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Published: August 8th 2009
We arrived after a fairly normal flight, looking forward to meeting a big chunk of the Hart family and a brave Auntie Sandra and Cousin Kate were there to collect us despite the early hour! It was great to finally see them and Auntie Sandra still has a Brummie 'twang' mixed in with her American which was cool. after a quick bite to eat i headed for a nap while Matt and Kate had a gossip. Kate and Ryan's house is beautiful and the spare room was most welcome! Later on we met Ryan after he had been to work and Ashlyn too.
Later that night we all headed over to Sandra and Mike's for dinner and to meet Mike, Zac and Joey and generally catch up and relax.
Day 2 was Pottergate.. we went to see HP6 and were amused to be asked if we were really English or if it was 'put on because of the film' apparently some of the fans at the first screening were that sad!
Later that evening we went over to Sandra's again and met her Aunts also from England, Brummies taking over Franklin in full force!! For dinner we went to
Chili's, a nearby restaurant for dinner.
Thursday - We had a relaxed day, Kate took us to the shops and we splurged on a lovely new camera for me and some bits and pieces generally. Heather took us to the hairdressers for a long overdue cut..especially on Matt's part!! Later that evening we went over to Heather and Zac's for a lovely dinner and cracked out the cards for some real playing for money....lots of banter and Hart family discussions which naturally take hours considering all the millions of Harts that are in existence!!
Friday - We were pretty sleepy after our late night with Zac, Heather and Kate but we made it up to go to the winery with mike, sandra, Sandra's aunts and little Joey. We had some tasting - putting our New Zealand lessons into practice and selected a couple of fine wines to take away with us. We had a lovely lunch in the winery grounds in the sunshine and took a sleepy Joey down to the pontoon platform to feed the HUGE fish in the pond.
Later that evening Matt went out in the ambulance with Heather, it was a fairly quiet night
in town but he checked his heart rate, played with the siren and watched an old lady take some serious painkillers!! Meanwhile the rest of us headed for dinner at O'Charleys to terrorise Kate while she was working.
Saturday - A sleepy matt managed to get up and went and played golf with ryan and mike, amusing thought for most of you as Matt points out it has been around 6 years plus since he played..so why bother??? Well THE BET of course!! If Matt managed to beat Ryan then Ryan would have to spend an entire week wearing no hat!!Now the significance of this is that Ryan is LITERALLY never without a hat..seriously..so the stakes were high. Now the result was in Ryan's favour until he stupidly agreed to give Matt a handicap at the end of the game without thinking it through-and thus resulting in Matt's victory and a lack of hat for Ryan. However..since Matt won on a default they re-assigned the punishment to last only the weekend rather than the week which seemed fair!
Meanwhile, i went shopping with the ladies didn't buy anything for myself but we got Ryan and Kate a present for
the new baby and had lunch at the cheesecake factory.During the evening we broke out the 'Rockband' on the wii and had a few beverages!!
Sunday - we had a nice sleep in and then headed over to Sandra and Mike's for a roast dinner-AMAZING.We ate and ate and ate - Matt naturally cleared all the plates in sight and we were sooooo satisfied!! Once we had let the food go down we watched the hot air balloons take off in the field and walked around the local fair..we saw..among other things..sheep shows and tractor racing-very country bumpkin!
Monday - Another lazy day doing very little...in the evening, we went to the fair..and this time not just for a look but for some serious rides!!!!We took Ashlyn on tons of the rides and managed to crack Kate and Ryan up on the sidelines pulling stupid faces and screaming like girls (in Matt's case!) and lots and lots of food including deep fried snickers, funnel cakes and lemon shake up drinks..we ate and rode and rode and ate until we felt sick sick and sicker!!
Tuesday - Yet again another lazy day, Matt went running with his Ipod
gadget and i went food shopping with Kate then in the evening Kate cooked for us,a really yummy lasagne, and we played some more card games in between playing with Joey and once again had a few drinks.
Wednesday - Kate and Sandra headed off to Chicago for a couple of days so Matt and i decided to do a little shopping!!We were let loose with Ryan's car which Matt was pretty pleased about even though it was a touch odd sitting on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road if you ask me..but it's lucky we did have the car because it was SERIOUSLY raining!! boo! After some retail therapy we headed home out of the rain and matt and ryan spent the evening playing playstation golf after we had eaten kates pre-prepared meal enchiladas-yummy!!
Thursday - Guess what..another chillout day..we were going to head to the pool but the rain made it a little tricky, but it eventually cleared up in time for us to go into Indianapolis and see an Indians baseball game with Ryan, Ashlyn and her friend. I had been told to prepare for a boring game
but spent a little time trying to understand the rules and watching the amusing hand signals the coaches were making on the field. It was a pretty slow game throughout..mainly equal the whole way but it was nail biting stuff at the end when the Indians won during the 9th inning on the last ball.
Friday - We took Matt to try his hand at the batting cages, since he felt that the game is 'easy'...'too easy' and yet he only hit one ball out of 20! ( although he did make contact with virtually all of them they would have been foul balls!) Following this we went to Bj's where Matt and Ryan did some beer tasting, and we ended up ordering THE Ultimate dessert, a huge base of 6 different cookie types topped with a mixture of ice cream and cream-heaven!!
Saturday was another grey day but Ryan had a friend who managed to get us in for free at the brickyard for the Nascar practice race, when we arrived i was firstly overwhelmed by the sheer size of tha place...it was HUGE. So huge that you park your car inside the track which also has
room for the fomula one track AND 9 hole golf course inside the Nascar track-crazy!! We couldn't see any action to begin with apart from the trucks driving around the track trying to dry it so we spent some time doing the traditional things like kissing the bricks, wandering around the sponsor tents, looking at the cars and generally people watching from various points around the track. Not a whole lot to see or do what with the rain so we decided to shoot off so Ryan could go with Ashlyn and Kate to a wedding before our BIG Night out!!!..We started the night with the standard drinking games...sadly it began with just Matt and i while we waited for the others to come around.. Heather and Zac were later than expected but with good reason... baby news! Another nipper on the way next year!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! (must be something in the Hart family at the moment, Kate reckons there is about 6 altogether expecting!!) We made Zac and Ryan catch up on drinks and then set off for the bar in the chariot!!The journey was nice and eventful and consisted of Matt climbing out the sunroof, seat swapping, photo taking
and various shouting over each other. In the bar the boys began with some darts, naturally as competitive as ever while i kicked off the dancing with the girls..soon to be outdone by Zac. As drunkeness set in of course we got to see THE WORM, but not just Matt's showcase this time- Zac too pulled some worm moves out of the bag to general impressed crowds in the bar!! Ryan felt the booze by this point and we soon found him asleep on the car, and decided to call it a night and head for a much needed drunken macdonalds-ryan woke up long enough to enter the car, slept until he needed to order and then slept until we got home..eventually taking his food to the bathroom, wrecking the stairgate on the way and then not eating anything until he discovered his macdonalds on the floor the following morning!!
Sunday the hangover dawned on my part bright and early..but Matt seemed ok and we hopped into Kate's truck (again Matt super chuffed to be behind the wheel of a monster truck!) and headed over to aunty Pat's to meet some more family. We spent a lot of time
chatting and had an awesome time catching up with her and Jim and her ex husband Tom. Gary, their eldest and his son nate, his wife lisa and their kids.We went for dinner at a local place and then for dessert at the ice cream place! Soon enough Matt too was feeling his hangover and i was practically asleep in the chair so we decided it was probably a good idea to head back to avoid sleeping behind the wheel!!
Monday - naturally we slept in recovering from Saturday night's antics- and then did the inevitable and packed.We took the laptop over so that Everyone could chat with Gail and Dave online..Joey was fascinated with the webcam..and then Kate took us to see some crazy-huge houses nearby before she had to go to work. Dinner was a BBQ at Sandra and mikes and some playing with Joey before a few almost-but-not-quite tearful farewells!!
All in all we had a fantastic couple of weeks in Franklin..we loved spending time with everyone and it was so great to meet the Harts. Neither of us felt like we were ready to leave but we thought we better go before we got
too much more attached-otherwise maybe we'd never come home!! So thanks to all the Hart's for making us feel so so welcome..hopefully it won't be too long before we see you all again!!
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