Indiana vacation continued...

June 2: The Lambs and I ran some errands to help my parents. We dropped off stuff at the thrift shop. We bought cat litter to help dry up some old paint in the garage.
We went to Once Upon a Child and traded in a pack-in-play that we had kept at my parents for when we visited when the Lambs were little. The Lambs found several t-shirts including a Tincaps shirt that they wanted. The trade was even so we didn't have to pay sales tax.
My parents had their realtor stop by to give them advice on what else to do before they put the house on the market. They set a goal to put the house on the market at the end of the month. I was a little embarrassed to have the realtor come when we were in the middle of so many projects and everything was such a mess. But her coming was helpful, it reminded us that taking pictures off the wall was important and tips like that.
The boys spent much of the time in IN playing with these old wooden spools from my grandma. My mom and her siblings played with these, my sister and I played with these, and every time kids visited my grandma the tub of spools came out to play with. We also had two small elephants that we built houses and swimming pools for them out of the spools. My sister said we could have the spools but she wanted the elephants.
One problem I never had because I was an only child for 7 years was there are 3 Lambs to play with one tub of spools. The Lambs solved this by having "auctions" for the pieces they really want. Lamb 1 is usually the auctioneer-"Who would like this block?, it costs two spools." We brought the spools home and they are now playing with them in my living room. We can no longer go to to my grandma's house and soon we won't be able to go to the house my parents lived in the longest, but it makes me so happy that my Lambs are still playing with the same wooden spools.

June 3: Lamb 1 got up and went to my dad's early morning Bible study. The other Lambs were jealous that he got breakfast there so we went for bagels. I met my friend, Nancy, for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We were both single and both attended church at Zion when we met. She is now married with one son. It was great to have lunch out and to see her.
I took the Lambs with me to Half Price Books to trade in the books that we brought that Hyde Brothers did not want. There were 4 boxes of books remaining. I had removed some of the nicer children's books to give to a friend in Fort Wayne and we didn't want what was remaining. They took a long time to look at that many books, it was probably the longest it has ever taken, and this time I happened to have all the Lambs with me. We were required to stay in the store while they looked at our books which was a very dangerous thing. I didn't do any shopping for myself, but the Lambs asked for $23 more in books than the little bit of credit we got for the books we traded in. I did let them get everything they asked for because Lamb 1 found several books he was interested in reading and they also found some books to complete a series of books that Grandma got some of the books for them. It is not often that we take the boys shopping for books, we usually shop for books when we are on a date or just expect them to read library books. I was glad they had so many books that the Lambs were interested in.
After the book store took so long I took the Lambs to a park and let them play on the playground as a reward. Lamb 1 was not too happy to do that as he wanted more boys his age to play basketball with, but the other Lambs loved playing on a different playground.
After supper the Lambs were playing outside and Lamb 1 came inside screaming that an insect had flown into his ear. My mom didn't have any hydrogen peroxide so Lamb 1 and I went to the store to buy some. Thankfully the insect flew out on it's own so we didn't need an ER visit. We rinsed the ear out with diluted hydrogen peroxide and he was fine.

June 4: My dad went with us for a tour of the Sechler's pickle factory. The Lambs didn't like the tour very much but they loved sampling the pickles. I spent over $50 on pickles in their store. Most of the pickles were $2 to $3.50. Our local grocery carries a few varieties, but nothing like every variety in their store. When we buy them locally they are almost $5. The Lambs wanted several different varieties. It will be fun to open jars over the next several months and try several different kinds.

I finally tackled mowing the back yard in the afternoon. It was still wet after all the rain and took a long time. I trimmed a few bushes in front of their house. I wish I would have trimmed all their bushes that day, but I was tired and it was hot. I never did finish trimming the bushes because it rained so many days while we were there.

To be continued...