Moving

You thought I was moving again? I don't know why you would think that. I've only moved 7 times since I moved to Indy. However, this time it isn't me. Its my blog. I'm moving to WordPress. I don't know if it will be better, but I have been having spacing issues on my Blogger. It won't let me put spaces in my posts. After much research I found that there is a group of us that have been having this problem since 2010. And Blogger has done nothing about it. So I'm moving. To my 5 followers, please update your readers to reflect the new address:

http://leslies1820.wordpress.com

Neighborhood Clean Up

On Saturday morning I got up real early and went down to the Sacred Heart neighborhood. This is an area just south of downtown. I would say it is in the worst conditions out of all of the sides of downtown. Run down houses, yards filled with crap, old broken down cards. Chris made me go look at houses for rent in this area even though I told him it was pointless b/c I would never ever ever live there. Anywho, I signed up for this clean up because my grandma grew up in the Sacred Heart area and went to church at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. In fact, that is where we spent many Saturday nights with her in her last years and its where we had her funeral. I thought it would be neat to give back to this area that was a home to my grandma and my family for so many years. The basic idea behind this group that I was volunteering for was not only to clean up the area, but instead of leaving it a big empty lot, they would turn it into a garden that produced fruits and vegetables for the people in the community. We started two of the four gardens that they will make this spring. I weeded, I raked, and then the worst came. I helped shovel soil into wheel barrows that were taken across the street to the second garden. At first when the pile was high, I thought this is easy! But as the pile got lower and I got more tired, oh wow. Yesterday I was definitely feeling it. So we just started the gardens. They will be going back every Saturday to do a little bit more work. One of the other neat things was that I met the guy who bought my family's funeral home. So he was happy to meet someone from the Lauck family and told me to come by to see all the changes (um, no thank you) and that business was up 30% from last year (awesome!). He gave me his business card which of course I will be using to keep my dad in check. :-)

Cribbage

When I was making my list of 101 things to do in a 1001 days, I knew I was going to have to put "Learn to play Cribbage." I think it was around the second year Chris and I had been dating that he tried to teach me. I got frustrated and told him to buzz off. Since part of the reason I did this list was to grow, I knew what needed to be done. At some point, I was going to have to suck it up and learn to play. So Friday night we were sitting around bored and I said, let's do it. Teach me how to play Cribbage. And he did. He did a very good job. He was patient with me because, trust me, its a very complicated game. I'm not even going to begin to explain it, but here's a super cute picture of me with the cribbage board. I also knocked another item off my list by making herb and goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of them because they actually looked beautiful. I had some trouble cutting the pocket into the breast, but by the fourth one, I had it down. Maybe if you're lucky, I will stuff a breast for you too!

Hiking in Brown County

As most of you know I have been trying to go walk more and lose some weight. So when my cousins, Matthew and Joanna invited me to go hiking in Brown County yesterday, there was maybe a .3 second pause before I accepted immediately. I've been living in Indy for 4 1/2 years and have yet to check out Brown County which is a huge 15,000 acre state park. Hank and I drove to their house and then we packed three adults, two dogs, and a picnic basket in a little Honda Civic. We did three trails equaling about 5 miles. The first trail we did was around Ogle Lake. Even though its not green out yet, it was still very pretty. There were a lot of trees (duh) and they were so tall and the sky just looked so blue. I had to take this picture. I can only imagine what its like when the leaves have grown in or during the fall.

Juniper is a very experienced hiker and she led the way most of the time.

And good ole Hank tried to lead the whole time. He was pulling so hard the entire time that my cousin, Matthew offered to walk Hank for part of the time. My arms are thanking him today. If anyone has any suggestions on how to break this habit, I'm open ears. We use the Gentle Leader right now but he keeps stopping and trying to paw it off his face. However, he does look super cute in this picture.

It was a gorgeous day. It got up to 80 but it was breezy so we stayed cool. I'm so happy to have gotten outside to enjoy the weather and hike in a new park. Hank passed out the minute we got home and is still sleeping this very moment!