Graber Girls in Indy

Hazel Clark, David Oliver, Joetta Clark-Diggs, Jearl Clark, Dan O'Brien

Friday afternoon, I took the girls out of school to attend a meeting at the USA Track & Fields National Convention.  We listened to a sports dietician who talked about how to heal from injuries with nutrition and how nutrition can impact your performance, etc...it was very interesting to me, the girls were a little bored with it.  After that Joetta Clark-Diggs, 4-time Olympian in the 800 meter,  was to give a motivational speech to athletes but since Megan & Natalie were the only two to show up they got a personal meeting with her.  We were so excited to get to meet her, and the girls got star treatment by her and then out of no where ALL these other amazingly talented USA Track Olympic Medalist started coming up and introducing themselves to Megan & Natalie!!  I was overwhelmed and totally caught off guard seeing them....the girls faces were in AWE of seeing all of them in one place!!  Joetta, her sister, Hazel, and sister-in-law, Jearl (the American record holder in 800m), all qualified for the 800 m in the 2000 Olympics, they came in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the Olympic trials...and they are all coached by Joetta's brother who is Jearl's husband.  Isn't that so cool????  I thought it was really neat for Megan & Natalie to meet Olympic Medalist who just happen to be sisters who run together!

This is the girls with David Oliver, Bronze medalist in 2008 Bejing,  He actually had his Bronze Medal with him and let the girls hold it and look at it!!!!  WOW!! How exciting was that!  You should have seen the girls faces when he opened that case up!! It was priceless!  The other olympians enjoyed seeing their little faces light up as well...and they were oooing and awing over the girls.   Oh and I forgot to add later in the hall way we met Maurice Greene, who is also an olympic medalist and is still the WORLD RECORD holder in the 60 meter dash and I guess he was also on Dancing with the stars recently..he was pretty sweet to the girls too and patted them both on the shoulders...Megan said she wasn't going to wash her shoulder! LOL!  It was WAY MORE than I expected to get out of the afternoon.  They also gave them t-shirts (really nice t-shirts, Nike brand and all!) for coming and the lady from the National office even said she was going to get Sarah and Ryan Hall's authographs for the girls since Megan & Natalie qualified for nationals but are going to be unable to attend.  Ryan & Sarah are going to be at Reno cheering on the kids at the XC Nationals.   Ryan and Sarah Hall are both distance runners...Ryan is the fastest American Marathoner and Sarah is a "professional runner" and holds several records as well.   They both are WONDERFUL Role Models for the girls...check the link out above.  So that was exciting too that the director offered to do that without us even asking!  It was very exciting afternoon and since it was getting close to being dark I asked the girls if they wanted to stay in Indy a while longer and go on a horse and carriage ride through down town Indy to view all the Christmas lights!!  They were all for it! 

We had to walk through all the sky walks and through Circle Center Mall (which we stopped in a few stores)  and a couple of other hotels to get the Crown Plaza (where the horse carriages were).  The girls enjoyed going through the revolving doors at the Omni...I think the girls could be a little like "Eloise at the Plaza"...good thing momma was with them! LOL!

Me & Megan enjoying the ride notice the capitol building behind us! 4th grade learns about Indiana history so Megan & Natalie both had studied about the Indiana capitol so they were excited to see what they had learned about.  Natalie in front of the Colonel Eli Lilly Civil War Museum that was made to look like a Christmas tree with all the lights!  It was so pretty!

Here is a picture of the capital building.  We got to see Governor Morton's statue out in front of the building...he was the Governor of Indiana during the Civil War.  Just an interesting fact in case you didn't know.   I had some more pictures but I'm really DISLIKING the new uploading of pictures on blogger now...grrrrrrr...so I may not be posting as many pictures as I normally like because I don't have too much patience for it!   Anyway we ended the night with a walk back through Circle Center Mall and stopped and purchased Christmas Ornaments with the kids names on them as a souvenoir from or little trip to downtown Indy.  As well as we checked out a new favorite pretzel stand...Wetzel's Pretzels!! Oh My they were YUMMY...we've been big fan's of Auntie Anne's but Wetzel's are now top of my list!  They melted like butter in your mouth!  Megan navigated us out of the Circle Center mall...as I got a little turned around in the "circle"...but her farm girl kean sense of direction got us right back to where we needed to be...I told her who needs "Tina the Tom-Tom" when I have Megan the farm girl!  Tina Tom-Tom got me out of downtown Indy and then died...but I knew where were going by that time and got us home safely with two sleepy girls.  But it was a fun time spending the afternoon/night with my two girls!  An older lady saw us walking through the sky walk and looking out the windows to everything in the city...and she said "ENJOY them, Spend time with them, and love them, enjoy them these times will be gone quickly!"  I'm like was she an angel from above or what??? But anyway I just was thinking that before she came into the skywalk...so I told her I am enjoying them and that's just what we did ENJOYED and savored that "girl time".