The BEST Family Vacation

When we were visiting my family this summer in Wisconsin my parents took us all on a little vacation to Wisconsin Dells!  You might remember that my parents took me and the kids there about two years ago for a night at one of the indoor water parks...and it was amazing!  So this time we stayed a couple of nights and explored yet another indoor water park!  Wisconsin Dells is known as the water park capital of the world and it pretty much lives us to its reputation.

I'm just going to say right now that it was easily one of the best family vacations ever!  The kids LOVED the indoor water parks (yes, plural...this place was huge).  There was such a wide range of water activities that we were ALL entertained!  Here, let me show you a little bit (though you'll have to excuse the quality of these photographs...there was just no way I was bringing my good camera anywhere near that place)!:)

 

Lily watching the rubber duck race! Joe and Eli watching the giant bucket of water getting ready to dump over. Eli was totally terrified of this thing and when nearby always kept one eye on it!  

Just a small part of one of the indoor water parks!  

These pictures were in another of the indoor water parks...this one was like a terrarium!   

The giant wave pool was one of my favorites...we put the kids on the double tubes and let them ride the big waves with us...so much fun! These pictures though were taken during a break in the waves!  

And these fountains in the floor were one of Eli's favorites...he loved to sit on it and squirt at people!  

The kids enjoyed the many smaller slides...but there were also larger water slides that Lily got to do with us, and family raft rides that we all got to do together!  

The kids even found a beaver slide!  

I had a really hard time getting pictures of this (because it was pretty dark in this particular water park)...but Lily LOVED this purple water slide! I bet you that she went down AT LEAST 50 times during our stay (seriously)...it might have been many more! She would go down and then run right back up the stairs to go again! A couple of times Eli decided that he wanted to go down it too, but would change his mind as soon as he got to the top. Well...except for the time that Joe gave him a gentle nudge and down he went through the slide and by the time he got to me at the bottom he was pretty well terrified...poor little guy...think we'll wait a year or two to try that again!:) So while Lily went on her purple water slide over and over Eli rode the lazy river with Grammy and G-Pa. And he went right back to the smaller slides and ground fountains!:)  

And that's what we did for a couple of days! We would play and swim and slide and ride the waves until we were hungry. Then we would break and rest and eat and go back for some more water fun. We did stop one afternoon to ride the Original Wisconsin Ducks Boat Tour...which was really fun!  

It was an incredible vacation! Other than playing with the kids and watching them have a blast one of my favorite parts was riding the Hurricane ride. It's a large 4 person raft water slide. It shoots you down a tube in the misty dark and drops you into a sideways, inclined, large funnel and you ride back and forth up the sides of the funnel as you make your way down. But before you get dropped into the funnel the first time you really have no good idea of what's coming so it's a pretty big shock! Joe and I rode it together our first time and then convinced dad to ride it with us the next time. That was pretty fun. But then dad and I convinced mom to ride it with us and I have to say that the look on her face the whole time was just priceless...and quite a good memory!:) And of course one of the other great parts was that at nap time AND bed time the kids were just so exhausted that they went immediately to sleep! In fact, at nap time we had to wake Eli up (and even that was hard)! Apparently for a good nights sleep we just need to visit a water park each day!:) Somebody NEEDS to build one of these places in Maine...please!