Vacations ...

Who said it was cheap to travel these days?? I guess its 'cheaper' but not cheap.

We took Friday and went up to Northern Wisconsin to see Mike's family - didn't stay long, long story but it just wasn't 'fun' to be there.

Saturday we headed to Greenbay to hit a hotel with slides for Amber, our halfway point of up north and the Wisconsin Dells. Stayed the night and swam ourselves silly. We even took a dive before leaving that day. I wish I had gotten pictures of Mike going down the huge slides!

Then Sunday we headed for the Dells - we got there with no reservations (silly I know with it being 4th of July week) but we called the Hilton with our honors card and got a king suite for less than the double rooms at the cheap places. It ended it up being only $127 - we were right in the thick of the Dells and had an indoor heated pool which was great - it got cold while we were there.

We were able to hit Ripley's Believe it or Not - not bad, could have been a little bigger but we loved the tombs exhibit and the shrunken head. The one basket on display has the lid lift up and air kicks out hitting your legs - scared the dickens out of Amber. There was this cool Toast display - sounds odd I know but it was a fantastic picture made out of toast that someone toasted to instead of painted to get the shadows to display this picture. NEAT!

Next door is the Wizards Quest - what a joke!! We were given a bunch of questions to ask, the kids were supposed to scan lights and find wizards - well you can't find the items to scan they are hidden so well that the adults had problems finding them, the wizards are even hidden worse yet!! Some are behind walls that you think are for employees only but they are really for the kids to squeeze through and find the wizards. *Shaking head - Mike couldn't fit through one of the openings, he was too tall. If you let the kids go through, you have no idea where they will come out. Scary thought!! So after 1 hr of climbing through tubes, pushing open small entry doors, sliding down ramps - we called it quits. So not worth the money!

After a little disappointing day we ended up going to the hotel to swim and relax. Ordered pizza and just swam!

The next day we went to the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory - this was neat! Tons of hands on things - we actually were allowed to take the camera into this one so tons of pictures!!

We saw the Mior Spacestation replica - they got to do some ride that shook them all over, there was no way I was going into it - at $3 bucks a pop it was worth it. Tons of robots through out - Amber loves the blue one with the flashing red heart.


High Wire SkyCycle - I couldn't get Amber to do the bike on the rope - you are strapped onto a bike with weights on the bottom and with NO NET underneath shoved out onto a 1 inch rope 12 ft up in the air, you have to peddle back and the kid before us could barely do it. there's no way to pull them back in either LMAO.

There is a special magic shadow wall where you can stand and the camera flashes - then you step away and you can see your shadow - like Peter Pan! I couldn't get a picture of this :(

The hair raising 100,000 volts of static electricity was cool - my hair just stood right up!

Then there was the electric chair - you sat down, put your hands on the bars and held on!! It shook you with vibrations that got worse and worse - by the end your hands are numb and sweating lol - Amber held on the entire time!!

It was neat and worth the money!!

We were going to do the Ducks but the weather wasn' the greatest so we kept our tickets for next week. It's only 1.5 hrs away and Mike has til the 12th off!! Our only vacation time of the year but its soo nice to have all that time - TONS of projects to do :)

We did one more thing besides buying a couple novel items (Amber got a tshirt, snowglobe and a bag of rocks) - we got an old time western picture done... not loving it lol but its cute!