Family of Travelers!

We just got back yesterday from our family vacation to Wisconsin. We had a great two weeks as a family and visiting John's parents & brother Brett. I can't believe how quick our vacation went and how much we packed in to those two weeks.

One of the favorite things our kids loved was going to the Cumberland beach at Beaver Dam Lake. There were jumping platforms that Annie & Charlie loved to jump off of. Both kids love to be in the water but Annie was a little fish. Charlie loved to build sand castles. There were tons of frogs at the lake and Charlie would build them sandcastle houses to live in. Charlie also loved to take his little fishing net he got and to try to catch the little fish swimming around. Audrey had fun toddling about the water and playing in the sand. We must have gone to the beach half a dozen times and the kids never got bored with it.

Charlie and Annie did lots of fishing with Pop & John. The fishing wasn't great this year because Wisconsin had such a cold long winter that quite a large amount of fish didn't make it. But.. with that said the kids still caught lots of fish and had a great time doing it. Annie wins the award for the first Garrison to fall into the lake. Luckily she had her life jacket on and was near the edge of the ramp to the dock and the water was pretty shallow at that point. I even went Kayaking for a little bit with Gerry on their lake- I will admit though as I get older I don't always enjoy the thought of going into the water with lots of fish and all the other things that live in there.

All of the kids loved Bubba as much as ever. Audrey would wake up in the morning asking for "Bubba bubba" until he got to get out of his crate for the day. Then she would stand at the door watching for him to come back whenever he had to go out. The kids loved going down stairs with Gerry to the exercise room and throw the ball for Bubba. Yesterday in the car on the way home from the airport we asked who was excited to go home and Audrey said "bubba, bubba."

One day Gerry & Joe took us out to see the farm the have purchased on the Yellow River. There are tons of old out buildings on the property and the kids had a great time looking into them and trying to guess what they had been used for at one time. We walked out with Joe into the "Meadow" and it was just beautiful. The kids loved picking the wildflowers. I could just picture a house on the edge of the meadow looking out over the river. Joe took John and I into the old house but I had to run out after we started up the stairs and I saw all the animal droppings. John stayed just until Joe went into the basement to see if he could find what kind of animal had gotten trapped inside during the window and had attacked all the window frames on the first floor. He said he thought he found the remains of a squirrel but I had to take his word for it because you couldn't have paid me enough money to go down the stairs!

Another day Gerry & I took the kids into Hayward to the Wilderness Walk which is like a wildlife zoo. The kids all had a blast feeding the deer, horses, birds and other animals that were there. Annie loves animals so much and had no fear, she would run up to whatever she saw and pet it and try to hug them. One of my favorite things there was watching her run after the chickens to try to pet it. It took Charlie a little bit of time to warm up to feeding the animals but once he did he loved it, even Audrey would hold out her hand with corn on it for the animals to eat. She was a little leery of the small baby goats though which was really cute.

Gerry got Annie and Charlie these really neat coloring books where you learned about the birds in Wisconsin. Often they would sit and look out at the bird feeders and when they saw a bird they would look up the picture then color the bird. One morning Gerry came out early and both of them were sitting quietly on the couch looking out the window just watching for birds. Charlie got really good at identifying the birds he saw. He loved finding the Oriole,Yellow Finches and Wood peckers. He would always tell us when he saw a squirrel and would run out onto the enclosed porch to try to scare them away. One night at dinner we were all sitting there eating and Charlie starts yelling "EAGLE, EAGLE, EAGLE!" and sure enough out side the window an eagle flew into a tree and was perched outside while we ate. The kids had another great sighting on this trip - a bear cub! I was driving just down the street from the house and there in front of us crossing the street was a baby bear. I was so excited for them that they got to see one because we always talk about them.

We took the kids again to the Dells and spent 3 days at the water park. The kids all had such a great time there and it is becoming one of the kids favorite summer traditions. Annie is just fearless and was up to do any slide she was tall enough for. Charlie and John went on the Hurricane (a huge massive slide that sends to through a huge tunnel sliding from one side to another before you drop into a shoot out the bottom) this year and John hurt his tail bone but other than that they loved it. Although after that Charlie didn't like going on any slides that were dark at any point. Audrey loved the water park and loved to play in the fountains and toddler areas. John had to go into Chicago one night for an early business meeting so I took the kids to the indoor play center that night and they loved it - it was chaotic to say the least! There must have been 100 or more kids running around. At one point I was talking with Annie and turned around and couldn't find Audrey, I had that horrible panicking a mom gets when she can't find a child. Luckily she was just a few feet away and another mom was holding her hand bringing her back to me. One of the nicest things about the resort we stay at is everyone is so friendly and nice. One night there we took the kids into town and then we went to a little arcade, Annie did the funniest thing, she and Charlie were playing a shooting game and she must have unloaded her gun in 30 seconds - we were laughing hysterically.

When we got back from the Dells John's brother Brett came home for a few weeks and it was great to get to see him. Annie has the biggest crush on him and we would tell her we were doing something and she would say "is Uncle Brett going too?" or "no, I am going to do what Uncle Brett is doing". Brett was a great sport about it and let her constantly sit on his lap and let her hug and kiss him. John and Brett had a great time together also! They saw a few movies and golfed a couple of times together. John got in lots of golf on our trip. There is a little golf course down the street from his parents and he finally broke 90 so he was ecstatic to say the least!

John, Joe and Brett went on a fishing trip on our last day in Wisconsin and came home and had us all laughing so hard over their antics and stories for the day. Apparently they used live leaches as bait. John kept making the sound they made as he would pull them off his hand. Luckily for all of them they weren't the blood sucking leaches!

Gerry & I took the kids to see Space Chimps while the boys were fishing and the kids loved it. It was a rainy day and it was fun to see the kids having a great time together and with their Nan. It was a great vacation and it was so nice spend time with John's family. It is always bitter sweet when vacation is over and you go home. Now it is time to get back to life!

Charlie starts school on the 25th. I can't believe he is going to be in first grade. We are almost ready for school to start we just need to get some new shoes and a new lunch box. I am on the Social Committee for his schools PTA this year and it is fun to be working on the back to school family picnic in a few weeks.

But for today we are going to just relax at home then we are going to lake with Natasha and the twins tomorrow!

I posted tons of pictures of our trip on our Picasa site, so if you had some time to kill feel free to check them all out! family pictures