VACATION!!!!!

Ok folks, get ready for a doosie! And when I say doosie, I just mean this post is really, really loooooooooooong. But it's our vacation! Yay! I would like to point out the book that Chelsea is reading in the above photo. Was it a reflection of our trip? Not really, fortunately.

This is our first rest stop of the vacation. Four hours into the drive, four hours to go. It was actually our only break from Minot to Oakdale (right outside Minneapolis) MN. The girls did very well up until the last half hour or so. But who can blame them? We had Chelsea in a pull up just in case the time came to "go" and we weren't anywhere near a rest stop. (She's not really the pee-on-the-side-of-the-road kind of gal.) But she didn't need to actually use it, which was a very pleasant surprise.

Here we are at the Havican's in Oakdale. I was sitting on the bed. Brie came up to my legs and I expected her to climb up my legs as she usually does. I didn't feel any climbing happening so I looked down and she had disappeared! Ok so she just went under the bed.

Day two of vacation: The Mall of America! We had to rent two strollers. There was absolutely no way of fitting our own stroller into our car in addition to all our junk.

This picture is for all the MSU Beavers out there. Our first stop was the aquarium at the mall. Right off the bat we spot a BEAVER DAM!!! MSU folks will appreciate this the most. :)

That is one gigantic sting ray! Steve Irwin, look out!

Whoa! What a neat experience! There's fish all around! There were even some scuba divers in part of it. That would have been fun, but I don't think Brie would have enjoyed it very much.

Chelsea thought the Nemo-fish were pretty cool.

Don't worry, Brie! There's no sharks!

Ooooh, Ahhhh...

Chelsea's favorite part of the aquarium was the jellyfish. They were pretty neat.

Octopi on heads. Nice.
It was kind of funny that the gift shop was toward the end of the aquarium, but you had to go all the way through it to get to the next fish. Marketing tactics at work. (Didn't work on us though. No souvenirs besides our precious pictures.)

I was a little surprised that Chels actually willingly stuck her hand in the water and touched some of these creatures. She's not afraid to get food on her hands, but dirt. No thanks.

My treasures!

This little girl was SOOOOOOO noisy at this restaurant! It was happy noise, but my goodness girl! We had a nice chat with the people at the table next to ours. They went to the aquarium at about the same time we did, but we didn't notice them there.

Kokomos, Hawaiian type food. Chelsea requested fish. Did she eat it? Hardly. Does this girl ever eat anything besides peanut butter or hot dogs? Every now and then. Brie happily ate pieces of bun and fries along with her babyfood meat and cereal.

Rawr! Legoland is way cool. But Chelsea hasn't played with them too much so she wasn't overly impressed. Meh. Maybe by the next time we come she will be more appreciative.

And this shows how impressed Brienna was with it all. Actually she had a great time looking around at all the people and had fun wheeling around. A baby just can't stay awake through everything sometimes.

Chelsea was excited to go see Blue from a distance. When we got up close, she was really nervous and had to be coaxed over to him. Ha! My shy girl. I wonder how long it will take before she gets over it. It took me till late high school/college to really come out of my shell. Hopefully she doesn't take as long as me, hehe.

We enjoyed the indoor amusement park for most of the rest of the day. I especially liked the climate control. I did notice a bit of sun on my face and forehead at the end of the day though. Chelsea loved the fact that she was tall enough for some of the kiddie rides. I'm not sure what that kid on the end is doing.

Driving a water boat.

Poor Brie is not tall enough to get on the rides yet, so she had to stay on the outside and look in.

This one wasn't overly impressive for either of us. I get sick going in circles quite easily. And Chelsea's first ride was the log flume, so going back to this was like, meh, to her. She was absolutely devastated that she couldn't ride the bigger green roller coaster. She passed the 36" mark, but it will be awhile before she gets to 48". She did a second ride on the log flume as a consolation.

Day three we show up in Madison, Wisconsin to visit some more Heit peeps.

Wesley and his mom and his younger brother or sister. Or rather younger brothers or sisters. Or maybe even younger brother AND sister. That's right. Twins are on the way! We are excited! We are also very excited to add a different boy cousin C.O. Jeff and Lois early in 2011 as well! Yay for babies! (No, I am not pregnant. It's just Lois and Amanda as far as we know.)

All three kiddos at play. The girls were very excited to see their cousin and play with him. When it came down to it they all kind of played on their own, next to each other. Someday there will be more enthusiastic cooperative play, I'm sure. :)

This is in one of the coolest children's section of a library ever. It was all medieval themed. There were lots of other activities as well. There were ginormous blocks, computers (Chelsea's top choice of activity), a cash register and play food, puzzles (another favorite), and much more. It makes our library seem boring, even though it is pretty cool too. It wasn't all that quiet though, imagine that.

We all went mini golfing, all us Heits. It was pretty challenging with little ones that enjoyed gathering up the balls they saw rolling around.

This was a neat hole. You hit the ball into one hole up on the top of this here hot dog slide and it comes out the bottom near the real hole. You have to slide down the slide to finish out the hole. Chelsea took advantage of it....several times.

Whee!

Whoa, was that a ball that just rolled by me? How did I miss it?

That Chelsea-girl of mine. She loves her sister, but she shows it in such rough ways. I guess grinding your heads against each other is a sign of love? At any rate, it makes a cute photo.

This was a fun see saw type thing that the guys are hanging on. I was trying to get the whole crew in the shot. You can see Wesley watching in awe, but Brie was just off camera at the bottom, also watching in awe.

Who can pass up a puppet show like this in the middle of a mini golf course? Not us, obviously, hehe.

And here we are finally coming to the main attraction. Our final destination on our 10 day journey: the Wisconsin Dells! Hip hip! Sorry this is so dark. This is the living room area to our resort suite. Lemme tell ya-I could get used to accommodations like these!

Here we have our dining area. That is an adjoining door, for extra large groups who take up two suites. We didn't. Not even with three extra folks the second night. :)

This is the secondary bedroom where we stuck the said three extra folks. That was Chris, Amanda, and Wesley for anyone not aware. Though technically I guess you could say there were...FIVE...extra folks. Tee hee!

Here is our lovely King-sized bed. We had two side tables and an armoire complete with TV. Ahhhh. I like the balcony as well. We had a great view of the parking lot and the woods just off the parking lot. We could see the people on horses walking their trail through the trees. The girls got a kick out of that.

This is the main bathroom which adjoins the two bedrooms. There was another small bathroom with just a toilet and sink on the other side of the main door, but I didn't find it too picture-worthy. I did enjoy the fact that we had two bathrooms though.

Our big/little kitchen. They supplied dishes and there was a dishwasher and everything. It's a good thing because we filled at least the top rack with just cups and bowls over our two day stay. It would not have been fun to have to wash them all before leaving, and it would have been pretty rude to leave them. We didn't make use of the stove or microwave. We mostly continued with our meals of peanut butter and trail mix and crackers-when we didn't spring for a restaurant or fast food anyway.

What is Chelsea eating? Peanut butter, of course! I'm glad that she likes that cheap, easy meal so much. I just wish she would branch out her taste buds a bit. Brie, on the other hand, will eat just about anything you put in her mouth. Gotta love that! Can you see her peeking out from under the giant stools?

Peek! She thought she was pretty hot stuff for getting under there....until she discovered that she didn't know how to get out. You will also notice the absence of pants/shorts. Why, you ask? Well. I'll give you the big answer in one little word: POO. 'Nuff said.

Yay! Finally! The highlight and main attraction for Chelsea: SWIMMING TIME!!! She'd been looking forward to swimming since a week before we left. Chelsea was feeling a little sick apparently and we had her eat something before we could go swimming for the next couple hours. She got so excited and ate so fast that she barfed. Poor kid. Poor, poor kid. Though really, I think she was more grossed out by the barf than actually feeling bad. I think she just ate too fast from excitement. And maybe a little too much car time. After a good clean up, a change of clothes (into swimsuit) and a calm down, she was good to go.
I also love this photo because their arms and legs are at the same angles! It almost looks like they are posing together. This is also the one photo of the two where they look NOTHING alike. They are sisters, I promise! ;)

Ah, the girls' first boat ride! We took a pontoon across the lake to go to Cubby's Cove first. There were about 8 water parks in this resort. There was a shuttle bus that could go around on land, but we figured this would be more fun. It was. :)

Look how big she's getting! I'm glad she could make use of this suit. I got it for Chelsea when she was about 11 months. It's a size 12 month suit. I didn't realize how small they ran until we tried to squeeze Chelsea into it. I mean, we literally held onto the suit and shook her up and down to get her into it. It was none too big for my 9-month old Brie, but it was comfortable still. (I had Chelsea's next size suit along, just in case)

Brie's first pool experience. How did she like it? NOT AT ALL! I snapped this picture right before she launched herself toward the edge of the pool. She loves bath time so we thought she'd like this shallow water to play in. Well it was CHILLY. Too chilly. She refused to happily touch the water again. Now this was our first swim on a waterpark-hopping vacation and she wasn't happy at all. I wondered if she would have any fun at all, and was thinking how LONG of a vacation this is going to be.

But, as you can see, she warmed up to it ever so slowly. Rick and Chelsea played inside for awhile till they couldn't stand the chilly water then came outside to look for me and Brie. I took Brie outside to the warmer, sunnier big pool. I sat on the first step in about an inch of water and poor Brie was practically climbing to the top of my head to get away from it. We stayed there for a couple minutes and I held her tight and patted her and talked calmly to her. Then I went down another step and she freaked out again. Repeat calming process. And so on. Eventually she got her feet in it and I showed her how to put her hands in and splash. She got the idea. After that, swimming was no big deal!

This is the infinity pool. You can see the edge of the pool is right at the water surface. It's supposed to make you feel like the water goes on and on, and maybe even that you are swimming in the lake. It was pretty cool.
How do you like our differing skin tones? Chelsea is even whiter than me, all peaches and cream. I'm, well, WHITE. But Brie is another story. She was slathered up but good with sunscreen the whole time. She didn't get any tan. She's just got naturally darker skin than us pale folk. Where she gets it? I dunno. Maybe grandpa Kelly.

Eventually I got them fairly well situated (Have you ever tried to hold two squirmy kids in a swimming pool and get them to be still and smile nice for a picture? Oh and not let them drown at the same time? Not. Easy.) and I looked up with a smile, but Daddy had already given up hope of everyone looking and snapped these. That's ok. It was just a brief second anyway, hehe.

Where does she get those beautiful blues? I think it's clear here. :)

SO cute. Our girls got many comments and compliments about their cuteness. The swim hoodies, as we call them, got lots of admiration as well. What can I say, I just have an adorable family. It's always nice to have a sleeping baby, too. Whether it is at home, at grandma's, or on a shuttle bus water park hopping, it's a nice break for everyone.

This is what Daddy and Brie did while I read Chelsea her bedtime story that night. They sat on the balcony and watched the sunset and the people in the parking lot. They might have even seen more people on horses, but I don't remember if the horses were out that late.
This night was my favorite night of the entire vacation. It was the only night where we had just us four together, alone as a family. We stayed with other family members every other night of the trip (or they stayed with us). That was fabulous, and we enjoyed every night and are very grateful for their hospitality and loved having the other Heit's with us our second night, so don't think I thought it was a drag. It was great! But I'm sure you can understand. We had a 3-3 1/2 hour car ride, ate, swam, bathed/showered, ate, and settled in for the night. It was truly relaxing when the kids were asleep and we were able to lounge on a luxurious bed and unwind. Ahh. I sigh just thinking about it. Like I said earlier, I could get used to those accommodations.

The next day, the park hopping continued! Here we were outside our resort waiting for the shuttle bus.

I think she was too big for that little thing, but the other kids were doing it, so why not her? She does have a tendency to do what Brie does.

All three cousins, plus a random kid. I don't know who it was.

Wesley didn't feel like smiling, but I think he might have had fun. Maybe. I don't think he was too sure about all this swimming business.

This isn't the only snooze Brie took on my shoulder. I was on a lounge chair outside in the sun the first time she decided it was nap time. So I covered her up with a towel. Apparently it was not completely obvious that I was holding a little one. That makes no sense to me, but Rick's first thought when he came over was, "Where is Brie?....Oh, there she is." And I chatted with a guy a couple chairs over briefly (don't worry, no flirtation was happening. He was older and had a wife and kids with him) and after I got up he looked over in surprise and said, "Oh, I didn't know you were holding a BABY!" What? How could you NOT know? Weird. But oh well. No biggie.

This is our last huzzah before grabbing some food and hitting the road for Oakdale once again. We were all checked out and everything. (They let you stay and play for the entire day on checkout day. You just can't go back into your room after 11.) We got a 15 minute horse-drawn carriage ride. We saw other people trail riding on horses as well. We mostly stayed in or close to the parking lot, but it was pretty fun. (Despite ravaging hunger on mine and Brie's part, hehe)

Heit, party of (soon-to-be) five....

I don't remember what he was pointing at, but it was pretty cute.

After the fact, I realized I didn't take any pictures of the outside of our accommodations. This is just one side. It was quite vast in it's entirety, which I'm sure you gathered, what with us having to take shuttle buses to everything. It was a great and fabulous vacation. We all had a great time. The kids did well, we did well. (Long car rides are MUCH easier when listening to books on CD. Our choice this time around was "The Alchemist," "The Magician," and "The Sorceress," which still needs to be finished. The library is constantly out of their 1 copy of it, and I just found out there's a fourth book "The Necromancer." So we still don't know the end of the story. I don't even know if the end of the story happens in the Necromancer or if it is just going to keep coming. Ack. I want the whole thing and I want it now. Anyway.
I apologize for my lateness in getting this finished. There is much going on right now. One thing is our basement is getting torn apart. I've got pictures of the progress. I'll post them later. We are having drain tile put in. No more of this flooding crap. I like my carpet dry.


Here is Chelsea on her first run on the log flume ride. The photos that they snap (that we didn't want to pay $10 for) were really funny. The first one, Chelsea's face was kind of a grimacey type smile. The second one, big broad smile and look of anticipation. Do we have an adrenaline junky on our hands? I dunno...