WI

This past weekend we took our annual trip to WI to see John’s mom and his grandparents. It was a short trip but we all had a great time. We left on Thursday late afternoon and the girls were so good. They watched movies and played. Camille has discovered Elmo and is obsessed. That is all she wants to watch and she will not fall asleep if it’s on. Poor Av got slighted on the movies and let her sis watch Elmo a lot more than she got to watch her two favs (strawberry shortcake or the care bear movie AA and UM got her). Camille stayed up all the way past Chicago watching Elmo. Av gave up and fell asleep about 9:30.

We stayed in a hotel that night. The girls were real excited and were running around that room like crazy. We all settled down and were fast asleep by midnight. Camille had us up bight and early at 7 but it was a nice solid 7 hours. From there it was just a quick 2-hour drive to great grandma and great grandpa’s house. We had a wonderful time there. Had lunch and just played. The girls ate up the special attention from their ggma&ggpa. It was so nice to see them. We stayed until close to dinner and then headed to John’s mom’s house. There we had a yummy dinner (pot roast which Camille could not get enough of) and then took a nice walk to a neighborhood zoo. Such a cute little zoo that had monkeys, goats, prairie dogs, deer, ducks, and a bear!! It was pretty neat. At bedtime Camille of course fought it. I think she was a little scared being in a new place. Av was in the room with her and we could hear Av trying to comfort her, she was saying, “it’s okay sissy, go night night.” So sweet. Finally Camille settled but had a restless night and so we were up a lot but poor Av had to sleep in the same room with her.

The next day we went on a nice hike at Devil’s lake and then headed back over to ggma&ggpa’s. The rest of the family came over and we had a nice dinner with them. We stayed until about 8 and then it was time for us to get back on the road again. More Elmo until we got to the north side of Chicago where we had decided to stop. Again the girls were so excited by the hotel room. This one was big with 2 rooms and a big couch they could run and jump on. Camille slept in the couch room but had a coughing fit from 12am-1. I felt so helpless. She was coughing in her sleep. I didn’t know what to do for her and all I wanted to do was sleep. We kept giving her drinks of water and at one point I thought a bite of bread/bagel would help the tickle in her throat so I pulled her out of her bed but in her sleep I could not get her to eat the bread. She finally stopped though and we all slept till 8:30!

The next day we got up and had a nice drive back. We stopped to get a Starbucks for me (WI has NO starbucks. One had a broken espresso machine and so she told us of another we couldn’t find, I was starting to have bad withdrawals), then we stopped at a park on Purdue’s campus (very pretty campus) to play, then lunch, then at the outlets. No I didn’t get anything fun, J got a new Puma jacket because he “lost” his old one. Guess I need to start “losing” stuff. Again the girls did not sleep at all until about the last hour they wanted to. By that time it was 6 pm and we could not let them sleep. Av tired first. It was so hard to wake her. Then after telling Camille to go “night night” all day she finally wanted to 10 minutes from home. Poor thing was so tired she could just not stay awake. At home I got her out of the car and brought her into the house and set her down on the floor and she laid right down and was out. Even with us laughing at her and Jack saying hi she was out. Finally John made me stand her up. She took a few steps and fell. She was mad but woke up to eat her dinner.