Love, Love, Love the Dells!

You have seen us partying at the Dells before so you don't need a lengthy description. We were once again at the Wilderness resort, staying in a family cabin, and swimming and sliding to our heart's content. There was nobody there. We never waited in any lines at all and most of the kids were big enough for the super cool slides so we moved out of our usual spot in kiddie land and hit the big stuff, over and over and over, until the adults could not walk one more flight of stairs.

On the first day, Chloe was a bit wimpy and refused to go on anything but her daddy's lap, the wave pool, or the lazy river, but with 6 adults there it was pretty easy to find someone to watch her while we took turns on the slides.

This was the first year Alyssa was tall enough for the Hurricane. We noticed that Olive also got on without anyone measuring her, even though her and Alex were about 2 inches too short to ride. I was pretty sure Alex would refuse to ride, because he doesn't care for thrill rides, but he went and we have his maiden voyage on video. He actually liked it and we rode repeatedly for a day and a half until they finally measured him and declared him too short to ride anymore. No big deal. There were plenty of other slides that he was happy to run off to, and he had a great time on the Hurricane while it lasted. Here are some still shots of our hours and hours battling the hurricane.

How awesome is my frizzy hair in this one?

Sarah and Linden spent much of their time in the lazy river. He napped in there every day, which was so cute, but every time I grabbed my camera he seemed to be awake. Oh well, that was cute too.

On day two Seth dragged Chloe to the tallest kiddie slide and pushed her down. That could have ended badly, but thankfully she loved it and found her new favorite spot in the waterpark.

We all rode Dueling Mammoths a couple times and then most of the crew wanted to head to the wave pool. I don't do the wave pool so I agreed to stay and ride with Alex, Cedar and Olive, 800 times a day.

Since you are in the dark the whole ride I took a bunch of pictures with my waterproof camera and then we would have a good laugh looking at what we got after each ride.

Eventually the stairs conquered me and my jello legs needed a break, so I turned my spot over to Grandpa.

And went to watch monkeys in the wave pool.

And the indoor/outdoor hot tub

And the kiddie area.

And after a day in the water, there is nothing better than more water.

Notice that after two kids were washed and removed from the tub, the water is getting a little cloudy and soapy.

The last two tub buddies had quite the bubble bath going, thanks to the jets and everyone else's shampoo.

On our last day of swimming, we arrived at the park 30 minutes early for the Ken-Ducky Derby, where the kids are given a duck to race in the lazy river. There were only about 14 kids there and 7 were with us, so the odds were certainly in our favor. There were 3 winners per heat and Alyssa and Linden both won duck whistles in heat one.

Cedar won one in the second heat. We came up empty in the third.

But for the fourth race, all ducks were returned to the water to race for the grand prize and Alyssa came out victor. Woo Hoo! Aspen's poor duck was in the lead three times and got caught in a whirlpool right by the finish line and started racing backward, but everyone got to keep their duck and everyone was a good sport. Sidenote: Alyssa looks just like her Uncle Michael in this next picture.

Here are the winners, plus Alex who was given Linden's whistle and Chloe who was given Alyssa's whistle.

I never managed to get any pictures of the arcade and indoor playground but the kids had fun there too, and came away feeling like winners, like all kids do when they flush $20 down the toilet to "win" a cheap bottle of disappearing ink. After the little champions went to bed we had a good time snacking and playing a game together. And when we went to check on Chloe, we found her like this...

She got out of bed and put on her cheap arcade tiara. Ahh, the joys of childhood.

I have one more little Dells adventure to show you, but it requires me to scan a picture and I will get to that later. For now, I will leave you with a couple of hurricane videos.