The Efficient Mother’s Day Extravaganza

Sometime in the last couple years Everett became interested in Jimmy Neutron. One funny part of the original movie is when the alien king’s assistant decides that he will be the one to examine a toaster that has arrived from earth, at which point he announces “I am the official checker of new things to be checked.” Everett mistook “official” for “efficient” and it stuck, which explains the malapropism in the title of today’s blog entry. We have been celebrating Mother’s Day for the last 24 hours with a trip to the Wisconsin Dells. Chris sprung this on Melissa late Saturday afternoon. We spent about 30 minutes getting ready and then left around 5:30pm. First stop: Ella’s Deli in Madison. It’s been our tradition for the past two years to eat there on our way to the Dells for Mother’s Day. This year we took a close look at the menu and realized there are a few items we just aren’t familiar with such as Phosphates (some kind of drink) and Boolkies (presumably some kind of bread since it is listed in the “Bagels or Boolkies” section). Other notable things about Ella’s are: the vast collection of kitschy animatronics including the backlit mechanical aquarium under the glass at our table; the carousel, which we rode after dinner.
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This year we decided to change our tradition a bit. The past two years we have gone to the Great Wolf Lodge and have loved it. However, water slides are frowned upon for pregnant women, so the things that Melissa could do in the water were limited. The Great Wolf Lodge has a tiny lazy river for floating, while the neighboring resort to the east has the longest indoor lazy river in the country (or so their website says). So this year we decided to try the Kalahari Resort. We arrived around 9pm, got settled in and everyone went to sleep a little after 10pm. The next morning we had breakfast at the Log Cabin in Baraboo. By about 9:30am we were in the water. Everett is just over 42″ tall, which means he is eligible for many more water slides than in past years. There were only a handful that he couldn’t ride this year. Among them were a couple where you stand in a vertical chute and a trap door opens under you (we didn’t try this). Another was a tube that shoots you into a spiral flume. Once you lose speed and slide toward the center you are dropped several feet into a pool of water, and as Chris demonstrated there is simply no way to do this gracefully. We stayed the day and headed home around 4:30. We adhered to our schedule remarkably well.

It was a lot of fun and definitely worth the trip. However, all three of us independently came to the conclusion that the Great Wolf Lodge edges out Kalahari as our favorite. Melissa and Chris feel that both places take safety seriously, but we also agreed that the employees at the Great Wolf Lodge did so to a greater degree. They were vigilant, bordering on obsessive. Everett liked the fact that the wolf howls before the wave pool starts. Lastly, floating on the lazy river didn’t quite work out the way we imagined. Melissa gets great relief from being in the water, but it turns out to be quite difficult for a woman who is seven months pregnant to get into an inner tube and get comfortable.

As we were leaving the resort tonight Everett announced to us and to Gabby (who was on the phone) that he was NOT tired, but he was very hungry. Chris gave him a cup of yogurt and a spoon, and since this was a long trip he got to watch Finding Nemo in the movie car on the way home. We discovered that movie watching and eating might not be a great combination for the new car. Everett is normally pretty tidy when he eats, but within a few minutes his shirt, carseat and even the car headphones were covered in yogurt. The good news is that this was our first food spill and that the car has now been christened!

Curiously, 30 minutes later Everett was snoring, which continued until we were a few minutes from home.

Here are a few photos and videos from the trip.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Moms in our life!

Comments (1)

One thought on “The Efficient Mother’s Day Extravaganza

  1. love, love, love the trip report and the pictures and all the smiles. Wonderful family tradition.

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