Family Photos 2024!

 

Christmas Parade!

On Friday night we attended the local Christmas parade and enjoyed watching Anna and Olivier marching with the band!  The 8th graders joined the band which made the band very large!  Anna is hidden in this photo!

And I didn't get a good photo of Olivier because he was on the opposite side from where we were but here is a cute photo of both of them from after!

Here is the group as they went past us:

Off to the Derby!

Today we hit the road and went to Kentucky to visit Churchill Downs!  We were really surprised at how close it is to the football stadium for the university, we had thoughts of it being on the outskirts of town or the county, it was not either of those!  They had a nice museum and video that gave a good history of the track.  

They had this fun exhibit that you could "ride" a horse against each other!  Anna won by a long shot!  Sorry Matt!

We were able to take a tour and we got some very exciting news!  We were going to see a race!  But first, the tour!  We went through the jockey entrance and headed to the paddock area.  

We then headed to the grass in front of the owners suite.  

We then saw the fillies come out.

We weren't able to see the starting gate but watched on the screen as the horses got settled and loaded into the starting gate.  

Here are some photos as they went by us!  

And here is a video of the race!  

We got to see the prior finish post too!

They had a couple of ponies but they were most definitely not interested in us, just in annoying each other!

We finished up our visit of the museum.  Dream BIG Anna!

Jockey uniform costume and a scale that talks about the weight checks.  

And a mock starting gate!

It was a very fun visit!

Visit to the actual brickyard!

Today was a full day of being a tourist!  One thing that was high on Olivier's list was to visit the speedway and we got to do a very slow lap on the track.  They also stopped at the bricks and allowed us to take photos.  

We also got to "kiss" the brick like the winners do!  

They have engraved bricks for the four who have won four times!  

Olivier wanted some solo photos too!  

Where they wave the flags.  

After lunch we went to the children's museum.  It was nice to check things out.  They had a lot of fun exhibits and we learned a lot about the mission to the moon.  

In the center of the museum they have a very cool glass sculpture!  

And in their pop culture exhibit they had a Taylor Swift outfit!  

There was a fun mirror maze and Anna got this fun photo!

And to close out the photos from the day, there was a car on exhibit that Olivier was very happy to be able to sit in!