Mount Olympus Water & Theme Park!

From Mommy: We certainly saw some interesting architecture on our drive. The Dells is a tourist trap akin to a mini Las Vegas. This place here is a replica of the White House, except up-side-down.


Ooooh, there's our park! Check out the Trojan Horse!


Here's where we stayed for a couple of days. It was a long drive, we were hot, and ready to get out of the car and play!

The water park didn't open until later, so we started with the theme park. Can you make out Micah and the boys at the entrance?

The boys didn't meet the height requirement on most of the big coasters, so Micah and I tag-teamed riding them while the other took the boys on the kiddie stuff. It being the off-season, there were maybe 10 other people in the whole place. Most of the time the roller coasters carried ONLY Micah or me. It was a kind of unsettling feeling being the only one riding. Kinda creepy, really.

We had fun on the Tea Cups, Bumper Cars and Play Structures.


Then it was time to cool off in the indoor water park!

Ooooo! The place was HUGE. The pics don't adequately relate the scale of this stuff.


The pirate ship was very cool....

But Kai wasn't too sure about the slides on the other side. Daddy says, "It's OK! Daddy will catch you!"

After much coaching and prompting....


"I did it!!"
Solomon, the kid who hollers if water gets on his face in the tub, surprised us. At first he was very cautiously checking things out. Then this little girl squeezed past him as he was contemplating using the slide. With a quick, "Excuse me!" she ran past him and dove down the slide on her tummy, face first, giggling all the way down. It wasn't long after that that he was shooting down that slide Superman style. At the end of the ride he even followed the example of the little girl and wiped his face with his hands with a big smile, like water and him had been best buds all along. Gotta love peer pressure.


Emboldened by his success, he decided to go with Daddy down the biggest slide in the place. They climbed and climbed up about 8 stories with their 2-person intertube in tow. You can just barely make out Micah at the very top of the stares, I held my breath as I waited with Kai at the bottom. That's an awfully big slide for such a little guy...


...then there they came! Laughing and wiping their eyes!


"Let's go again, Daddy!!"

Kai did end up trying one of the milder adult slides but was unimpressed by the walls of water you slide under at different intervals along the way. And he was completely unimpressed with the amount of water involved with exiting the slide at the end.
He said, " I liked the part where I slided, but not the part where I drownded." So Daddy and I took turns taking Solly on the big slides and playing on the pirate ship with Kai, who eventually became comfortable with the littler slides, fountains and pools.


My guys and me.


OK. This slide to the left and below is the one. The slide I figured I could handle when I asked the lifeguard, "Which one is the fastest?" He pointed out which one it was with raised eyebrows as I nodded and headed that way. I emerged disoriented, half-drowned and bloody. Seriously. I needed the first-aid station for my gashed baby toe and the chunk missing out of my knee. Micah took stock of his sputtering, bloody wife, made sure she was going to live, then headed off to conquer the offending slide. He fared better than I did and, in fact, went 5 or 6 more times in a row to prove his dominance. I still have painful wounds and band-aids lining my bruised knee..
.
...but we had just the BEST time. The place was gorgeous and filled with little stone critters and beautiful murals. The resort was full of everything Greek and it was all very impressive. We met some real nice folks (a shout out to Terry, a sister in Christ whom we met in the gift shop) and just plain had a great time. If any of y'all are ever in the Wisconsin/Minnesota area....it's worth the trip.


We took our tired selves back to our room at the end of the day and ordered a movie, Evan Almighty, for our TV and munched our TV dinners. It was a great movie and our night wrapped up with 2 wiped-out little guys and 2 happy parents.

The Ice Queen

After I scoot her off my lap, I get this look:

Not. Happy.

Nelson's Ice Cream & The Teddy Bear Park

From Solly: This morning we woke up and decided to do some of the things that Gramps was looking forward to doing on this trip. One of those things was teaching us his secret recipe for Deviled Eggs which has made him somewhat of a legend in the family. Gramps was a chef for a long while and this is one of his masterpieces. It was a family affair, shelling eggs and mixing the ingredients under his direction. Then we were off to satisfy Gramps' unrelenting desire for Nelson's Ice Cream. Now, Gramps has been talking about Nelson's Ice Cream Parlor since the initial planning of this trip, months ago. Gramps and Gram both grew up around this area and they know all the best spots from when they were little. They have stories to tell about the places we go and it's fun to hear their stories. Over in Stillwater is an unassuming little ice cram shack that serves unbelievably huge cones of delicious ice cream in any flavor you could imagine. When we pulled into the parking lot Gramps shouted, "Ah! The promised land!!".Gramps with his long-desired cone of chocolate chip (half gone, already!)

Mom got peanut butter chocolate fudge, same as me! By the way, that's only 1 scoop she ordered!
Gram and Vickie got hooked up, too. YUM!
Look at the size of the child-sized cones! Mommy and Daddy were shocked as the lady handed over our ginormous cones. Score!
Malachi was thrilled to see that they offered a flavor called "Superman". He was very impressed.
Then we went to a pretty park down the street. We met a little guy named Ezra whose Auntie asked if we were from out of town. When we said that we were, she asked if we'd seen the Teddy Bear Park. We said that we hadn't and she promptly offered let us follow her over. She was anxious to show us her city's best park which wasn't too far away...




These next several were taken at the Teddy Bear Park. It was sooo cute and we had a great time, the whole family played all afternoon - Even Gram!
The park is set on the side of a set of cliffs and off to the right there's caves to go into. There's also cute stone teddy bears sitting everywhere!
This is us and a friend we met. His name is Sailor. Mommy thought it was fitting to get a picture of us on the boat.My family and me with a teddy. I love my family!
The playground and slide look like trees!They have all sorts of live children's' shows in this area. There was none going on today, but the weekends offer magic shows, musicians, dace recitals and all sorts of things!


These next 2 pics are those that I took - all by myself! The folks getting all mushy
My Mommy :)

News about Sx3

We heard from the girls' caseworker. Their Mom is doing very well caring for them while we're here. When we get back the judge will most likely transfer custody back to her.
Please pray for my attitude. I knew this would happen. I did. I had a peace about it. That peace seems to have disappeared and in it's stead has come a strong desire to get "my babies" back. I miss them. I brought them home from the hospital and I have this sense of entitlement when it comes to them. They were supposed to make up for everything. I know, it sounds weird. But what's worse is that, with this sense of loss coming into my heart, comes flowing all the past loss from before. I miss Rayna and wonder how she's fairing with her new family in Washington. I hope our foster babies, McKayla Rae and Damiion Andrew (although it blows my mind that by this time they're no longer babies but have recently celebrated their 9th and 8th birthdays), are doing well all these years after being reunified with their Mom. I wonder what ever happened to little Taysha, whom we tried to adopt from Haiti all those years back.
These memories are tainting the news that we were chosen for Committee for a baby boy named Michael. It seems we'll be going to Committee before Christmastime. I was pleased to hear the news, don't get me wrong. I just wonder if his memory will be included amongst the rapidly growing stack of those labeled, "loved and lost".
Thank God for Micah, Solomon and Malachi, my own guys who are mine forever. If they weren't, I may not be strong enough...

Looking Forward to October 2nd...

From Mommy: Last night we witnessed the most amazing thunder and lightening storm. I've not seen the likes of it, ever. As we sat enjoying it (or in the case of my youngest son and I, uneasily peering around and flinching every so often while clinging tightly to one another) we heard a sound over the noise of the thunder. I looked over to Donovan in puzzlement and was answered with, "It's a tornado siren."
Well, that's nice. A tornado siren. As we ushered the boys inside I realized how much I miss Oregon (go fig, huh?). I asked Dono what we should do and he responded with, "We wait to see if trees and 2x4s start flying 'round. If they do, we head down to the basement." Mmmmm. Yeah. That's all very well for the Wisconsinites, but this girl's an Oregonian. I like my trees root-down, my 2x4s nestled tightly in between the walls, and my tornado sirens kept safely inside my copy of The Wizard of Oz, thankyouvermuch.
As I listened to Donovan and my husband discuss options for Gramps (he's in a wheel chair and the basement stairs are steep and plenty) I became more homesick. I think the feeling peeked when I heard the guys decide "we could leave him upstairs, get a rope and tie the old man down, wheelchair and all, so he won't go flyin' 'round..."
Thankfully, the storm never escalated beyond high winds and huge flashes of white lightning, but it left me ready to go home. I miss my dog. I miss my house. I miss my family and my homeschool co-op. For all the fun we're having here and all the good times spent with Micah's wonderful family, and even though the Dairy State is just beautiful, I would be hard pressed to ever move out of the Willamette Valley. It's just...home.

Mall of America

From Solly: We got up early and headed to the Mall of America yesterday! Until recently it was the biggest mall in the world, but Canada's mall has overtaken it's spot. In retaliation the MOA is considering an expansion. We were wondering to whom else they could possibly rent a space - they already have 1 of everything you could possibly imagine (sometimes 3 or 4 like in the case of McDonald's). Here's me, brother and Daddy catching a bite to eat at Chipotle's. It's like Baja Fresh and we really enjoyed it.

Here's some of the stuff they have there. Up above is the awesome Tree Swing. The roller coaster intertwines with it and a bunch of other rides and shops as well. Below is us and Uncle Dono playing at Lego Land. They have stations full of Legos for kids to use. You can build a car and then take it to the track and race it against other kids'.

Here's Kai and me on level 2 (there's 4 levels altogether), and a good shot of Gramps & Gram. It's been so fun to spend all this extra time with them! By the end of the day we were jealous of Gramps' "stroller".

...and some more of our favorite parts of Lego Land. The dinosaures were huge!
It was a long day and, boy, were our legs tired. We were there walking through it until 7pm and didn't even get to a big chunk of it. Whew!