Dallas

After leaving Indiana we embarked on a 15 hour drive to Dallas. We stayed the night there and had a flight leaving from Dallas the next evening to Salt Lake. Since we had an entire day in Dallas to wait for our trip we tried to sleep in, let the kids play in the hotel pool, and then we went to the Dallas Children's museum (got in free with our Witte museum membership), then we hung out at a McDonalds for a late lunch and let the kids play.

We had a few hours to spare before our flight took off so we hung out at the USO at the airport. This USO was great. They had a theater set up and a room for the kids to play in, and the the free food/drinks.

The rest of our Indiana trip

Allie's birthday gift from Mony & Papa:

She was very excited to get her Walking Dog that she's been asking for for quite a while.

We spent a few days out in the heat playing in the little pool.......and with silly string.

playing at GG's (Blake loved chasing after Jackie)

we played at a few parks

We always enjoy our time in Indiana. We had a couple good bye dinners. One at Dog N Suds and another at the Mulberry Pizza King where Allie won a free large pizza.

Derek also started working on finishing my parents basement for our upcoming stay. I feel really bad about us now not being there for the full nine months as originally expected. We're still planning on going back in August to help with the next stage of the process.

Going to try to catch up

We've been out of town since June 2nd.......just got back this morning! It's been a crazy, long adventure and a lot of fun but it's good to be back. Not that we're big fans of Texas but being HOME feels good. We thought we were going to be getting home just to hurry and pack up the house for Derek's cousin to move in to while the kids and I moved to Indiana since Derek is going to be gone a lot during the next 9 months. Well, we got a call this afternoon that they aren't going to do it now. So we're dealing with the sudden change and trying to figure out what we're going to do next. Right now the plan is that the kids and I will stay here until school gets out in December and then we'll head to Indiana for the rest of the school year. We'll have to work on trying to find someone to house sit or rent/buy our house for 6 months until Derek gets back from his deployment.

Since we've been gone so long I'm going to try to catch up some. Stay tuned for posts.

Great Wolf Lodge

Part of our gift to Allie was a stay at the Great Wolf Lodge. Derek's class ended on Friday the 22nd so the kids and I and Mony & Papa packed up on Thursday (Allie's birthday) and headed to Ohio so we could all celebrate.

We went straight to the Boonshoft museum upon arriving in Ohio, at Allie's request.

Then we had dinner at City Barbeque and ice cream at Young's Jersey Dairy.

this boy is exhausted

Friday we finally headed to Great Wolf Lodge. Allie was so excited and said, "this is the best hotel ever!" We spent about 4 hours at the waterpark, had dinner, went to story time, and then ended the night at the arcade. Well, the kids and Mony & Papa ended the night at the arcade. Derek and I went back to the waterpark until it closed. We were very impressed with the bravery of our girls! They went down some pretty scary slides. I'll post some pictures/videos from GWL's website of some of the slides they went on. The next day Mony & Papa had to leave for a wedding so they took Blake back home with them while the girls stayed with us and we spent the morning/early afternoon at the waterpark. We don't have a lot of pictures but we have tons of video. Hopefully I can get some of those posted at some point.

Allie in her very own Kid Cabin at GWL

notice a difference in her facial expressions.......she's overcoming her fears on the slides. And the slides are getting bigger too!

getting ready for story time

posing with Wiley

view from our balcony. The orange slide in the background was Allie's favorite slide.

Birthday Party Time

It's summer, which means the start of birthdays in our family (Allie -June, Avery & Blake - August, me - September, Derek - October). We had Allie's birthday party this weekend. I think it turned out nice and she had  a lot of fun.

Allie with the banner and t-shirt that I made for her

trying to melt the ice to get to some prizes

we had to get out the hose because those squirt guns just weren't getting the job done. It was shortly after this picture that Avery got sprayed on accident and declared the party canceled.

Wondering why you don't see Avery in many pics? She had a melt down at the start of the party and declared that the "party was cancelled!" I whisked her away and Daddy had a talk with her and she took a very long nap. She didn't get up until pretty much everyone was gone. We let her have some cake after eating a late lunch.........I think she enjoyed it! ;)

and what better time to see your first 'real rainbow!' than on the day of your birthday party

dinner at Pepe's per Allie's request