Final post about the Dells - I promise!

Wednesday, we went back to Mt. Olympus. We did lots more of the water parks and the wave pool, but we honestly spent the majority of the day laying in the sun. I read and read and read some more and Chris slept in the sun. It was amazing and relaxing!

Thursday, it rained and poured and rained some more. We slept in and then we hit the outlet malls. We left the mall and went to Mexicali Rose for lunch. It was amazing. Then, back to the malls, where my husband got very excited when he saw a certain store. Now, my husband isn’t a shopper, so when he gets excited, I try to share in it, and tell myself that if he wants to buy something, go with it, because really he doesn’t shop much, ever. So, back to us, casually walking through the mall, bags in hand and he veers off to dash into this store.

Now, I know my husband and I’m thinking electronics store, pet store, or toy store – it’s true. But alas, it’s the Corelle store. Corelle. Dishes. Yup. You see, Chris HATES the last set of dishes I bought. I bought a whole set of ceramic stoneware dishes that are beautiful, but honestly, aren’t practical. They get sooooo hot in the microwave and yes, I admit it is terrible. He also hated the first set that we had for the same reason. They were black plates that I had gotten when I moved out of home. Again, same thing with getting hot, plus we didn’t have enough. So he was soooo happy to enter a whole store of Corelle dishes. Corelle is what my mom uses (white with the green flowers on the edge – what do your mom’s look like?). He was going to just buy the plain white ones, but we picked out these ones together. Here’s hoping that these are the dishes that I will collect for the rest of my life, because I’m done with trying to find some plates that I love.

Thursday night, we went to a family-style restaurant for supper and then we had tickets to go see the Rick Wilcox magic show. It was amazing and worth every penny. We were so stumped on so many of his tricks and illusions. It was very well done and Chris and I are still talking about some of the stunts.

After the magic show, we headed back downtown and took in the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum and the 4D movies. Ripley's was better than we expected with some pretty neat displays.

This was a man hanging from a telephone pole, being chased by a dog (not pictured), but it was all made out of scraps and trash. I thought it was pretty cool.


This picture is actually carved out of toast. It was so cool. Makes me want to attempt something like this when I'm making breakfast.

And, here we are sporting our oh-so-sexy 3D glasses. We actually got to watch all 4 of the 4D movies because one of the workers really liked us, so she let us stay for the extra 2 shows for free. A 4D movie is really neat because not only are you watching the 3D movie, but you are able to smell things, or feel things that are happening in the movie. Most of the movies involved us getting sprayed with water or poked in the back which did get a little old.


Friday, we took it easy. Chris slept in late, and I got up early to read. I laid out in the back yard, right outside our patio door, and read in the sunshine. Then, Chris got up and we went to Arby’s for lunch because all week long, Chris really wanted Arby’s. I dropped him off back at the hotel after lunch where he worked on getting our internet up and running and I did some shopping at Kohl’s. I like shopping without Chris. That sounds bad, but Chris doesn’t shop – he hovers. He needs to be standing approximately 6- 8” away from me at all times when I’m shopping and I tend to just give up, rather than perseveare when I’m shopping with him. I spent an hour and a half at Kohl’s, then went back to the resort for more suntanning and reading, while Chris relaxed inside watching movies. It was a smokin' hot day and he was enjoying the airconditioning as he was slightly burnt from Wednesday's day of fun in the sun.


We bought a pizza from Walmart for supper and then we went downtown one more time to buy some fudge to bring home. There are approximately 18 places to buy fudge in the Dells, in case you are wondering. Turns out we should have bought way more than we did because both Chelsea and Gavin loved it.


Coming home was great. We got home at about 7 on Saturday night, after leaving at 5:30 in the morning. Chelsea ran outside and dramatically yelled "Mama!! Did you bring me a Barbie toy?" and Gavin, well, he walked across the driveway straight to Chris. That's right... walked. When we left, he was taking 2-3 steps, but now, he's a walking man. I love it!



And that's our trip. Soon this blog will be back to boring ol' posts about regular life and my kiddies. Exciting, isn't it?

Tuesday's vacation

Tuesday, we hit Mt. Olympus. So much fun. We did all the rides and rollercoasters first. I love rollercoasters. These ones were big wooden ones that made a LOT of noise. The only complaint I had is that they were pretty jerky. Chris and I apparently didn’t tighten the first seat belt and I actually slid side to side so hard around the corners of the rollercoaster that I bruised the sides of my legs really bad. But, the ride that freaked us out the best was Hades. It actually went under the parking lot after the biggest, fastest drop, pretty much ever. So, here I am, actually screaming in fear, (they take your picture as you are dropping and mine was literally pure fear), and then you are in complete darkness, the suddenly back up into the daylight, breathe a little breath of relief and then down back again. It was fun, but we only did it once.

Let me start this next story by telling you that to ride Hades, you have to climb up a lot of stairs to load onto the coaster. It’s pretty high up off the ground. When we tried to ride Hades the second time, we had just gotten to the turnstiles, so we would be the next to load, and I kid you not, the rollercoaster comes speeding up over the last hill and stops. STOPS. Those of us waiting have been talking the whole time because it was about a 20 minute wait, and we all get quiet. The employees are using their mysterious walkie-talkies to call in more staff, but we can’t hear what they are saying.

Now there are 6 employees, wearing their festive Mt. Olympus Hawaiian shirts, talking in hush tones. They start to WALK UP THE TRACK. Let me remind you. This is a wooden rollercoaster. The employees start unloading passengers way up this hill track, WAY up in the sky, or so it feels. I’m dying. I can handle rollercoasters, the heights, the speed, going upside down, because I’m strapped in. But seriously, if that had been me, having to walk down the track of the rollercoaster, I’m pretty sure I would have had to bumscootch the whole way. There is NO WAY I’d be able to walk down. Nope. Na-da. No way.

So then, the helpful staff, finally, after we’ve watched the entire population of the rollercoaster get off and walk down the track, one of the staff members says, “We just need a couple minutes to fix up a few things. It’ll be back up and running in 20-30 minutes.”

Yeah, no thanks. Nope. I am NOT going to be the first person to test out whether or not the coaster is good to go, for fear of having to walk down that track. No way.

We walked back down the stairs and decided we were done with rollercoasters for the day and so we then went to the Upper slides, and the slides inside, and then we laid in the sun for a long time. It felt so good to relax, suntan and read. Oh, and I was introduced to my new favourite food. Funnel cakes. So amazing. This one was topped with ice cream and warm apple pie filling.

Wednesday, we did Mt. Olympus again. We did all three of the big slides on the main level and then we just laid around in the sun. They have an amazing wave pool, so we’d jump in that for a while, then go back and lay in the sun again. It was so great.

We had a quick supper at Carvelli's, a pizza and pasta place, and then went back to the main strip. Here, we wandered again, checking out more shops and things and Chris really wanted to check out a haunted house, so we did.

It was really, really lame. No surprise there!

We did decide to check out Wizard Quest. We were a little apprehensive, but it turned out to be the coolest thing we did while we were in the Dells. It's basically a video game put to real life. You are given a quest and you have to find clues and wizards and answer questions. It was unbelievable.

It was pretty physical too. You had to crawl through mazes and tunnels and find secret rooms and passwords. We had such a good time. After we were done this, it was after 11, so we headed back to our hotel.

Day Two

Alright, so the forecast for the week was rain, thunderstorms, and then more rain. I told Chris that we'd be praying hard and speaking to those clouds and it worked! Monday morning, we we very pleased to see the sun and were super excited to hit up Noah’s Ark. I didn't get any pictures though because well, it was a waterpark and didn't feel like subjecting my new camera to water and because well, me + bathing suit = no pictures allowed. :P

It was a great, sunny, hot day, which unfortunately meant lllllooooonnnnnnggggg lines. Seriously, in the morning, we hit 3 slides in just over 2 hours. LONG lines. It was atually kind of fun because we kept running into a few of the same people, but it was really discouraging to spend most of the day in lines. We did eventually find a few of the slides that the lines went really quickly, so we enjoyed those ones, but we didn’t (praise the Lord) get to hit up The Scorpion’s Tail because the line was averaging about an hour and a half for the 15 second slide. I’m very relieved because that slide scared the bejeabers out of me. You stand in this little tiny cylinder, a voice counts down from 3 and the floors falls away from under you and you free fall until you go upsidedown through a loop. Seriously, so glad the lines were long for that one!

Monday night, we headed over to Field's at the Wilderness for supper. We had heard good things, but weren't expecting it to be quite so fancy, or we would have dressed up more. The good thing about the Dells is it's such a family tourist spot that most everyone is dressed very casual. There was a waiter for water, a waiter for bread, a waiter for drinks, etc... Crazy. The food was amazing,
Chris had a steak with blue cheese and peppers that he drooled over the entire time.

Chris convinced me to order the surf'n'turf. The lobster, shrimp, and steak were fantastic, but the scallops were definitely not my favourite.

We skipped out on dessert and headed downtown to more of the shops. There was so much to see downtown. I'll leave you tonight with a picture of my knight in shining armour...

Wisconsin

I'd like to blog about my trip, but I'm going to break it up into a few different chunks because I know there's no one out there who wants to read a big ol' day by day breakdown.

Sunday we were up and on the road by 7, I think. The drive was fantastic. It’s amazing how relaxing driving can be without 2 kids in the car. No Dora or Diego playing in the background, no requests for sippy cups or Chelsea yelling because Gavin is looking out her window – just driving. I took the first 5 hour stretch while Chris slept most of the way. I fell in love with how beautiful Wisconsin is. I did laugh a few times at the gas stations along the way. The farther we went, the stronger the accents got. But this came back to bite me in the butt, when some lady giggled when she was listening to Chris and I. “You MUST be from Canada. How’s the weather, eh?” Mocking me and my accent – why I almost feel like I’m back in Winkler, being mocked by my friends at home! :P

When we got to the Dells, we were a little apprehensive because our resort wasn’t showing up on GPS. Let me explain – we bought into a trial program of RCI Points a few years ago (Run the opposite way from this company, people!). We had to use our points up before August this year, or they would expire. So our travel agent guy kept recommending that we check out the Dells. We had points to go ANYWHERE, but hey, Wisconsin it was. We were put on a waiting list for a room, and when we got the call, we took it. We didn’t really care where we stayed, as long as it was a clean room. The problem was, we couldn’t find out much about it online or anything. So, when we couldn’t find it on the GPS. We were pleasantly surprised when we found it though. It was great and heck, *free* with our points.

It was a one bedroom, with a full kitchen, livingroom and little patio. It was great. I do need to point out here that we drove to the Dells in Chris’s tiny Golf. It cost us a whopping $45 in gas to drive almost 11 hours. I’m pretty sure Chris spent more than this on junk food on the way.

We quickly dropped off our bags and then headed to the action downtown. Chris was excited to eat at Famous Dave’s. Great atmosphere and yummy food. We had some nachos with brisket (I had to ask what this was) and sooooo good. Chris ordered a ½ rack of ribs and I kid you not, when the waitress brought out his food, he actually said in an excited voice “That’s a nice, big rack!!”.

I burst out laughing and apologized to the waitress who was laughing at my husband who was now 17 shades of red. We tipped her well, no worries.

After Famous Dave’s, we hit the Dells Comedy Club for the late night show. It was okay, but definitely not the highlight of the trip. More to come later!

Things they don't tell you about having children

1. You will go through an enormous amount of toilet paper and kleenex the first few years. Not that it's being used for it's actual purpose, but because it's just so darn fun for kids to take off the roll and out of the box.

2. You will never, ever get to eat a hot meal again. It'll be lukewarm, and chances are at some point, your children will be eating off your plate.

3. Same goes for drinks. It's open season on Mommy's water glass around here apparently.

4. Car seats, although a necessity for safety, are a magnet for stains, spills, crackers, cheerios and fishie crackers. Car seats also are not designed for easy cleaning. You have to actually unscrew screws and plastic pieces to take it out to wash it and even then sometimes you can't. Hey carseat companies, can we work on this to make it a touch more user friendly?

5. You will at some point suck your child's soother to get the nasty dust/hair/fluff off of it before you stick it in your baby's mouth. Don't judge me. I know you will or have done it in the past.

6. Sippy cups, again, wonderful for not spilling drinks. Terrible for getting misplaced or lost. Also, the chances of losing a sippy cup with milk, chocolate milk, or apple juice are exponential in comparison to losing one with just water. Nasty. 'nuff said.

7. You might think of a bathroom as a private place to do what you need to do. Kiss that bu-bye. If, by chance, I manage to sneak in to the bathroom without one or two children following me, you can bet at least one of them is pounding on the door before I'm done. It really is the most fun if both of them are pounding on the door and yelling at each other, and screaming and pulling hair, all while you are busy. Makes life so much more fun.

8. Your child's favourite tv show will wind up being one with annoying song lyrics that get stuck playing over and over and over again in your head. If you hear me singing "Shine on, shine on", you can thank the makers of "My Little Pony."

9. Poop, snot, puke, spit up, and pee no longer disgust you.

10. Instead of diligently marking your child's age and height in a safe place, you decide to let the handprints on the walls be a good guide. I say forget about washing walls. These are precious keepsakes for the future!

11. You will be shocked one day when you look at the walls closest to the highchair. I honestly didn't know that fruitloops become cement if left to dry on the wall.

12. Between the ages of 2 and 3, somehow your child will discover that the Band-aid is the magic cure all. Even the littlest, tiniest "owie" will require a Band-aid. If you are like me, your child, at one point, may have 14 band-aids on at the same time because you didn't want to argue any more about them. Pick your battles, people!

Canada Day

We headed down town for the festivities. This year wasn't a great hit, other than the petting zoo. Chelsea went on the bouncers once, but it was smokin' hot and crowded. But, animals are always a big hit.

Chelsea finally held a chick without it fearing for its life.
Gavin was loving the goat action.

And the one bouncer we could convince Chelsea to go on.

Anyways, it's late, I'm tired and I think I'm heading to bed. Night all.

End of June

June was crazy hectic. Going back to work for 13 days was actually really good. I missed my babies lots - like really, this smile melts my heart.

But it gave me a chance to reconnect with co-workers and meet the teacher that I'll be sharing a class with next year. It's definitely going to be a challenging year for sure, but I'm pretty sure that we'll have a lot of fun.

We also took a weekend to go up to GP to meet my newest niece Amie. I definitely got baby fever. "Hi, my name is Amanda and I'm addicted to babies."

As if the end of June wasn't busy enough, Chelsea had swimming lessons. I would rush home, get the kids changed and head to the pool.

And I'm going to include this picture - not because it's a good one of me, but because I love G's face! Too funny.

More posts coming soon, I promise!

Date Night Ridiculousness

Crazy fun date night. We both arranged babysitters and headed to Winnipeg around 4. A quick trip to Michaels for me to get some cake supplies (and glow sticks) then we were off to Montana's for supper. Chris was very excited for the "All you can eat ribs" event. He polished off 3 plates of ribs, with a little help from Shelly who was pretty much drooling on the table.

Then, we went blacklight minigolfing. Some of us were sticklers for rules, and some of us were just there to have a good time.

It got a touch ridiculous with a few clam heads....

some dinosaur kissing...

and some dolphin caressing...

There were two "hole in one" miracles.

It was a great time. I recommend this place to anyone. We had fun. After this though, we decided to go watch a movie. It started at 9:40 p.m. Sounded like a good idea at the time, but when Chris and I didn't get home until 1:40, we realized it probably wasn't the smartest idea ever. Thanks for a great night!

Twenty nine

So, I'm now officially 29. Life is pretty sweet. I keep trying to write 29 things about me and my life, but it's all stuff you've heard before, so I won't. :P Instead, I'll just do a random post.

- Gavin is getting much better at walking. He can take about 4-5 steps when he wants to. When he doesn't want to though, he's really good at holding his legs up in the air so that you can't get him to stand.

- I'm loving celery lately, which is weird because up until a few months ago, I hated it. Pair it with Kraft's 3 cheese ranch and I'm in heaven.

- Parenting a 3 year old is hard. I don't think we're doing that great of a job. Tantrums, tears, timeouts.... Sigh. I miss my sweet baby.

- I'm having a hard time back at work. I don't know where I fit anymore. It feels like I never left, but to everyone else, I've been gone for a year. I've been replaced and life goes on. I don't know where I belong especially because right now, I'm "teaching music" and when I come back in September, I'm teaching grade 3/4 in the afternoon. I can't wrap my head around that one yet.

- I gotta go. Lunchtime!

Birthday Party Extravaganza!

We started off party day with streamers and balloons hung by mommy and daddy and a great big balloon bouquet from Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jerry. We were a little confused by the "Congratulations!" balloons though. Maybe those ones were for us - "Congratulations! You survived year one."

Saturday morning, we had a little party for our playgroup friends. We had cute little cupcakes! Gavin was a little unsure of the flaming cupcake.

But, he quickly understood what needed to be done.

He didn't really enjoy opening presents at all, but his big sister sure did!

Here's a picture of Gavin on his new toy. It looks like he's holding on for dear life on a bucking bronco, but really, his little legs are just a bit too short for this one still.

And.. on to party #2. This party was a friends of the family party. We had 4 families over. 23 people in total. Thank goodness it was nice enough outside that most of the kids played outside! We made a whole whack of kabobs, pasta salad, caesar salad, veggies and dip, fruit and a cake!

If you haven't checked it out over on my cake blog, I urge you to go over there. This cake is definitely one of my top 5 favourites!

This is pretty much the only picture I have of Gavin with his cake. Chris was in charge of photos and they didn't turn out at all. That makes me really sad. They are all so washed out, but I had to put this one in anyways.

It was sooo cute watching the kids crowd around and call out which animals they wanted to eat. They all had manners except my little piggie. She ate a bumblebee and a spider before we even started to serve the cake!

Monkey, anyone? The cake was vanilla with chocolate chips and chocolate pudding. Note to self, next time, add way more chocolate chips!

And... onto party #3. This was just a simple one after church for Chris's parents and brother's family to come over. It was great to use up the leftovers from party #2. I quickly whipped up a cake on Saturday.

This time, he was an old pro at the cake eating part.

So glad we were able to take the time to celebrate Gavin this weekend. Tomorrow is his actual birthday, with mine following on Thursday. It's going to be a busy week as I start back at work bright and early tomorrow morning!

Getting ready for the big one!

Amanda did not nurse her baby today.

:(

This is a sad weekend for me. I'm literally on the verge of tears constantly. I am so sad to go back to work on Monday. Yes, I realize it's only for 2 weeks and 3 days. I know this. But I also know that that's 2 weeks and 3 days that I'm away from my kids. My Chelsea, who throughout the day gives me hugs and kisses and tells me that I'm "the best mommy ever" and that she "missed me so long". My Gavin - my baby who turns one on Monday. One whole year. One. Where did the time go?? I feel like I've missed it. And I'm going to miss them so much on Monday.

Plus, I've been slowly weaning the boob man. I slowly got him down to morning and evening bedtime nursing, with sometimes missing the evening nursing. He's never had a bottle. We never offered formula and I was too lazy to pump, so little man has gotten very attached (pardon the pun). I nursed Chelsea for 15 months, until I got an ear infection and needed to go on stronger antibiotics. Plus, I needed to stop nursing in order for things to happen so we could have baby #2.

With Gavin, I feel like I'm weaning him too early. We don't do bottles or sippy cups of milk. He doesn't take it (Chelsea never did either). He doesn't have a favourite stuffy or blanket. He doesn't take a soother. I don't know how to comfort him without boob! He apparently gave the sitters a hard time going to bed tonight, which is unlike him.

I hate weaning. I can't cuddle him right now because he wants to nurse when I do. I'm uncomfortable and he's not happy. The reason we're weaning now is that in a month, Chris and I are going away for a few days by ourselves and we want to be sure that he's completely weaned and not missing it then. I know it's only for a few days, but not nursing my baby plus a weekend of celebrating his birthday, plus going back to work - it's too much! It's a huge reality check that he's growing up.

He's such a little man.

(and yes, we're still dealing with the rash on his chin, for my facebook friends. The flash in this picture minimizes how bad it is. It looks a lot worse in person. The doctor and the allergist both think it is something that he got into, rather than a reaction or allergy, but we are clueless as to what it was for sure. It's aggravated by the fact that he's teething and constantly drooling and so any ointment we put on, literally is washed away in minutes, and his chin is left wet and raw. I just want it healed already!)

So yeah, there's my post. I didn't mean for it to be all about nursing and weaning, so if it offended you... shush. I'm talking to you, anonymous commenter!

Hot stuff!

Yesterday, we took a trip to the city to take the kids for allergy tests. For lunch, we went to the Olive Garden. There was a 10 - 15 minute wait, so we were waiting in the area at the front of the restaurant. There was a group of ladies there, ranging in age from 30-40, waiting as well. It started out as three ladies, but eventually all 8 of them arrived and were waiting.

At first, I noticed one lady kept glancing over at Chris. I thought at first it was because he was playing with Gavin and she was either a) admiring how cute Gavin was or b) trying to figure out what kind of rash that cute baby had on his face.

Then, she nudged her friend who started looking at Chris. They started whispering. Then they told another lady to look and because she had her back towards Chris, she actually had to turn around and take a few steps to get a look at him. At this point, I interrupted them and asked them what was so interesting.

A few of them started to blush and one lady outright said, "You are so handsome." Another one chirped that Chris looked like he was a model and someone else said that he looked like a dad from the day care that they worked at. The one lady though just kept going on and on about how handsome he was and something about a modelling career. Another lady said to stop, that they were embarrassing him (he was about 17 shades of red by now), but that one lady just kept going on and on. Luckily our buzzer for our table started vibrating so Chris could make his escape.

When leaving the restaraunt we had to pass by their table again and although Chris refused to look at them, I gave a little wave and said "Bye, ladies!"

Next time you see my hottie of a husband,be sure to tell that big ol' hunk of man meat how handsome he is. He'll love it. ;)