Mt. O-FUN!

We had a great trip to the Dells! It was definitely relaxing and nice to get away from our house and from real life for a while and to be able to do it with friends was even more fun!

Our drive down to the Dells was easy peasy. Jay decided that since we weren't supposed to have any super serious bad weather, that we would take my car and save on gas, you know, because it's costing us like an arm and a leg these days to fill up our vehicles (no lie!). But you already know that. The forecast stated that northern and central Wisconsin could expect some precipitation on Tuesday into Wednesday and Point was only looking at an inch or two of snow. No biggie, my car can deal with that, especially since it was all highway driving and the highways are always the cleanest when it comes to snow.

We (my family and my friend's) arrived at our hotel around 12:30pm and pre-registered, got our wrist bands, and found some food to eat. They rob you blind with their food prices down there! $4.99 for a HOTDOG! I mean... come on! It was crazy! But we didn't get a whole lot to eat because I wasn't paying $40 for a lunch of hotdogs and hamburgers, no way! After lunch, we went to the indoor amusement park and rode some rides and played a few games. Ayden even got to go on his first roller coaster! His reaction... 'THAT was dangerous!' But it didn't stop him from going on again the next day with Jay!

And what would a post about our Dells trip be without a few pictures?! Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought. (Although I do have to say that I was a little disappointed with my camera this week and how some of the pictures turned out. The lighting sucked and I don’t know enough about my camera settings with poor lighting to make them how I wanted so maybe I should say that I was disappointed in myself this week and how I handled my camera.)

Ayden was just tall enough to drive the bumper cars himself! And him and Lily had a blast on the teacups! Even I got dizzy watching them spin around so fast!

Here is the rollercoaster that Ayden and I went on! He was just tall enough to ride this as well! It was lots of fun, but I’m pretty partial to any rollercoaster, hehe!

Ayden and Lily also hit up the ‘drop’ ride! It was hilarious watching Ayden go on it the first time because I don’t think he knew what was going to happen. They both had a blast! Lily was technically about an inch too short, but the operator let her on (but she did get turned away a few times when the operators switched, boo). They both LOVED this ride!

The hotel had guaranteed us our room at 4pm, but we headed back to the front desk around 3:20pm so see if our room might be ready a little early... NOPE! They said it wouldn't be ready until precisely 4pm! So what did we do... we parked our butts on the couch across from the front desk to wait.

Unfortunately, the kids were starting to get antsy and crabby and tired and more and more people were milling around waiting for their rooms to be ready too. Kristi and I got into line to finally get our rooms! Our rooms were conjoining which totally rocked! Lily and Leila spent a lot of time in our room playing with Ayden!By the time we got settled into our room it was time for supper so we munched on the food that we brought along. Remember me telling you they rob you blind with the food prices... we came prepared (for at least the time we were in our room, we didn't feel like eating in our cars for lunch and they wouldn't let us carry any food or drinks in with us). After supper it was time to hit up the water park! Ayden was tall enough to go down the tube slides with someone, he loved the lazy river, and couldn't get enough of the hot tubs! I didn't get a lot of pictures in the water park because I didn't want my camera getting too wet. Boo, but it was still loads of fun!We also went to this place called Wizard Quest. It was SO much fun! You had to go and find the wizards and then free them. For the younger kids, they could just find the wizards and free them, but for the older kids and adults, you have to find answers to questions and earn points to be able to free the wizards, so even if you are able to find the wizards, if you don’t have enough points, you can’t free them! It was a TON of fun!

Here is a less than glorious picture of me in the ball pit. There was this tunnel you had to crawl through to get to a secret room to see if you could find one of the wizards. Of course the kiddos wouldn’t do it unless someone else went first. Let me tell you, it was no easy feat to get through that tunnel and then because I had slip on shoes on, one of them fell off… IN the tunnel and I almost couldn’t find it because it was pitch black in there. Haha! SO much fun though and unfortunately, the wizard was not in the secret room beyond the tunnel. Better luck next time!Would you believe that after going through a secret maze, that you had to crawl under the table and through another tunnel to find this wizard?! I would have NEVER thought to crawl under the table! They do give clues along the way to help though!

We ate at the Moose Jaw for supper and it was pretty yummy, expensive, but yummy!Here is my lame attempt at a family photo in the mirror. Jay was none to thrilled about it and I chopped Ayden’s head off at the neck. Oh well, they’ll get used to me and my camera at some point, right?! And finally, my friend Kristi, her daughter Lily (who was my bud for the trip), Ayden, and myself. Kristi’s husband Nick and youngest daughter, Leila, were waiting for them in the car… gearing up for the horrific drive home!

The drive home in and of itself should be its own post. It was terrifying! Kristi and her family left about a half hour before us and I text her asking how the roads were. She said that they were pretty good, but that it was really windy out. My car can handle windy, just so long as the roads were okay.

We headed out and the roads were, like Kristi had mentioned, pretty good… for about half of the trip. Then they started to drift over… not too bad, and then they started to become snow covered, okay getting worse, and then it went down to one lane and we were going about 30-35 mph and I was almost in full blown anxiety attack mode. Thank goodness Jay was driving! It was probably one of the scariest, if not the scariest drive I’ve ever been through. I prayed and prayed and prayed that we would make it home safely and when we hit our driveway I thanked God over and over and over and almost burst into tears. It was THAT bad!

Thing is, our driveway was plowed shut and Jay thought that my car could make it through it… um… or NOT! We got stuck… turning into our driveway. I was just overly thankful it wasn’t on the side of the road or in a ditch somewhere along the highway. I could deal with being stuck at the front of our driveway. And some neighbor was out plowing and was nice enough to give my car a push with his plow to get us out and then plowed our side so we could pull in. Some people are just SUPER nice! I couldn’t believe how much snow we got though! Will teach us the next time we think to take my car out of town for a weekend when this can still happen. Oops!

It was a super fun vacation though and I’m so glad that we decided to go! Three more days and then it is back to reality… ugh!

CIAO! LOVE ME!