Happy Memories

Guess where we were last weekend!

Kayleigh was on fall break so right after cross country semi-state on Saturday, we left to spend a few days in Bloomington.  Up until a year ago I never really thought much about trying to persuade her to go to the same school as me but then she decided to major in Marketing.  Seriously, if you live in Indiana and want to major in business, you go to IU, right?  She has been hesitant to even consider it though mainly because she wants to follow her own path.  But the great thing about such a large school is that you can make it whatever you want.

So I decided to win her over to IU by taking her to visit the campus in the fall.  It is beautiful down there all year long but in the fall, the campus outdoes itself.  We were hoping to go for a run but never found time to fit one in.  We did plenty of walking though.

Apparently Kayleigh has never seen a chipmunk in real life.  Lucky for her, there must have been a chipmunk convention going on while we were there.  We couldn't turn a corner without seeing them!

I was actually a little nervous about the visit.  I have such great memories and I was afraid that seeing the campus again might tarnish some of them.  It has been about 21 years since I have been there but I immediately felt and home and remembered my way around just fine.  I loved it.  I felt like I got to go back in time for a few days.

Kayleigh seemed to like the campus and had a good time walking around Bloomington but she certainly wasn't going to act too excited!  She bought plenty of IU items though so I'm hopeful.  We'll just have to see.

One of the shocking things that has changed about Bloomington is all the vegan options.  I became a vegetarian while at school.  I started researching it my sophomore year (which wasn't so easy before the Internet!) but had to wait until my junior year to actually change my diet because it would have been impossible to be vegetarian in the dorms.  Now not only does Bloomington have a vegan restaurant (which we tried to go to but it was always packed), there were vegan options at every restaurant we visited.  It was fantastic.


 On Sunday we went to Scholars Inn Bakehouse for lunch.  We first went to The Owlery but didn't want to wait 45 minutes.  This restaurant was just down the street so we decided to try it out.

I got this veggie sandwich.  It was good.  Overall this place reminded me a lot of Panera.  My husband was quick to point out later that they sponsor a local bike racing team.

 After walking around for hours and hours, we decided to grab some ice cream before heading back to the hotel.  Is that vegan ice cream?  Yes it is and it was delicious!  We got this from Hartzell's where the people were unnecessarily rude but the ice cream made up for it.

 On Monday, I wanted to walk through the campus so Kayleigh could see how crowded it is during classes.  Unfortunately it was so crowded, we couldn't find any parking spaces and it took us forever to just drive around the outside of the campus.  So instead we went back downtown.  Kayleigh went to a running store and then we grabbed some soup at this restaurant to eat back at the hotel while we packed up.



Kayleigh's soup is the very non-vegan chicken tortilla but I got lentil spinach.  The portions were so large that I had half mine left over for lunch at work on Tuesday.









I really hope that Kayleigh ends up at IU so that I have an excuse to keep visiting for 4 years.  I forgot how much I loved it.  It is a long drive but completely worth it.