Wisconsin Dells

I have a backlog of posts to make!

Two weeks ago, destiny pulled the extended family together for a weekend in Wisconsin Dells. Ashley, my 13-year-old niece, had a softball tournament scheduled there, it's the waterpark capital of America (family fun!) and is a halfway point between Chicago and the Twin Cities, and it happened to be my 35th birthday and my brother Drew's 40th birthday. My parents arranged for us all to meet up there for the weekend. Destiny often has help from my mom.

On day one we met up with Mom, Dad, Sarah, and Logan in the late morning and headed off to Chula Vista. I love water parks in all their humid, germ-incubating glory and hope to make repeated visits in years to come, but with three little non-swimmer (or rather pre-swimmer) kids, the key to success on this trip was that the adults far outnumbered the kids. Without help keeping the kids safe around the water and having someone to hand one or more of them off to, the stress would have outweighed the fun. I think we have a couple more years before we visit a place like this with just our family of four.

With extra adults to help with the kids, though, this was a ton of fun. Cora was thrilled to see Logan again. They took a little while, but the girls eventually warmed up to the kiddie pool area.


Hazel is a total water baby and had lots of fun bonding with Grandma and splashing in the kiddie pool while Geoff and I took Cora around to play in the various water spouts and sprinklers and sprayers and dumpers in this big labyrinth:




Grandpa also got some Hazel time in while watching from a deck chair. Geoff and I even got to hand off both kids so the two of us could float around the lazy river or go down the water slides together.

The little ones only have so much endurance for such a stimulating place, so we went back to the hotel and also had a lot of fun just hanging out with the family there in our adjoining rooms.


We went out to dinner at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty. Wisconsin Dells has changed and built up a lot, to put it mildly, since my family went there a generation ago, but Paul Bunyan's was evidently a place we used go even in the seventies.

Cora considers holding hands the ultimate expression of friendship, and often tries to hold hands with little kids she's just met at the playground. I've had to step in several times (when the other random playground kid objects and squirms away) and tell her "Oh, Cora, I don't think she wants to hold hands right now, and that's okay. You can still play together." I think she's recently started getting the picture.

However, Logan was perfectly willing to hold hands. Cora's all right with the world, here.


Say cheese:

In our hotel room Hazel and I shared one bed, and Geoff and Cora shared the other. Cora was all tucked in with her usual four loveys/stuffed animals, and a few minutes after lights-out, she sat up, turned to Geoff, and stage-whispered, "Daddy, do you need a animal??" holding out one of her loveys for him to sleep with. He assured her he didn't need it, and that she needed to lay down and go to sleep. Amazingly, everyone slept pretty decently.

The next morning we went to Denny's for breakfast, and coincidentally it was my actual birthday so my Grand Slam breakfast was free! Free birthday breakfast at Denny's--cross that one off the bucket list.


After breakfast we went to Mt. Olympus, which I thought would be another indoor water park, but which was actually a freaking huge, full-on theme park and water park in one.

We stuck to the water elements. Didn't get many pictures, but we frolicked around the indoor water tot area a bit:

And then headed outside. The grandparents and the toddlers had base camp at a picnic table in the shade, and Kyle and Sarah and Geoff and I checked out the lazy river, wave pools, and even a huge water slide.

When we were kids we got to pick our activity for our birthday, and with an August 1 birthday, I spent more than one childhood birthday at a water slide, so it was fitting and fun to do it again as an adult.

In the afternoon we met up with the softball family to enjoy a meal and some arcade games before hitting the road back to Minnesota. It was a very fun weekend.