Water park weekend

I mentioned in an earlier post about taking a trip to Dubuque, IA. We went Thurs afternoon through Saturday afternoon. Dave's brother Josh suggested meeting up at a hotel that has a big water park that is well suited to little kids. They were making the weekend trip partly in celebration for their son Austin's 5th birthday and thought it would be fun for us to join them. It wasn't exactly in the middle between our houses, we drove about an hour and a half, they drove about 3 hours. Overall the weekend was really fun. It was definitely nice to catch up with Josh and Carrie and see their kids. Violet, Austin, Renee and Calvin had so much fun playing together. Baby Wesley is 4 1/2 months old, and stayed in the arms of an adult most of the weekend. He got in the water once. I didn't swim at all...I just didn't feel up for it with such a large belly and nothing comfortable to wear in the water. I don't own a maternity suit...so I mostly took care of baby Wesley while everybody else swam and went down slides. It worked out pretty well, actually. We met up Thursday evening and both arrived at the hotel (Grand Harbor Resort) around 6 pm. We fed the kids some Easy Mac in our hotel room so they could get a little something in their bellies before hitting the water park. Violet was SO anxious once we arrived to get her suit on as fast as possible and make a mad dash to the pool...(I can SOO relate, I used to be "that kid" begging my parents to go swimming at any hotel we ever stayed at! Just the smell of chlorine in the hotel was so tempting!). She paused for enough time to snarf down some noodles and then we all headed down to the water. Both kids had life jackets on the whole time, which gave Violet free reign of almost the entire pool. There was a huge structure the kids climbed on most of the time that had 2 very long and twisty water slides. I think Violet spent 90% of her time going up and down slides. The end of the slides didn't end in a large pool either, which was nice...it ended in a few inches of water...like the slide itself tapered off slowly. Dave had his hands full keeping track of V and C at the same time. Calvin was pretty scared of everything at first. The big climbing structure that had the slides on it also had an enormous bucket of water that occasionally dumped its contents of water over the whole thing and made the loudest crash sound...Calvin got scared every time that water dumped out. Thursday night was really late. All of us adults were really hungry after letting the kids play so late in the water, so we went to the hotel restaurant and eventually finished dinner by 10 pm. All the kids were wiped...and fell asleep very quickly once we got back to our hotel rooms. We spent an hour or two in J&C's hotel room that night talking, but once the clock hit 1:30 am we had to call it a night...all of us were exhausted. Too bad all the kids woke up at 7 am the next morning!! Ughhh...why don't kids sleep in when put to bed so late? I'll never understand that. :P The morning was a little rough...and the moment we woke up we vowed to take naps when the kids did. We had brought along some cold cereal so for breakfast, we ordered a big glass of milk and let the kids eat cereal for breakfast. Dave was still full from the big dinner the night before, and I was craving protein, so I got a 2-egg omelet from room service off the kid's menu. Of course we headed down to the water park again that morning. For the next three hours the kids completely wore themselves out, and were starving by the time we got them out of the water. Josh ordered a couple large pizzas for everybody and they were gone in about 10 minutes flat. Violet ate 4 pieces of pizza, Calvin had almost three. Nap time came next...and for some reason, Calvin started screaming 45 minutes after he fell asleep. Dave drug his crib into the bathroom and shut the door so it was dark, and coaxed him to go back to sleep. He did fall asleep for another hour or so, which was a huge blessing. Violet, Dave and I all slept for awhile. We scouted out a public park location by the recommendation of the hotel's concierge service - he recommended a park called Cleveland Park. We all thought it would be a good idea to do something else than the water park again that day, and hit it in the morning before we left on Saturday. The park he suggested was only a couple miles away, and it was really nice. It had nice equipment, a view of the Mississippi being way high up on a bluff, and the weather was just barely warm enough to enjoy an hour of park play. We headed out to dinner after that - we went to a little place Josh and Carrie knew about called the Shot Tower restaurant, or something like that. Very casual and dark, order-at-the-window kind of place and stay as long as you want. Carrie and I were determined to eat healthy, so both of us got grilled chicken salads. Josh, Dave, and Violet were chowing down fried cheese balls!! A rare greasy treat that we never get a home, that is for sure. The kids played a bunch by pretending to play video games in the corner of the restaurant. Calvin and Renee ran endless circles around a pole in the middle of the room. I'm not really sure how it all happened but we thought for sure we'd get the kids to bed at a decent time by going out to eat before 6:30 pm...but they didn't get tucked in until 9:45 pm. We stopped at a grocery store after the restaurant and picked up another box of cereal, 1/2 gal of milk, and some bowls for breakfast. Another late night! But it was much, much nicer. Both slept better, and everybody woke up at 8 am. Ahhh...we sort of breathed a sigh of relief. At one point (some time between 6 and 7 am) Calvin did cry in the middle of the night, so Dave moved his crib into our room (it was a 2-room hotel room with a door separating the rooms) so he wouldn't disturb Violet...and another miracle occured...Calvin fell asleep for that last hour so we could all sleep more. I am feeling redundant here, but we went to the water park again Saturday morning. Calvin was well acclimated (finally) to the pool so he had the most fun this morning kicking and splashing in the water, being brave enough to go down the tiny baby slide. He's such an athletic, agile guy, but very sensitive and cautious at the same time. Violet disappeared in the maze structure of climbing and sliding, I watched the baby, and everybody else had fun. Violet threw a major fit when we told her it was time to leave. It took her about an hour to change her attitude...it almost wrecked our lunch plans. She finally came around and got happy. We got the kids bathed, packed up our stuff, and checked out by noon. We met Josh and Carrie for lunch at A&W...and called it a day, and went our separate ways. The cousins did lots of hugging and kissing goodbye - good thing everybody is healthy! Our drive home was short...but just long enough for them both to fall asleep. We put them in their beds when we got home and Calvin was the only one who fell asleep once put in his crib. Violet did not take to sleeping in her bed and kept getting up to adjust her baby, blankets, teddy bear, and saying she had to pee...so her nap was very little. All in all, the trip was really great. Of course, there were times it was stressful and all of us parents would look at each other over 5 little screaming and whining heads all in one place and say "Are we having fun yet!?" with exasperated looks...but those moments pass. It brings parents so much joy to see their kids having SOO much fun. The looks on their faces doing something new and daring is so great, especially seeing Violet enjoy so much independence. I could tell she was so proud of herself for not needing help with hardly anything. Seeing how far she's come in the last two years, being so afraid of everything to being really brave and bold was a big difference to me. Her confidence rubbed off on Renee who just turned 3 to try some things on her own too. Austin has always played that role for Violet. Their ages this trip: Austin-5, Violet-4, Renee-3, Calvin-2, Wesley-4 months. Soon to be another newborn in the mix!!