Kalahari

All 5 of us having breakfast at the resort (and yes, a few of us are still in our pajamas)!

The Kalahari was all decorated for the holidays- including this giant gingerbread house (my mom's favorite).

Lily and the Kalahari mascot

Eli loved these water spouts!

Eli's favorite hungry hippo slide

He likes going down backwards!

This was one of Lily's favorites.

For some reason Eli liked playing at the end of this slide (and waiting for his big sister to come sliding down)!

My mom caught this picture of Lily going down her favorite slide.

These next four pictures are from the Kalahari's website- it might give you just a taste of what it was like! Above is the wave pool and at the bottom center you can see Lily's favorite (yellow) slide.

This is one of the family raft rides. Lily and I enjoyed this one together three times in a row (and she wanted to keep going)!

The lazy river (my mom's favorite).

A couple of days after Thanksgiving Joe headed home (driving straight back to Maine in our minivan all by himself) and the kids and I have stayed to visit with my family for another week. Two days after he left we got an extra special treat. My parents took the kids and I to the Kalahari resort in Wisconsin Dells where we stayed overnight and enjoyed two days at one of the largest indoor water parks! I'm just going to go ahead and say that it was incredible! It didn't matter that the kids and I were all still sick because as soon as we hit the water we seemed to forget about anything else. The water park itself was amazing- literally a full sized water park inside- complete with at least 7 adult sized slides, lots of kids slides, family raft rides, a surfing ride, wave pool, lazy river, hot tubs, and all sorts of fun water features!

Lily loves every second of it and pretty much went non-stop for hours on end. Lily, my mom and I were some of the last ones there at night and Lily, my mom, and dad were some of the first ones there in the morning! At the beginning of the 2nd day my dad seemed to think that Lily might be worn out after a few more hours in the water in the morning. I knew she wouldn't be.
Dad came back that morning after two hours saying that Lily was still going strong and just as excited as ever. They guess that she went down her favorite water slide about 50 times that morning!

I've decided that this might be one of the best vacations available for families with little ones (at least little ones who love water like mine do). Our family sized hotel room was just a few halls away from the water park and with the overnight stay we got two free days at the water park. And because it was indoors I didn't have to worry about sunscreen or the weather or temperature or anything (it's lovely and warm inside all of the time). We could play for a few hours then stop for a meal and then go back and play some more. My parents and I were able to rotate staying with Eli while he napped and even he had a great time playing in the water when he was awake. And of course if Joe had been there it would have been even more wonderful. So check out the Kalahari resort (or other indoor water parks across the country) and go if you can- I'm already dreaming about our next family visit someday! Thanks mom and dad for this special winter treat!

P.S. Tomorrow I'll be flying home alone with both of the kids (pray for me)! We decided that it would be just too much for me (as I'm lugging both children, the stroller, their bags, and our computer through airport security) to also bring my camera. And I just couldn't risk checking it in my luggage so I sadly had to let Joe take it home with him. It was hard not having my camera at all of the fun things we did this week (like the water park) but it was also a little relaxing. Thanks to my mom for many of these pictures (and the ones in my next few posts coming up)
and for letting me borrow her camera from time to time!