vacay

So, we had a little mini-vacation last week, and overall it was lots of fun!  Certainly, when you have three over-tired little boys there's bound to be some "moments"...  (And, I have to admit, I wasn't always in the best mood either - you know, it's hard to be the mom and put on a happy face when things aren't going as they should!)

We had told the boys we were going to an indoor water park (and we had been counting down the days), but we also surprised them with a train ride.  We thought it would be fun to take the Amtrak from Grand Rapids to Holland since we often see the train on Sunday mornings on our way to church and we hear it every morning from home, and it would just be cool to go on that stretch of track past Schreur's, etc.  (Mike and I have both taken the train to Chicago, but get on in Holland.)  Anyways, the train is supposed to leave GR at 7:40am (and that's where it starts from, it's not coming from anywhere else).  It seems like usually it leaves on time - on the way to Chicago there are often delays starting around Gary, IN, and on the way back this way in the evening it's often running late, but you would think the very first stretch of the morning it would be running on time.  So, we got the boys up at 6:30am, which is quite early for them, got them to the station in GR where it was packed with no good place to wait, and we waited, and waited...  We were SO close to just bagging it and going home when the train finally came and we could board (8:30 am, almost an hour behind at this point).  Yay!  We're going to get going and this won't be so bad after all!  Wrong...  Still stopped and waited several times.  Boys had lost their patience (esp. Levi), so by the time we actually did get going for real, they weren't as into it.  And yes, I was struggling a bit with my attitude at this point.  :)  Thinking I had planned this really cool thing, and it just wasn't turning out well!  We did get to see my parent's on the road in Jenison (they dropped us off in GR and picked us up in Holland), so that was fun.  We finally got into Holland at 10am (supposed to get there at 8:30am).  Thankfully we were still able to get breakfast at McDonald's because I was counting on it and would have been so upset if I missed being able to get a Sausage Egg McMuffin because of the train delays!  :)

After finishing packing up at home, we headed out to Frankenmuth.  We stayed at Zehnder's and really enjoyed the water park there.  It was perfect for us.  It was pretty empty on Thur and Fri, and was definitely busier on Sat, but still not too bad.  Caleb loved the big slides that you ride a tube down, Logan enjoyed a bigger slide that you go down without a tube.  And, the last day Logan really got into swimming in the shallow pool without a life jacket - he LOVED going under water.  Levi warmed up to things a little slow.  As far as water stuff goes, he seems to be more of a Steenwyk than a Krol...  The last day he did go down the small slide a bunch of times and was really getting into it - Mike would catch him at the bottom and, of course, the last time Mike had to let him go under water a bit.  Then Levi just wanted Grammy because he knew she was safe territory.  :)  Thursday evening we went to a sit down Italian place for dinner and the kids did remarkably well!  We thought we might be pushing out luck to take them out again for a real dinner on Friday night, but that didn't go too bad.  We went to Zehnder's and did the whole family style chicken dinner thing.  Levi ran out of patience, but didn't do too bad.

So, I just had to take a break from typing this post to rescue Caleb.  He was in quiet time upstairs and somehow got the small desk in their room tipped over on top of him with his fingers caught in a drawer - hmmmm....you just never know what's going to happen with these boys.  Of course, first I didn't realize his fingers were in there and I started lifting the desk off of him, and a drawer came slamming back on my thumb.  After a minute we got all untangled - he's got pretty good marks on his fingers, but no bones are sticking out and he can bend them, so I think we're good to go.  My thumb is bleeding and sore, but I'll make it.  :)  I haven't tried too hard yet to figure out what he was trying to do, but (He said something like he was just opening a drawer and the desk fell over...yeah, right!) we'll see if we can get the story later.

Levi was quite the stinker in the hotel room!  Between the bathroom, microwave, fridge, door, alarm clock, remote control, phone, and heater, he kept us running!  Also, the first night he was NOT going to sleep in his pack'n'play, so he ended up in bed with Mike and I.  Now I know why we never do that.  Sheesh.  Thankfully by the second night everyone was tired out enough from playing that bedtime went much better.