Wisconsin Dells

Since our family never really had a chance to take a family vacation last year and since we were tired of the cold dark snowy winter weather, we decided to take a trip to the Wisconsin Dells for a few days between Christmas and New Year's Day. Wisconsin Dells is known as the "waterpark capital of the world" (I never would have guessed Wisconsin would be the home of the waterpark capital of the world - I would have thought that would be Las Vegas or somewhere hot!). It's a little town in the middle of Wisconsin completely built around tourism and boasts the largest waterpark in the world along with the two largest indoor waterparks in the world not to mention the other 20 or so waterparks in town.

Since our kids were not ready for the really big and crazy waterslides (and we didn't think our pocketbook was really ready for the pricetag on the really big and crazy waterslides), we decided to go to one of the smaller, children-oriented waterparks. Adam would have liked some bigger slides, but he was content with the 5 water basketball courts. There was one area meant for toddlers - Ben liked to spend a lot of time there. Another area was where the rest of the kids spent the majority of their time (pirate ship with water cannons, basketball, and slides). Our hotel was attached to the park so we could go from the room to the park anytime we wanted without having to go out in the cold winter weather.

A lot of our pictures turned out blurry, so some of the best shots didn't work out, but following are a couple of movies and a few still shots of our time at the park.



Here's Lizzy playing in the toddler pool. Every few minutes the pelican opens his mouth and vomits a tub of water down on the kids. She and Anna had a great time with this. After getting spit on, they would run over to the water fountain and take a "shower".


Share Video at DropShots.com
Here's Anna and Adam playing in the bigger pool. Anna is enjoying her favorite slide and Adam is of course playing basketball.


Here's Anna and Lizzy getting spit on by the Pelican.


This is a blurry shot of Ben getting drenched. He enjoyed the water most of the time, but was usually the first to be ready to go back to the hotel room.


Another shot of Adam playing basketball. In the background is some of the other fun things to do (like the pirate ship).

I should mention that when our family had taken on us President Hinckley's challenge to read the Book of Mormon, this trip was the reward we had set for ourselves if we all finished. Adam, of course, led the way and finished about a week early. We're very proud of him for accomplishing that! The girls also spent a lot of time listening to stories from the Book of Mormon reader. Tammy and I followed and finished up just in time.