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Friday, July 31, 2009

Vacation Days Four Through Seven

Sorry about that little break in posts. We're fighting some summer yuckiness around our house.

For day four of our vacation, we decided to do something special for Jackson since we would be celebrating his birthday while in Wisconsin.

Chuck decided to take Jackson horseback riding. Jackson was super excited to be doing something special and I don't think Chuck or I realized just how hard it was going to rain. It was sort of gloomy and sprinkling when they bought their tickets, so we decided to drive into Baraboo and wait the rain out.


Baraboo is the original home of the Ringling Bros circus and home to Circus World museum. The boys weren't as excited about the circus attraction as I thought they'd be so we scratched that from our itinerary. It was a nice little drive though, lots of old time building and architecture. The rain looked like it was stopping so we headed back to the Dells and dropped Chuck and Jackson off at the stables.
The other three boys and I went to what I'll call "Cheese World", a store filled with cheese. (It had a real name but I can't remember it-the boys and I just referred to it as Cheese World). Now cheese is a staple of the Lakes family diet, so you can imagine how excited my boys were to browse coolers and coolers full of cheese. We bought a few of our favorites and headed back to the van, only to discover that it was pouring rain. I don't mean a slight drizzle or some showers, but it looked like someone had turned on a firehose at full strength. Oh no! It occurred to me, Chuck and Jackson were riding horses OUTSIDE. Poor guys.
I made a run for it and somehow got everyone in the car-yes, I was soaked! I went to grab the keys from the diaper bag and they were...gone. Nowhere to be found. After a few minutes of searching in the warm, dry car, I resigned myself to the inevitable-retracing my steps in the pouring rain. Sigh. We eventually found the keys in the backseat (still not sure how they got there) and by then it was time to pick up the horseback riders.


They were absolutely drenched. I have never ever seen two people so wet in my entire life. Despite the downpour, they had so much fun.

We headed back to hotel to let Jackson open his birthday presents a day early (we got him the police light Skechers shoes, and since his shoes were drenched, we figured he'd need something to wear besides flip-flops).


The Birthday Boy with his other present-a Bumblebee helmet


Bed full of boys relaxing...


Moosey takes his relaxing seriously!

After an exhausting day, we decided to spend some time relaxing and make a quick trip to the Goody Goody Gumdrops candy store. The candy there was amazing! Chuck found a jawbreaker the size of a baseball and the boys couldn't believe all of the good stuff!

Moose looks slightly afraid of it!

The next day was Jackson's actual birthday, so he got to decide our activity. He choose Knuckleheads, an indoor amusement park. The boys spent the day riding rides and playing games. Moose had so much fun he fell asleep at the table at lunch while eating Cheerio's!




Check out the Cheerio...just out of reach!

After, being inside all morning, we headed to Pirate's Cove to jump on a huge inflatable playground and ride pedal cars.


Jackson choose Moosejaw for dinner and the servers brought him an ice cream sundae and sang Happy Birthday to him.

The next morning we woke to clear blue skies, and weather warm enough to be outside in! Woo-hoo! Chuck and Jarron really wanted to go to Noah's Ark water park, while the other boys and I weren't really into it. So we stayed home and enjoyed the outdoor kiddie area at Great Wolf. Chuck and Jarron rode just about every ride at Noah's Ark including the Black Anaconda! (Oh how I wish we had a bought a waterproof camera for them!)





The next day, was our last day in Wisconsin, and it was raining (again) so we decided to go to the Kalahari. The Kalahari is a resort with indoor/outdoor waterparks and has a HUGE indoor amusement park. We had sooo much fun there. We got to ride the Go-Karts, ferris wheel, and carousel. And Chuck and the twins got do some wall-climbing and the ropes course. It was pretty awesome-Moose got to ride his first ferris wheel! I think if we decide to go to the Dells again, we will stay at the Kalahari. They had baby tigers in the lobby! Baby tigers! Seriously.



And this picture? This was my dessert, an entirely edible tiramisu! Doesn't it look like a real coffee mug? And it was so yummy!

The only thing left to do, was the jet boats. I desperately wanted to ride a jet boat. The weather was not cooperating but Jarron and I decided to do it anyway. We bought a couple of sweatshirts and bought our tickets. It was such a blast. The boat was extremely fast and we got very cold and very wet but it was worth it!
We hit the indoor waterpark one last time that night and then got up bright and early to head back to Cincinnati.

It was a great vacation. We had so much fun spending the week together.

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