a park or nature park, it was all about the dandelions.  Anna HAD to have a yellow flower and a green leaf every time we went outside.  In the pic, she was focused on going after all the dandelion seed things and saying "We're blowing BUB-bles!" each time she sent the seeds floating through the air.  It was awesome, adorable, and fun; though I'm sure I would forget someday if I didn't write it down, hence the blog : )

As the summer continues, it's been more about going on an adventure and exploring. In this picture, she was playing in the dirt at McCloud Nature Park, the Grand-Daddy of all local parks.  For all it lacks in playgrounds, it makes up for in explorability (not actually a word).  246 acres of wilderness with two creeks, most notably the main fork of Big Walnut Creek, a really cool bridge, and tons of wagon friendly trails.  It's a tough place for a stroller, but not impossible.  You just have to stay off the trails with looser gravel.  Anna calls this "The Big Nature Park" and always looks forward to seeing the nature center, a cat named Smokey who lives there (Anna always calls him a turkey: "You're a TURKEY! Hey, cat, you're a turkey!" just because), and of course the creek.  She always asks to "see the kitty cat?", then moves on to "go down the water?".  She calls some of the shorelines "the beach," which is really cute.  We've spent as much as four + hours there at a time (packed a lunch of course).  Sometimes, we just find a spot on a gravel trail where Anna can sit and play with the rocks.  Sometimes we go off the trails and explore the woods. 

Anna was actually chasing my phone around in circles in this picture.  I had the reverse lens setting on the iPhone on so she could see herself in the picture, which is the only way to get her to smile for a picture so far.

This was the day I got hurt carrying her down to the water.  We decided to go down to the water from the wrong side of the creek.  I got banged up pretty badly when I fell down on a steep hillside carrying her, but I actually had a little pride in my abrasions and bruises because I was able to protect my little girl from getting hurt at all. We found a cool spot on a rocky sandbar with almost no mosquitoes (There was so much rock, it was like being on a large concrete pad) and spent about an hour and half there throwing rocks and playing by the water.

Lots of these pictures are at McCloud, but it's not the only place we've been this summer.  I've got lots more to add.

Nature park again

Finally, for the first time in 2011, we're t McCloud Nature park. And for all the exploring we could possibly do through the hills and woods out here, all Anna really wants to do is play in the gravel that makes up most of the trails. She likes going off trail to check out the undergrowth in the woods, and she loves riding her stroller up and down the hills. But for her money, nothing beats a sand bucket and some loose gravel. We could've just gone to play in a gravel driveway somewhere. The scenery wouldn't have been as nice though. This place is beautiful. I only brought my phone, but I'll try to post some of the pics soon. Ooh 25% battery. Time to shut this thing down.

Test post

Just testing to make sure that my lovely Tammy can get new posts emailed now. 
Tammy, there are some ramblings down below this on the main page.

I love you,


Marcus

One Room Hoarder

So we started cleaning out the spare bedroom to get ready for little baby on the way due in November.  And, I think that, at least in that room, and the garage, I am a hoarder.
I have thrown away:

a stack of college notes and binders.  There were some 12+ year old things in there as I began finding things I had clearly written in high school.

no less than four WALKMANS (or Walkmen?), yes, walkmans (Tammy was guilty here too): three that played TAPES (that's right) and one that played CD's.  Of course most of us know that a Walkman cassette player was the most infuriating, inefficient, devourer of batteries money could buy.  So, I didn't mind letting go of the little machine that I used to take on family trips only to find that without a huge bag of batteries, ol' Tom Petty was going to start to sound pretty tired by the end of Side 2.  So goodbye, Walkmans.  We'll always have that one childhood family vacation where you made it through Billy Squire's Greatest Hits twice without dying. 

A couple of old toy trucks that I repaired as a child after they were crushed by a backhoe (apparently, piles of fill dirt were NOT a great place to build a whole town to the scale model of one's Nylint and Tonka trucks).  Back then, I thought it was pretty cool that I was able to unbend all that metal back then and basically make them look like a couple beat up old trucks.  However, from a father's perspective, they had now become a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

a box of friggin magazines; Now if that's not a hoarder thing to have, I don't know what is. 
a box of GI Joes which had already made their way out to the garage before Anna was born in which a family of mice had decided to have some kind of extended party (I hate mice, even in cartoons)

There is more cathartic junk removal to come in preparation for our second child.

I'm hoping to talk Tammy into getting rid of my rather sizable and her gigantic cassette tape libraries.  I have a ridiculous amount, but Tammy's collection easily doubles mine because she was reluctant to change over from tapes to CD's.  She may be a software designer, but she really doesn't care about the newest and best technology (as evidenced by the box of VHS tapes I recently boxed up for Goodwill).

NCAA Championship

Yuck.  That was one of the worst basketball games I've ever seen.  Naturally, since I really wanted to watch it to see how Butler's second consecutive magical run to the final four would end up, Anna decided she was too wound up and too scared of the dark to go to bed. 
Fortunately, I was able to watch some of the game on my phone while I got her settled in. 
Unfortunately, I ended up watching the rest of the game as well.  I should've turned it off at halftime.  Butler decided in the second half that they would play zone defense which they never do...and now we all know they are awful at it.  But I don't know if any kind of defense would've made up for the way they shot the ball.  I just felt bad for those kids that they had to end their season on such an embarrassing note.