A Little Getaway

Yesterday Matt took off of work and we decided to leave town for a little getaway. We knew we wanted to go somewhere with water so the kids could splash around. We narrowed our choices to the Dells, Duluth and Owatonna. After some thought we decided on Owatonna because it was by far the closest place and with two little kids that is always a plus. Besides we thought about changing our stay to just one night instead of two...which we ended up doing. So bags packed and everyone ready to go we were on the road.

First stop: Cabela's. Which apparently is a really cool store if you love to hunt, fish or anything of the sort. Well, Matt loves all of the above so he was pretty excited to go. Alexa actually liked it there too. They have huge fish tanks and about 5792 different stuffed animals (everything from lions to deer to elephants to fish) on exhibit. Kind of cool. Kind of creepy. So after far too long looking at boats that we obviously weren't going to buy we headed out.

Next stop, the water park. We barely made it to our room and Alexa was undressing to get her suit on so we basically threw our stuff in the room and headed to the pool. We were there pretty early, like hours before we could even check in (even though they let us) so we got the whole place to ourselves for almost 2 hours. It was great! And guess what I did AGAIN? Pulled out the camera and got about 8 pictures taken before it died! UGH! Thank goodness I had my cool new phone that has just as good of a camera right? Yeah except I still don't know how to use it! So we didn't get very many pictures, but life goes on...I guess.

Also I would just like to point out how much stuff we had for our overnight trip. Amazing? I think so! I am such an overpacker but managed to pack each person only one small bag. (Although if we happened to have been stranded there for about 5 days we would have all been fine!) :)

Even though the water park was nothing in comparison to the Dells it was actually just about perfect for this trip. It was small enough where Alexa could be running around and doing her thing and us not having to worry about losing her or a zillion other people running around too. Although they claimed to have a "lazy river" however it was not all that great, which was okay because we had no time for being lazy, unfortunately. :) Our favorite part? The tube water slide...Alexa loved it! Matt and I each probably went about 500 times with her. (Okay maybe it wasn't 500 but it had to have been close.) I think I can speak for all of us when I say we had a blast. Matt and I were laughing the whole time because Alexa was just so happy and excited and just screaming with joy!

Here's Alexa and Daddy after going down the slide...

Braden waiting for everyone else to get ready. You know, forget about all the toys I strategically jammed into his one suitcase, all the kid wanted was one of Alexa's flip flops. :)

At the restaurant, once again no toys...just a spoon.

We didn't really decide about how long we were going to stay until last night but after just the one day we decided come home today. Besides the fact that I don't think anyone got a whole lot of sleep. After we finally got around to dragging ourselves up from the water park, got showers and settled in our beds it was way past our usual bedtime. And I don't know about other people but no matter how comfortable hotel beds are I can never sleep very good. Anyway, we got packed back up and came home which turned out to be great. It was beautiful out today so we spent most of the day outside playing and relaxing...because what does a person need more after a vacation? A little R & R! :)

Oh yeah, Alexa's second favorite ride....