The Dells!!

We kicked off our summer by heading up to the Wisconsin Dells on June 11th for a day of fun with our good friends, the Schaefer family! Brian and Steve (the Schaefer papa, and also our bishop) had waited in line at a radio station where they give away these awesome free passes for the Dells. Since both families needed 6 passes and they only gave away 2 per person they had to go twice and took some missionaries from our church with them the second time to get all our passes! Our first stop was to ride the Wisconsin Ducks. They are crafts that can go on land and water and originated during World War II. We went on a nice long ride and it was a lot of fun. In fact Nora said, "I could ride this all day and not go to the water park and have just as much fun!"

Brian, Wes, Nora, Eli and Jake, Sophie, Emma, Josh, Miles, Jamie and Steve

After the Ducks we had a picnic and changed in to our swimming gear to head to Mt. Olympus water park! Here are the kids ready to go!

Doesn't this look awesome?!

Josh, Jake, Sophie and Nora.

Wesley loved this little area (that's him in the blue shorts)

Poor Nora still had a pretty bad case of swimmers ear but she wanted to still go on our trip and not postpone it. She was pretty tough but not her usual excited self :(

Sophie is a little thrill seeker and went on all the scary rides. Any ride with a drop-off or anything like that she was totally there and loved it. I went with her on a few and even when I hesitated she would just jump in without a second thought. There was one ride where some high school boys were second guessing going down (the straight drop off one) but when they saw Sophie do it without even hesitating they decided they had to as well.

This is Jamie (the Schaefer mama) and funny Emma. After we wore ourselves out at Mt. Olympus we let the kids all choose a ride to go on that wasn't part of the water park. Our tickets were only for the water park so the roller coasters and such we paid 2.00 per ride.  Brian and Sophie went on Hades 360, which is their new wooden roller coaster that goes underground and upside down and they loved it. Nora and I also went on it but we didn't love it so much. It was so jerky and it made Nora's ear hurt really bad and I was so worried about her I didn't enjoy it either (usually I would!) Brian took Miles on a go-cart ride and Wesley was content to just hang out. After the rides we went out to dinner to Pizza Ranch, which is a Pizza buffet place. Yum!! We had a great day and