WISCONSIN DELLS

Santa brought the kids an 4 day and 3 night stay at Wisconsin Dells.  We stayed at the Mt. Olympus resort.  There was an indoor water park, amusement park, arcade and free skiing, tubing or snowshoeing.

 

This was the kids' bed for the duration of the stay.  The kids rotated who would be able to sleep up top together.  We didn't arrive till late the first day we got there.  So we unpacked and walked over to check out the water park and arcade.  We were just doing a reconnaissance to see what was there.  We went to bed early and woke up early. 

 

 

After breakfast, we headed out to go tubing.  Unfortunately, there was a long wait for tubing.  So we decided to go skiing.  Jon snowboarded while everyone else skied.  Tommy caught on quick.  Madeline had trouble turning and took a fall off a jump.  She was fine.  We had to walk Jenna half way up the hill and send her down.  Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of skiing time in but I did get a lot of exercise.  We ate a quick lunch and spent some more time skiing.  We left around 5ish for dinner at the hotel. 

 

Everyone was exhausted after skiing all day.  We went to the amusement park and rode a few rides then headed back into the hotel for dinner.  We had pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers.  After that, we hit the arcade up for a while.  The kids were crashing quick so we went back to the hotel and slept.

 

The next day, we went to the water park.  We got there when it opened and grabbed our table for the day.  We ate a quick lunch then headed for the park to swim and slide.  The kids and Jon spent 5 hours climbing the stairs, sliding down and playing in the water.  We headed out to a pizza buffet for dinner.  The pizza was horrible but the mac and cheese was awesome.  After dinner, we went back to the arcade to finish the last of our money on our card.  Jon won the kids this huge, green, bumpy, bouncy ball.  We got a total of 611 tickets to cash in.  

 

Our last day, we hit the amusement park one more time before heading out around 1 pm.  Madeline talked us into letting her climb the wall.  She made it to the top really quick but wouldn't rappel down.  She slowly climbed down.

 

On the way out of town, we ate at Buffalo Phil's restaurant.  Our food and drinks were brought to us by train.  The kids really enjoyed that.  We headed home after that.  It took about 4 hours to make it home. 

 

It was a wonderful short family vacation and were are very grateful Santa brought it for us.

GLIMPS OF CHRISTMAS

I got very few pictures of the actual Christmas.  These are a few of the ones leading up to Christmas.

 

Jenna seeing Santa at the book Fair.

 

 

Messing with face paints.

 

The elves came again this year.  This year, Fred brought along his sister, Sparkle, to join in the fun.  The elves brought little gifts for the kids again.  One of the gifts was ginger bread men to decorate.

 

I caught Jenna praying to Baby Jesus in my Nativity set. 

Super Sweet.

 

Jenna's Christmas Party at school with her class.

BOY SCOUTS

Jon is the leader of Tommy's Boy Scout den.  This is the 2nd year of Tommy being a scout.  He is now a Wolf Scout.  Today, they are working on building a bird house.  This is part of their requirements to move up to the next rank.  Jon cut the wood to sizes and the boys hammered the pieces together.  It was a great project.

 

TEXAS BY PHONE CAMERA

This year for Thanksgiving, we traveled to Austin, Texas for a wedding.  Jon's cousin, Megan, was the one getting married.  We decided to drive instead of flying.  It was considerably cheaper.  We, also, decided to rent a car versus driving the truck.  We ended up with a Toyota Camry.  The way down took us about 23 hours total driving time.  We left about 9 am on November 27th and arrived in Vinita, Oklahoma about 10 pm.  We decided to stop there for the night instead of pushing towards Texas.  We were afraid that there would be no hotel rooms open due to Thanksgiving.  We were back on the road at about 7 am and arrived at the hotel at about 4ish pm. 

That night was Thanksgiving.  Megan was nice enough to cater a huge Thanksgiving dinner that was delicious.  We hit the sack super early that night.

 

The next day was the rehearsal dinner.  We decided we were sick of being cooped up and wanted to get some hiking in before the dinner.  We headed about an hour outside of Austin to a park called Balcones Canyonlands National Park.  We spent about 2 hours hiking the park and climbing its mountains.  It was beautiful weather for it, roughly 60 degrees and sunny.

 

The road to the park was very hilly.

 

The landscape was beautiful.

 

 

The kids were very excited to see a lot of cacti.

 

The landscape again.  There was a huge area that looks like what the grasslands of Africa looked like.

 

We found some ravines to splash in.

 

The muddy canyon walls where the water washed out the land.

 

One of our sunny paths.

 

More of the kids walking along the ravine that turned into a stream.

 

The super crystal clear water of the stream.

 

More pictures of the land we walked around in.

 

We made it back in time to shower and head over to the rehearsal dinner.  It was a taco dinner, my fave.  After the dinner, they played some games.  One was a Nigerian game where the groom had to guess which woman hiding in a sheet was his wife.  He didn't guess right.  Then, we played a paper air plane game.  Madeline's plane ended up flying the farthest.  It was a little tipped towards the winner considering her Daddy, who has a degree in aeronautics, made it for her.

 

The next day was the wedding.  The wedding wasn't till 2:30 so we headed out to find official cowboy boots and hats for pictures later.  The wedding was in a beautiful venue outside Austin. 

 

The day after we headed into San Antonio to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  We left early that morning because Jon's phone died.  We were going to try to pick up a new one before we headed down there.  unfortunately, nothing was open till 12 so we had to wait. 

 

The Alamo was awesome.  We spent about 2 hours touring the place. 

 

We met up with the rest of the family for lunch.  We ate down by the Riverwalk and had an amazing steak dinner.  The ribs weren't too bad either.  We then toured the Riverwalk.  We were not impressed.  There were only a few businesses and mostly restaurants around the front of the walk.  Around the back was hotels and a lot of homeless people and dead animals.  At one point, we walked up street level to use the restrooms.  Very scary up there and definitely not a place to be touring around night or day.  We were exhausted and headed back to the car.  We called everyone to see what they were going to do.  They have not met up yet so we decided to head back to Austin.  We still needed to get a phone and we wanted to get out of the scary neighborhoods. 

 

First, everyone was going to met at another restaurant for dinner, then it was cancelled.  So we told the kids we would go see Frozen.  After talking to Jon's cousin, Andrew, he suggested a movie and dinner place.  It was an awesome suggestion.  We ate a very tasty meal and watched a great movie.  Even Jon liked this Disney movie.  It was a great way to end the vacation.

 

After spending many days in the sun, it was time to head home.  We had a long drive ahead of use so we packed up early, ate breakfast and headed out. 

 

A picture of Dallas on our way out of the state.

 

 

A picture of the biggest casino I have ever seen in Oklahoma.  It makes the ones around here look like child's play.  The route we took through Oklahoma was a very small 4 lane highway.  We passed through a lot of tiny little towns.  The biggest things around were the casinos.  At night, nothing is opened. 

 

There is a huge lake-reservoir that is so massive.  It never seemed to end.

 

We stayed at Uncle Adam's and Aunt Kayla's that night.  We got there around 11 pm that night.  We tried to get there earlier but there was so much fog through the hills of Missouri.  We were forced to drive at snail pace.  After an amazing breakfast, we were on the road again.

 

We passed over the Mississippi River.

 

We got home around 7pm or so that night. 

We headed straight to bed because we had to get up early the next day for school and work. 

All of us, including Jon, really love Austin.  It would be a place we would consider moving to one day.

THUMPER

This year, we had to put our beloved dog, Thumper down.  She was very sick and in a lot of pain.  She could barely walk and had to be held up while she peed.  Her hips finally gave out.  We have had her since we moved into the house over 8 years ago.  She was originally my parents dog but she loved moving in with the kids.  We will miss her very much.

 

These first few are pictures from her last day.

 

 

Her grave in our flower garden behind the garage.

 

An old picture of Thumper and Madeline.  This was before Tommy was born and before we got the house over 8 years ago. 

 

Jenna missing Thumper.