Ally's first day of Kindergarten!

Today was Ally's first day of Kindergarten! It is bitter sweet. I can't believe she's old enough for Kindergarten, but yet on the other hand i know that she's a smart cookie and will do great! She didn't even seem upset when I left today. She kept asking when I was going to pick her up, so i think as long as she had an idea of when I would be back she was fine. I showed her what 11:30am looks like on the clock, so i think that helped.
She sat down at her chair and started working on playdough. She loves playing with playdough, so it was nice to see her excited to start her first day.
Here are two pictures of her in her uniform. She looked so cute! :)

Kids riding their bikes with NO training wheels!

We are SO proud of our children! They are both now bike riders without using training wheels!

Tommy's definitely Matt's son - riding without training wheels at 3 1/2 yrs old! I think Matt's going to start training him for the Tour de France! :) lol

After watching Tommy ride his bike without training wheels, ally decided she would give it a shot today. She was able to ride on her own on the 3rd try. She's very proud of herself...and so are we! :)
The next step is to get the training wheels off of her own bike. She felt more comfortable on tommy's b/c it's lower to the ground than her bike is.

Here are videos. You may need to let it play through once (it may be choppy the first time) and then replay again. That's how it worked for me. If you can't watch it at all, it may just be your connection.
if you click the box to the right of the sound symbol, it will make it full-screen.
For some reason the sound doesn't work. It works on my camera, but not on my computer.

Tommy's videos:





Ally's videos:

We're back from our wonderful vacation!

We had a WONDERFUL trip to Wisconsin! It was a great experience. The kids loved it. Tommy would go down a waterslide and say, "that was crazy fun!" and ally would say, "absolutely!" lol They really enjoyed themselves. It was such a nice week. Our resort was amazing. We were at Glacier Canyon, which is part of The Wilderness. They have 7 waterparks, 3 of which are indoors, which was nice. It was only about 75* outside most of the days we were there, so it was nice to have the option of going to one of the indoor/heated waterparks. We did get to go to the outdoor waterparks on two afternoons when the temperature got a little higher. Tommy gets really cold easily, so after going down a tube slide (yes, BOTH kids were brave enough to go down on a double raft with either me or Matt) 3 times or so, they would shiver and we would bring them back inside to warm up.
Our condo was great. We had plenty of room. It had a full kitchen with dining area, living room, two bedrooms, two full baths, and a laundry room. The kids had their own bedroom with a tv, which they loved. We told them that they could watch tv at night before bed, which is a special treat since neither of them are aloud to have a tv in their room. They didn't nap the entire time we were there, but they had so much to keep them occupied that it didn't really matter. They were both so well behaved! There was very little fighting between the two.
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Wisconsin Dells really is a great place to take your family. There is so much to do. Not only did we have unlimited access to the 7 waterparks, but there were also 2 dry parks, nature walks, arcades, etc. You really didn't even need to leave the resort! Although, we did. lol We ate breakfast and lunch at the condo, which helped on saving money as well as giving us a little rest time after swimming for hours! We ate dinner out each night and found a really good pizza place called Moosejaw Pizzaria and Brewery. It was YUMMY!

Each afternoon or evening, we chose one activity to do off the resort. We went go-karting, mini-golfing, bowling, and took a Duck Boat ride. It was a lot of fun. I have to say that I can't imagine having a better time anywhere else. It will definitely be a place we would consider turning into a tradition going every few years as our kids get older. There's something there for kids of all ages. We are SO grateful to my grandparents for giving us a week of their timeshare. It really was such a wonderful thing for them to do. We will never forget it.


One of the indoor waterparks. The kids had a wonderful time...


...and as you can see, so did Matt! :)

These waterslides were in one of the other indoor waterparks. This blue one was my favorite. It was SO fun! Tommy says it's his favorite, too!

Another fun thing to do at the resort were the "dry" parks. They are HUGE indoor playgrounds for kids and adults. There were tons of slides and thousands of foam balls with airgun type things so you could shoot the foam balls everywhere. Matt had a ton of fun with that. lol




This is a senic view along the river. The city of Wisconsin Dells has made this a really nice tourist attraction. It was so peaceful there. It's so nicely landscaped and provides a really nice walking path along the Wisconsin River. We had a lot of fun doing this one late afternoon.

Towards the middle of our trip, we had a rainy day. Although there is PLENTY to do indoors, including waterparks, we decided we would take that day and do something different. We went to a place called Knuckleheads where the kids bowled and rode a few arcade rides. After we were done here, we went back and swam again.

Here's Moosejaw Pizzaria and Brewery. It was SO good. I will miss their pizza.

The kids couldn't get enough of these silly cars for Moosejaw. The moose is sitting on top of the car and when you look at it from the back, you see the moose's rear. lol The kids thought that was so funny.

We took a Duck Boat ride, which is a vehicle that the military used to allow them to drive on land or water. It basically turns into a boat when it hits water. Here's what it looks like when it's in water.

Here's just a neat rock formation on the Wisconsin River.

Pictures of all of us on the Duck Boat ride.

Here is one of the wave pools at the resort. This was one of the kids' favorite parts. They loved jumping over the waves or going on an innertube. Ally didn't like to go out too far, so she stayed near the "shore" with me, but Tommy went out to the big waves a few times with Matt.

One day we went mini-golfing. It was a lot of fun. The kids really enjoyed it. It was the nices mini-golf place i had ever seen. It had beautiful flowers all over and it was really well-taken care of.

The mini-golf place also had a Family Fun Center for families. It was a GREAT place for us to go. We went back there several times. The mini-golf and family center (which included a playground, sand pit, jumping pillow, and pedal cars/track) cost us a total of $10.75. Then when we went back and had the kids play at the Family Fun Center later on another day (w/o playing mini-golf) it was only $2 per child to play ALL DAY. It was really great.

Here are the kids pedaling away on their pedal cars.

oh, and the biggest kid of all, Matt.
This jumping pillow was tons of fun. I tried it for a few minutes and it was a blast. Very safe, too. It was huge and there weren't many people on it.

Ok, i know it was a lot of pictures, but they really were the best 50 out of several hundred pictures. lol ;) It was hard to narrow down!