Our First Family Vacation!

We had the best time on our first family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells!  We stayed at the Wilderness Resort and it was very fun :)

Ben wasn't so sure about Monty the Moose...

Day One:
We arrived at the Wisconsin Dells and went straight to the Pirates Cove Adventure Golf!  Pirates Cove is a family tradition for the Badtke's, so this was a lot of fun.

There is a picture of me in this chair when I was like 8, heck if I can find it now.



Next we stopped at Walmart to pick up food for the hotel room, then we checked into our hotel.  After unpacking, we got ready to Swim!

After a few hours of water fun, we closed out the park and headed back to our room with the intention of renting a movie and ordering a pizza.  We ordered our pizza from Sarento's as well as some tiramisu and a cannoli, yum!  The movie, however, was ridiculously over-priced, so we put "Wreck-It Ralph" on for the kids on the laptop (since there was no DVD player in the room).  We are so glad that we brought the laptop and that we brought our own movies... we had promised a movie to the kids on the way back to the room and it was the only thing keeping Elena from a total meltdown (as she got tired and ready for bed, she wasn't so sure about this staying-at-the-hotel thing).

Day Two:
We woke up rather early (by vacation standards) to go to the Ken-Ducky Derby.  This is an activity they do every morning for the kids.  Each kid picks a small rubber ducky and their name is then written on the bottom.  All the duckys go into a basket together, then after a countdown, they get dumped into the lazy river.  They flow with the current to where the kids are waiting at the finish line.  Neither Elena's nor Ben's won, but they still had fun and got to keep their duckys.

After the races, we headed to the Arcade. After lots of fun, and lots of wasted money, it was back to the room for the kids' naps.  After the kids were refreshed, we headed down to the Polka Dot Pots shop in the hotel.  This is a make-your-own pottery shop. We made a plate with our hand prints on it for our house, and one for each set of grandparents.

  

This photo was taken before they were baked and sealed, 

so they are much brighter now that they are finished.

These plates took FOREVER! After we finally finished these projects, we hit the waterpark again, but only for an hour.  We had dinner at Survivor which was at the hotel, and headed off to bed.

Day 3:

We woke up and went to the hotel's breakfast buffet, after discovering that they serve instant coffee, we stopped by the Starbucks next store to get a proper charge-up.  We quickly headed back to the pottery shop to pick up our plates because we were very excited to see how they turned out.  We were very pleased with the final product!  We intended to go do some more swimming at this point, but there seemed to be a medical emergency in the indoor section that we were hoping to swim in, so we played in this amazing 4-story tall Play Park while waiting for the waterpark to reopen.  

We then hit the waterpark again and headed back to the room for naps (all of us).  After naps, we got dressed up and headed to Fields for dinner.  This was our much anticipated, splurge, fancier dinner.  The kids were very well-behaved and quiet, so much so that a nearby table complimented them on their way out. After our delicious meals, we headed back to the room.  We popped "Pippi Longstocking" into the laptop this night.

Day 4:

We've been waiting all week to ride on the "Wisconsin Dells Ducks" and this was the morning.  Luckily, our hotel had Duck pick-up right in our parking lot. So we hopped on at our hotel, and got dropped off back at the hotel afterward!

It was a little chilly, but nothing that light jackets didn't take care of.  The kids had a lot of fun going from land to water and back to land again.

We even saw some beautiful deer and other wildlife!

When we arrived back at the hotel, we finished watching "Pippi Longstocking" from the night before.  We were wasting time until we could go Tie-Dye t-shirts.  Elena chose her own Tie-Dye design, and her own colors!  We made a shirt for Ben, too.  After we finished the shirts, we headed off to the Wisconsin Dells Mining Company.

Elena had a lot of fun finding all the treasures in the sand.  

Unfortunately, Ben only wanted to eat the sand.

After the mining, we drove through Dairy Queen for ice cream, and headed back to the hotel for a family nap.  When we awoke, we went back to the arcade to play more games and cash in all our points for prizes. Elena got a stuffed piggy, among other useless junk and candy.  We also came home with a giant bouncing ball (almost the size of a fitness ball), which was very tricky to fit into the car when packing to head home. We tried many times to win a ball from this giant crane game, to no avail.  A group of boys won ball after ball after ball from this machine, and one of these boys gave one to Elena.  It was quite adorable.

Day 5:

We woke up and packed as quickly as we could to make it out by check-out time.  After Sean very strategically packed every inch of the car, with Elena and I supervising from the balcony of our room (Elena encouraged him from afar by yelling, "Juh bob, Dad. Joh bob!" aka Good job, Dad. Good job!), we took a horse-drawn wagon ride.

This was our last day in the Dells and the first day that it didn't rain!

We then headed to the last waterpark of Wilderness that we had not already encountered.  There are 3 indoor and 3 outdoor parks all within walking distance and all connected by sky-way walks (There is 1 more indoor and 1 more outdoor, but you need to drive to get there, so we didn't even try to go there).  It was a little chilly, but the water was warm enough to make it more comfortable.

Kids fast asleep on the drive home... and that giant bouncing ball, in the only place it would go.