Vacation!

We made it to Wisconsin! The drive was long, and I'm really glad we did it in two days. We drove to St. Louis on Friday. We ate a great place in Laclede's Landing downtown (Old Spaghetti Factory) which is wonderful because you get dessert (ice cream or spumoni) included with every meal. Then we went to City Museum for a few hours. The kids loved it! Unfortunately, it's not air conditioned through most of the museum, so it was pretty hot. Of course, the kids had to climb through all the outside stuff too, which was very hot and humid. (City Museum isn't an ordinary museum; it's like a giant art deco playland.) Hannah's favorite was the three-story slide. The boys just loved it all. If we lived in St. Louis, it would definitely be the place to have a birthday party.

We drove the rest of the way to Wisconsin Dells on Saturday. Our condo here is incredible! By far the nicest we've stayed at anywhere. It's huge, new, very posh. Thanks Mom & Dad!! There are six different water parks here at the resort, and all are included for guests and can only be used by guests. Some things were crowded by afternoon, but never too crowded. Some of the water parks are inside which is nice since I can't be in the sun for too long. We did an outside park this morning and an inside one this afternoon. I only had to apply sunscreen to everyone once - nice. Last night and tonight, we let the kids play in a giant indoor playland (no water). It's wonderful just to let them go and sit and watch. (Yes, I did climb through lots but am sore and bruised from City Museum!)

We plan to drive in to Madison tomorrow. The zoo there is free, so we'll probably do that and go to see the capital building. There's a free ferry across the Wisconsin River that is supposed to be really neat. We also want to tour a cheese factory.

Please keep praying for John. His hearing is ever so slightly better, but he's experience extreme tenitis (sp?). That's a reverberation/whoosing sound in his good ear (trying to compensate for the bad ear). It's driving him nuts. He isn't having any bad side effects from the prednisone, so that's a praise. He is still really anxious about whether his hearing will come back. He's being a trooper, though. We're still all having a great time. I've included some trip pictures. I don't have many water pictures yet, so more of those later.