There’s plenty to entertain visitors

What a difference a month can make.

After all, a month from now, baseball season will be underway.

The country will have moved out of gymnasiums and onto fields of green and dreams.

And a month from now, our two grandsons and their mother will be coming for a visit.

They’ll be around for about a week, so we’ve been focusing on the question of how to keep an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old interested and occupied over the course of several days.

Emily and the boys are flying into Indianapolis, so some activities are obvious. We’ll take them to the Indianapolis Zoo, making use of passes we bought at the annual Arts Place benefit auction in November.

We’ll take them to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game if the weather cooperates — April in Indiana is better than March in Indiana, but it’s still unpredictable — because both Julian and Gabe are baseball fans.

And, of course, there will be a trip to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. The boys visit its Boston equivalent regularly when at home, but the Indy version is far and away the best in the country.

After that, we’ll head down to Bloomington to visit daughter Sally and her husband Ben and our newest grandchild, Julian and Gabe’s new cousin Bea.

Then it’s back home for the balance of the week.

So what would you do to entertain and amuse a couple of high-energy kids on a visit to rural Indiana and Ohio?

Nothing come to mind? Think again.

There’s plenty to take advantage of.

Here’s a quick list at our short list:

•A walking tour of the Loblolly Wetlands Preserve with naturalist Curt Burnette from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

•A visit to the Jay County Historical Museum so they can learn a few bits of information about their ancestors and relatives they’ve never heard of.

•A day trip to Bear’s Mill, just east of Greenville, Ohio, where — with a bit of luck — the water-powered grist mill will be working.

•A visit to the Joseph Moore Museum at Earlham College so they can marvel at the skeleton of a mastodon excavated in Randolph County about half a century ago.

•Shopping trips to Fisher Packing Co. — the boys like their meat — and Sharlette’s Fudgery. They also like their chocolate.

•Cooking together in our kitchen. Connie is already rounding up kid-friendly recipes.

•Checking out the vintage Haynes automobile at the Community Resource Center.

•Filling the birdfeeders with Grandpa.

•A visit to Arts Place to see the gallery named after their great-grandfather.

•A stop at The Glass Museum in Dunkirk if it can be worked out. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that nothing gets broken.

•Lunch at The Chocolate Moose in Farmland.

•A day trip to Minnetrista in Muncie depending upon what exhibit is featured.

•A trip to the newspaper during the daily press run and maybe letting the boys push the button to start the press.

•Digging out my diecast toy car collection and letting the boys select some to start collections of their own.

•A trip to the Fort Recovery State Historic Museum and the stockade so the boys can run down the hill like their grandfather did when he was a boy.

•A visit to Haynes Park in Portland, which was named for their great-great-great grandfather, Judge Jacob March Haynes.

•Helping Grandpa pick up sticks and litter in the yard, a regular chore in March and April and much of the rest of the year.

•A visit to the Levi Coffin House in Fountain City for a little Underground Railway history.

•Lunch at the Glass Capital Café in Dunkirk.

It’s one heck of a list, and more items will be added.

They’re still a month away from arrival, and I’m exhausted already.