Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Trip to Madison

We traveled to Madison to visit my sister and her family the last week of October. I usually just see her once a year because she lives so far away. This was the first time Kevin was able to come with me on the plane and it was a HUGE help. The car ride to the airport was eventful, as Lucy got carsick and vomited all over her carseat and clothes. We had to park our car there and didn't have time to clean anything so we changed her clothes and left her pukey carseat locked in the car.
Isak loved watching all the airplanes take off and the moving walkways and escalators. I am deathly afraid of both so I let Kevin take him on all those fun adventures. Our plane ride there went pretty well, we were well equipped with treats, iphone games, and dvds. At one point the flight attendant even gave us free tv and claimed it was because another customer who was eligible for the free upgrade declined it. I think it was because Lucy was screaming and she was trying to get her to be quiet. Either way, it worked in our favor. Frontier Airlines is awesome, we got warm cookies on each flight, we were big fans. Our plane had to circle about 3 times while trying to land in Madison because of high winds, making an extremely turbulent flight. I did not handle this well and judging by the number of puke bags I saw leaving the plane, no one else did either. We went to the zoo the first day which was great because it was so cold, no one else was there! The zoo they have there is a free zoo and has tons of great animals and exhibits. They had a great playground with huge climbing structures. Isak decided to don a matching lemur costume with Maddie and they wore them to the zoo. Don't their tails look awesome?

It was fun having all the kids together and letting them spend time with their cousins. Especially now Isak is old enough to remember things. It was great having Maddie and Martin there who are 7 and 9, they are old enough to entertain the younger ones and can help out quite a bit. Perhaps this is why people have more children.


The elementary school is just across the street from where they live and has a fun forest area to explore as well. Below is Caleb posing. Him and Isak raced a lot, Caleb is super fast and always won. It helps he is a year older as well.



Maddie got a new bike for her birthday and loves riding it around everywhere. She is quite the character.
Reed is just a few months younger than Lucy and would always give me a smile. He really loves my sister and would cry anytime she was out of sight. He started to warm up to use after a few days and would no longer cry if I talked at him or looked at him wrong. :).

Maddie just turned 7 and I made her some cute hair flowers and a headband. She sported this and some of her Barbie make up to church on Sunday. She looked pretty awesome.

I loved that Kevin came along because I could do things with Valerie and didn't feel bad about leaving my kids. We went shopping one day and hit up a thrift store where we had all sorts of great finds...ie, red leather pants for $0.10, wooden picture frame $1, fluffy pink pillow for lucy...$0.10, piano bench for $7...I wish Othello had one of those!


My cute sister and some of her kids. We did a race on Saturday, it wasn't a big one, not too much of a big deal, except, we RAN to the starting line. Which also wouldn't be a big deal, except that it was 13.5 miles away. In another town. Madison has more bike trails and running trails and skiing trails than anyplace I have ever seen. Anyway, my sister thought it would be a terrific idea to run to the starting line, sign up for the race, then run the race. It was the UFO days in a nearby town, they even had a doll head float. So, I ended up running almost 17 miles when all was said and done. I was pretty sore on Sunday, I hadn't run that far since September.

We went to the arboretium one day and explored and saw some wild turkeys. The kids had alot of fun running all over and climbing on the leaf piles.

We also went to the children's museum in Madison while we were there which was amazing. They had a water room, a huge climbing structure, arts and craft room, tons of neat hiding places and things to play with. Above is the shadow room where this camera will take a picture of your shadow on the wall everytime you push a button. It was pretty cool.


The roof had a chicken coop, a garden, and several herbs the kids could taste test. There were binoculars the kids could look out over the city.

I also introduced my sister to the beauty of spray painted furniture and we found and painted this piano bench.

We had so much fun! Now if only I could convince her to move to Othello.....

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