The Dells-concluded

Sunday morning we called the Hoel clan to let them know that we were going to go to the Deer Park to pet the deer. Essentially, they have hundreds of different breeds of deer that are tame. You stay on the path and the deer can go under the railings and into the grassy areas to get away from people if they feel uncomfortable. They were super tame as they'd take feed from the kids and not one ever nipped any little fingers.

Then we met up with the Hoels later that day to go mini-golfing. That was quite the adventure!! Four adults and five kids under the age of 7. While Wyatt slept, it was easier to get through. We'd send the kids up to the hole ahead of the one we were on. They'd run around hitting their golf balls happily and we'd get to play the course. Once Wyatt woke up, it became much more difficult as he had his own idea of how the whole thing should go down.

After that, we took the kids to one of the go-kart parks. Katie was able to drive her own go-kart and really enjoyed herself. Then we each took a kid and raced on the bigger courses. The first course was a lot of fun and I passed every single person. I actually nearly lapped one of the other racers. Katie and I made up a 'race face' on this track. When we got to the second track, it wasn't nearly as fun simply because there was a young-ish guy racing who didn't really care if there were kids or not. In fact, he couldn't have cared less about the rules, either. He was ramming into people and just being very unsafe. He slammed into someone who would have spun out if I hadn't smashed into him (there was NO way I could stop). But Katie still had fun on that course and that was the most important.

On Monday, the Hoel family met up with us for breakfast and headed home. We were supposed to try going to Noah's Ark waterpark but it just wasn't going to happen so I took them to Circus World Museum. This was probably the least fun thing for me and the thing that Katie loved the most. In order, we saw a magic show ("How did he make that girl turn into Roger the Clown??"), a kid's interactive circus where they used their imaginations and each child became a part of the circus ("I got to be a pony!"), learning how they trained the tigers, seeing the actual circus performance where Katie got pulled out of the audience as the volunteer to help Roger the Clown ("I love Roger the Clown. He's SO funny!"), and she got to ride the elephant. I figured Jack was too young for the latter so he wouldn't remember it and at $5 a pop, that was pricey for something he wouldn't remember. That elephant ride was seriously short but she talked about it for so long!! By the way, let me tell you that the day I chose for this particular outing was painfully hot and humid!!! During the week, we'd had a horrible storm and after that, it was awful as far as the humidity went.

And that is pretty much a step by step summary of our week in the Dells. We really enjoyed ourselves but I think everyone was ready to go home at the end of the week. Even Katie was asking by Sunday if it was time to go home yet. You put 10 very very different people into one house and you will eventually get unhappiness. I think that once Mike and I just decided that we'd announce what we were doing and then just do it, we had a much much better time. We were trying so hard to co-ordinate everything so that we could all hang out together and it was upsetting me when that wasn't working out. Some people came with the idea that they'd stay at the rental home and watch TV all week. Others thought that a week of golf would be THE thing while even others thought that seeing/doing all the attractions possible was the way to go. After I realized that we all had different visions of what the vacation would be, I began to loosen up and have more fun.

Tomorrow I'll post and let you know what I know about my Dad and his passing. If you don't want to hear about this for various reasons, just skip tomorrow's post. I have a feeling that I'm going to ramble and it might be a somewhat painful post to read/write. By the way, I deserve a cookie or something. I've posted three days in a row. That's, like, a record or something!

Edited to add: Katie also discovered a loose tooth on this excursion. As of yesterday (August 22nd (happy birthday, Dad) you could see the adult tooth coming through her gum behind the baby teeth. Lovely. Just in time for school pictures.)