Vacation, Louisville style day 4

Day #4 was also our last day of vacation in Louisville.  Steve's convention was over Friday night at the awards dinner, so we had him the entire day.  We took our time getting up and packing the room.  Steve made a trip down to the van while we watched from the window.  Our van is the blue "blob" in the middle of the photo...and Steve could see is looking and waved to the boys.  Oh, and a cool thing to note...the remote to the power doors works from 10 floors up.  I was able to click the button and open the door of the van from up in the room!

My boys in one of their favorite parts of the hotel...the elevator.  They fight every time we get in one as to who gets to push the button!  And my favorite part?  They only pushed the "call help" button once!

On the race horse in front of the hotel.  Kinda like Cincinnati has flying pigs all throughout the city, Louisville has horses!

What was on the agenda for day #4?  What else, but the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory!  Steve and I had been there before while visiting family in Louisville probably 8 years ago so we knew the boys would love it!  Here's the famous Slugger bat, which is the world's biggest baseball bat!  It just so happened that the museum was celebrating adding a Derek Jeter sculpture to the museum and in celebration of his #2 jersey, admission was $2 each!  So, instead of $20 for our family it only cost us $4 (under 5 is free)!

Some of the displays outside of the museum along the sidewalk:

 

Yep, these boys were in HEAVEN!

Here is a video of one of the exhibits in the museum.  The boys loved this one!

You aren't allowed to take photos on the tour of the factory, but they take you through and show you the process of taking the "billet" or raw wooden cylinder (like these) to a bat.  They have a lathe that they show how they used to do it by hand, but now they have machines that do it all by program.  It's pretty cool that they can control the weight and shape all by a computer program.  They have machines that do the "common" bat types and then one machine that customizes the bats for the professionals.  They said the normal pro goes through around 150 bats in a season!

At the end of the tour, we were given Mini baseball bats.  The boys were thrilled!  Now the trick is going to be to keep them from beating each other (and my house!!) with them!  Here's a photo of them with one of the sculptures (Babe Ruth, I think) and their mini bats.

After the tour, we visited the kids area and the boys were able to hit in a "batting cage" setup with balls and a tee!  Tyler loved this and he was really good at hitting it!  Ryan, not so much but he had fun!

  

Steve took his turn in the adult batting cages.

After the tour, we found a local Mexican restaurant that I had heard good things about....Los Aztecas!  It was yummy...Steve had his normal steak fajitas, but I had a really good Shrimp salad :)

You know it's been a good day of vacation and that the kids had fun when this is the sight on the ride back home:

Once we got back to Cincinnati, we took the Anderson Ferry back across the river to my in-laws house to pick up the dog.  The boys loved it just as much the second time as the first time!  Especially since the trip the second time was with about 10 motorcycles.  Steve even got out of the van with them and went to the edge too look over.

So, vacation was exhausting for me.  But the boys had fun and lots of memories were made!  Vacation, Louisville style is now in the books!