Weekend Vacation
This past weekend happened to be one of the few weekends that I did not DJ, or have church obligations, and Nina did not shoot photos at a wedding.
It seems as though life has been extremely busy lately, especially on the weekends.
Anyways, we decided to take a little drive somewhere to shoot some cool photos, and just get away.
So, we decided on heading to Notre Dame on Saturday since there are wonderful buildings on campus and in the immediate vicinity for photos, and it is only 1.5 hours away.
DAY 1
Since Saturday was the Notre Dame/Michigan State game, we decided to head to the Nappanee Apple festival.
It was about the only thing to do within an hour's drive from South Bend. We looked it up on Friday, and it seemed action packed!
We got there around 5:00pm IN time, and changed and fed Eva, then headed to the main area to feed her.
The festival is fairly small, but had quite a bit of character, being in the middle of Amish country, and a small town festival.
There were quite a few people, to my surprise. Most of the area is filled with vendors for all kinds of articles of clothing, crafts, and food.
There were several carnival rides, but Eva is too small for any of those, and I am too cheap to ride them for myself.
We fed Eva, then grabbed some food for ourselves (Italian sausage sandwiches from a church booth; very good).
Then we visited many of the vendors, and walked around a little.
After an hour or so, we became a little bored, and it was around 7:30pm (IN time), so we decided to look for some place to stay in the area.
We decided on the Nappernee Inn, which was only a mile down the road, and near Amish acres which we wanted to check out as well.
The Inn was quite neat, and <$100/night, so we stayed there (I will post photos soon).
The pictures on the wall were farm animals (Two pictures: 1 of goats and 1 of a pig), which I thought was a nice touch.
Eva slept for the first time in just the pack-n-play, which kinda freaked Nina out...
She slept most of the night, with a brief feeding at 4:00am.
DAY 2
We woke up with Eva in the morning, and I got breakfast from the continental breakfast buffet, then brought some back for Nina.
We packed up around 10:00am, and headed back to Amish Acres for some sight-seeing, and photo shooting.
Most of the Amish Acres is only open to those who pay $10 for a tour, so we just visited the public areas, and looked through the gift shop.
I was not that interested in the Amish farm manned by costumed characters. I have been to the Tulip Festival too many times to get excited about that. 
There were some cool old buildings, and a pumpkin pile to take photos of.
After we became bored with that, we decided to head back to South Bend for the photos we couldn't get during a Notre Dame Home Game.
We first stopped at the St. Mary's College campus.
The campus was beautiful, with lots of cool old buildings, and more open space than any campus I have been on.
Several ponds, and fountains, and lots of wooded grassy areas.
Next, we headed to Notre Dame. I have never been there, so we spent most of our time trying to get close to the "gold dome" thing in the center.
We finally parked at some parking area near the intramural football fields.
We walked in the general direction for about 5 miles (yeah, not quite), and finally found the Basilica (gold dome).
It is very wonderful looking, and the sun was shining off the dome, and the sky was quite blue.
We shot some great pics, and found some other buildings/statues to photograph before we decided to head home.
That is pretty much it for the mini-vacation. It was the first night away from home for us since the Hospital stay with Eva!
She was an absolute dream the whole time. She slept for every car ride, and was generally happy the whole time.
I may have said it before, but if you don't have a daughter yet, you should seriously consider getting one!
I have posted some photos in the photo section! Be sure to check them out.