January 7, 2007--Erick's birthday

Yesterday was Erick's 29th birthday. His parents watched the kids and we had a date. We went looking at a house we'd seen advertised. It was small, but it was cheap and it had an acre of land and was on the river, and we thought maybe we could build on. It was on the high bank of the river, and the acre of land dropped off at a very steep acre behind it, all the way to the river. I don't think that's going to happen! We then went and saw the old Groniger's Grocery store that used to be in our town. It was built in the late 1800's and closed in the 1950's when the owner died. It was closed up and everything was still in it until a man bought it and moved it to another town about an hour away. He put the merchandise back on the shelves and he let's people come see it at no charge. He was a friend of my dad's, too, so he had a lot of old memories to swap from when my dad was an antique dealer. It was so neat to see the store, just like it used to be when it was in business. The owner and his wife are parents of quadruplets. They waited twenty years to have children, and then had four at once. I couldn't imagine what that would be like! We also went to Indianapolis and wandered around downtown. Erick's sister and her husband live in Indy, and they agreed to tape the Colts game for Erick. I would have let Erick buy tickets to the game, but he didn't want to spend the money. We could hear the crowd from the outside as we passed by the RCA dome. We went to the Circle City mall, and ate at the food court there, and went to the Circle there in the middle of the town and walked around. It was really pretty. It sure is different to what we are used to. People just walk in front of you while you are driving, like they are confident no one is going to run them over. It's a different culture, the city. We didn't get the kids until church this morning. It was kind of weird sleeping in a house with no children, and not getting them ready for church in the morning. We still barely got to church on time. Erick got up early to watch his Colts game, and made breakfast, and got his presentation ready for the FPU class, etc. Five minutes before we were supposed to leave he still wasn't dressed. He tosses a shirt to me and says, "Can you iron this for me?" "NO!" I said, "We need to leave!" So he put something else on, and couldn't find the right shoes. He finally had to wear his brown shoes with his black suit, because his brown pants were in the laundry and he couldn't find his black shoes. We ate at his parents house when we picked up the kids. They had a lot of fun there. Tim didn't even want to go home! They got a horse yesterday, so they were all excited about that. They thought it was fun being in Grandma's Sunday School class. Erick's sister is due today. She's supposed to be having a boy. I hope she has that baby soon!