Family vacation 2011 - Day three

I didn't sleep very well that night, because I kept waiting for someone to wake up.  For Violet to start screaming again, or for one of the kids to get up for the day.  Everyone was quiet all night, until Rowan woke up around 7:15.  I begged him to be quiet (as to not wake up the baby) and bribed him with breakfast in bed.  We whispered to each other while we ate dried mango and granola bars and drank apple juice.  When I felt I could hold him captive no longer, I woke up Jason and asked him to take Rowan out into the lobby to play (or watch Disney channel).  Almost immediately after they left Ellie woke up, so I fed her breakfast and sent her out to join Daddy.  Then, I packed up our many bags.  On our last day of vacation, we had to check out of our room by 10:30am, but we could stay as long as we wanted at the water park.  So as soon as Violet woke up, I called the family back in so we could change into our swim suits for the bazillionth time to spent our last hours at the pool before we headed back out into the snow.  While Jason loaded up our car and I checked us out of the hotel, the kids went to work spending the last few tokens we had.  Ellie divided them up fairly (5 for her because she is 5 and 3 for Rowan because he is 3.  That's fair, right?) and Rowan promptly dropped two tokens into a dumb prize machine that took four tokens to even try for a prize.  Thankfully I caught him before he threw his last token away.  I led him over to a game that the kids had been eyeing all trip, yet had not played.  It was a shooting game that I didn't even realize gave out tickets until this happened when Rowan played it:                            

To our surprise, my delight, and the kids' glee, Rowan had hit some bonus ship and won the jackpot.  168 tickets!  I could not stop laughing at the irony that a 3-year-old who had no idea what he was doing won the jackpot and had tickets just coming and coming and coming out of that machine. 

Rowan was pretty proud of himself.  And Ellie was a lot jealous.  She played the game right after him and won two tickets.  And then started crying.  "It's not fair!!  Why did he get so many tickets!!!  Whaaaahhhh!"  Honestly it was a relief that Rowan won those tickets, because without them they could only afford to redeem a couple pieces of candy.  His jackpot tripled their ticket total so they could each have a plastic piece of crap toy AND a candy necklace.  It's amazing what $10 in tokens can buy, right?  :)

Off to the waterpark, where we enjoyed another two hours of swimming and sliding.



Then, back to reality.  The frigid air welcomed (or shocked) us as we drove back home.  But first, a stop at Culvers to pick up lunch.  And on our 53 mile trip home, we passed four different Culvers.  Now that is Wisconsin.

Oh, and I should mention, Violet came home with a souvenir too, but hers wasn't a plastic piece of crap.  Hers was a nice, pearly white souvenir  :D

Have you ever tried to get a picture of an angry baby's first painful tooth?  I promise it's there, even if it's hard to see