Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

We just got home from our annual trip to Indiana for the Indy 500. B went up 3 days early with my dad. He was able to go to an Indy Lights race on Friday, which he loved. It is a shorter race, but still barely held his attention for the hour. He wanted me to know that the race cars were loud and the race cars were fast. He told me that the race was 'good'. He was also spoiled rotten on the trip. On the drive he ate, a granola bar, McDonald's, Cheetos (from a rest stop vending machine), powder sugar donuts (from a gas station), a corn dog and Ocean water from Sonic, and that is not counting the snacks I sent in the car. My dad bought him whatever he wanted at every stop. The 1st morning he was there my aunt went and got donuts. I think B ate 4 donuts in one day. My aunt gave him a donut just because he fell down and got hurt. It's no wonder he didn't miss me a bit, or want to talk to me on the phone!
Our trip did not go nearly as well as B's trip did...

Before we even got to Tulsa our car started acting funny and smoking. We were able to pull off the turnpike at Supulpa to get help. Thankfully, the gas station was right next to an elementary school. Mase played on the play ground for most of the 2.5 hours we were there. We think our transmission completely failed. We had the van towed back home, and we took a cab to the Tulsa airport where we rented a car to continue on our way. You might be wondering, "Why not just rent a car in Supulpa?" Well, we discovered that car rental places in small town America aren't open at 6:30 on a Friday evening. LOTS of fun, let me tell you! I was so glad we were stranded with only one of our kids.
I love this picture. Mase is just swinging on those bars. You can see that his feet are out behind him and not touching the bar. He is so full of energy.

This is another one of my favorites. He went around pulling dandelions and blowing the seeds all over the place.

We made it half way to Indy that night despite the car trouble. The next day we trekked on in our nice brand new rental. That night we enjoyed dinner with our extended family, but I don't have any pictures. The next morning we were up EARLY for the race. We left the house at 7 and still had to sit in traffic for 2 hours before we got to our parking place.

Two B-25 Bombers did the fly by this year.

Danica got 3rd!

We sit just at the end of turn 4 and we are able to see quite a few wrecks. Here is a cool picture of Ryan Hunter-Reay's Izod car. We experienced the smell of burning rubber twice this race. It is amazing that most drivers just climb out an walk away. One driver was taken away in an ambulance this year. He broke 2 vertebra in his lower back when he hit the wall. He was only expected to stay in the hospital for 2 days and he didn't need surgery. That happened in turn 1 or 2 so we couldn't see it.

The 3rd time winner, Helio Castroneves.

We are off to FL next week to visit Mimi and Landon! Is anyone interested in buying a '99 Honda Odyssey? It's a great van, all it need is a tiny bit of transmission work before you can drive it home!