Our Family's Blessings: Spring Break 2017!

In March, for Eliana's spring break, we took a trip to Wisconsin to visit my sister Abby and her family. David was in the middle of one of his busiest months of inpatient service, so we left him to work hard while we partied for Spring Break. That means I drove the three kids from Ohio through Indianapolis to Wisconsin mostly by myself! Yikes! We did split the trip up a little though by stopping in Indy to visit grandparents both there and back. The kids did amazingly well in the van, and luckily Laney slept most of the time. She travels much better than Eliana did at the same age.

Abby took a few days off of work so we were able to spend lots of time together with her, her husband Mike, and my niece Hannah. The kids really liked playing with a new set of toys, especially Laney

Laney was just learning how to sit up on her own. At this point, she still needed something to hold onto to keep from tipping over.

After checking out the toys and the playground, we explored Wisconsin together. We went bowling at Mike's school (I bet they don't get a lot of toddlers at that particular bowling alley). Eliana and William really enjoyed themselves. Hannah wasn't so sure about the whole thing. Laney slept in my carrier, which added a unique challenge to bowling.

Watching the ball roll slowly down to the pins.

Pretty pumped! Eliana got to be quite the expert at using the ball ramp. She figured out that the ramp was not quite straight so you couldn't aim it directly down the middle of the alley. She had one of the top scores for the game - better than my score!

William had what I called the "Punch Method" for bowling - he put his ball on top of the ramp and then did the double punch to get it down. Unfortunately, even with two punches, he usually couldn't get his ball rolling fast enough to knock down more than a couple of pins.

Watching very seriously. The bowling alley (remember, on a college campus) did not have bowling shoes small enough for William so he had to play in his socks. He also liked to carry his bowling ball himself to the ramp. There were several near misses on smashed toes, but we managed to have a fun game without any tears.

We had a very busy Saturday in Madison, visiting both a huge cave and the free Madison zoo. I think both older kids enjoyed the cave although there were a couple of areas of concern. We learned that this cave had no natural entrance, so there were no bats living there. However, they did have some very small water insects (I think?) that floated on the cave pools. Eliana did not want to see those! Then, at one point in the tour, the tour guide turned the lights off to show how dark the cave was naturally before electrical lighting was added. William really did not like that part! Luckily there were several small kids on the tour, so I think the tour guide knew to keep that part very short. We did enjoy looking at the cave formations and imagining what they looked like (melted ice cream mostly).

The narrowest part of the cave. Laney and I could not follow the rule of not touching the walls.

See the melted ice cream behind us?

The zoo of course was a hit. The first animal we saw was a lion, so William spent much of the rest of the time roaring like a lion. Until we got to the giraffes. Then he started stretching his neck and chomping his jaws, pretending he was a giraffe.