Days 4-7

Friday morning, we stopped by the Jelly Belly Factory. It just never gets old.

Then we might have actually relaxed a little? Went to the store and bought some food that started with a 'T' for Taylor (that was the potluck rule), and headed over to a BBQ at our friends house. The kids loved shooting off this rocket, and just playing around together. Cant believe I didnt get pictures of Erin doing her gymnastics routine with another gymnast friend of ours. They are both amazing!

 After stuffing our faces, we needed a way to burn those calories, so we went across the street to the school to play some ultimate glow in the dark frisbee. Of course, someone forgot the glow in the dark frisbee, so it was just plain dark. But so much fun! Our Taylor clan pretty much consisted of one entire team, and of course we won. Taylor power!

 I think Willie is taking someones head off here, but all's fair in Ultimate Frisbee. 

 Awww, look at that smile. He just loves competitive sports. Or competition in general. (:

Saturday morning, we went to the bowling alley. 

 Not sure what plan these two are concocting, but Alissa is super excited about it! Or maybe its shock over the score board. Hmmm...

 Madi is entering her teenage years, and isnt shy about displaying her sense of fashion. Did you know mis-matched socks are in!? What style!

Maybe had another break in here, then off to the temple to witness our friends sealing. She had asked me to take pictures, but Tina had a much better camera and is more skilled in picture taking, so she happily jumped in and took some amazing shots for them. I think she may have even enjoyed it a little. (;

After the Temple, we went out to eat a the Walker Brothers Pancake house. Now, when you go out as a couple, and ask for separate checks...you would assume two checks right? We ended up with 5! We had the most goofy waiter we have ever seen! He got confused about everything, but the 5 checks at the end was the breaking point. I was laughing so hard, I had tears running down my face. Not only did we each get a separate check, but the 5th one was all our desserts combined. Figure that out! The guy at the cash register had to split the dessert check up, and add the two other checks to it...he was so confused, which only added to the humor. Anyway, guess you just had to be there.

After dinner, we went to the Par-King mini golf course. I saw it featured on a yahoo article as one of the best mini-golf courses in the country, so we had to check it out. Have to admit, it was pretty cool. And who doesnt love giant pink castles?

 We love our kids, but it was great to get out for a few hours for adult time.

Sunday arrived  for a much needed day of rest. We went to church, then hung out in the backyard together. Erin changed into her leotard and did some more gymnastic moves for our neighbor, who was very impressed. Still cant believe I didnt take pictures of her doing that. Then we found out that 9 kids and 2 adult men do not work well on a trampoline! I looked over to see the leg bending on the back side. Ryan and Willie tried to bend it back into place, but it wasnt budging, so I called our neighbor over for some added muscle. How many guys does it take to fix a bent trampoline leg? More than 3. The trampoline will now be limited to a couple kids at a time until a new one is purchased. After finding out our neighbor was a bachelor for the weekend (his family was out of town), and to thank him for his help in trampoline repair efforts, we had him join us for some fresh peach cobbler and ice cream. It was the perfect end to a lazy Sunday.

Monday morning came, and it was back to party time. We headed to the beach for the day.

The kids enjoyed the freezing water, building sandcastles, finding sea glass, and getting sand wedged into every crevis. 

 The sand castle we built looks kinda like a turtle now that I look at it.

Monday night, we had ice-cream and set up the tent for a camp-out. Ryan was the lucky man who got to sleep in the tent with some of the kids. Haha...love ya babe!

Bring on some more!

Day 8

Discovery World Milwaukee was on the agenda for Day 8. These pictures are horribly out of order, but you'll get the idea. 

To start off we have the displays of different kinds of levers, springs, wheels etc.

 This was a machine they had to all pump with their feet to get this wheel to turn.

 An electricity generator. Word of caution..do not touch the person standing off of the platform like Willie and I did here. We got a surprisingly strong shock sent in through our fingers and through our bodies. Ouch!

 Jellyfish are cool! Tina and I were both taking a picture at the same time here, so her kids looked into her camera, and my kids looked into mine. Guess who took this picture!

Lets try this one family at a time...

 The underwater tube was cool to walk through too!

 Seahorse.

The touch and feel sea creature station.

 Apparently, the touch and feel station does not include pick up and hold. This was taken right before I got in trouble for picking up the starfish. So cool though, so it was worth the trouble.

More levers and pulley's. Brylee and Johnathan trying to pull themselves up on this chair.

Alissa did it!

 Have you ever laid on a bed of nails? Yeah, me either. But Madi and Ryan did!   

Discovery World is right next door to the Summerfest music grounds, so they have a bunch of signed guitars from famous bands that have played there. Ryan found one of his favorites- the B52's.

 And I had to get a picture in front of Carrie Underwood's.

Playing gerbil to try and get the lights on. First up, Katelin and Alissa...

 Madi thinks she can do it alone...

 Nope. Maybe Zack can with help from Ryan...

 Still no. 

Okay, time for the big boys to try. After a lot of synchronized running, and thinking the wheel was going to come right off, the lights finally turned on. 

Then there was this driving simulator. Please remind me never to get behind the wheel of any of these kiddos! Yikes! 

  

Back to the sea creature area...did I mention these were out of order? Madi looking out a periscope to Lake Michigan.

And also in the pully chair area...a life size boat to explore. Zack is the captain. 

In the end, it was a gorgeous day, so we wanted to get a group picture of the kids in front of Lake Michigan. I guess it was a little too gorgeous...and too sunny. Eyes up here guys! 

 Oh well, thats as good as it gets with 9 kids.

And some family shots. Hoping for better luck with the sun here. 

Oh well, guess this shady spot will just have to do. Unfortunately, couldnt get the other two kids to join, so you just get these 3 pretty faces!  

Another eventful day down! 3 more to go!

Hopefully you can get days 9 and 10 to show up on the blog, because I cant. Just in case, it doesnt come up, you can get to it from clicking on the link on the side of the blog!

Day 9

Since we have 6 flags passes this year, the girls didnt need to use their reading passes from school. So why not pass them down to the cousins and get 3 of them in free? This is probably the only time we werent bombarded at the entrance by photographers wanting to take your entrance picture. Figures, its the only time we wanted them too. Too bad, we might have actually bought one this time. Its also the only time we have gone when almost all the rides had mechanical issues or were closed down. Apparently it was too hot for them to function properly. First ride that got stuck was one of our favorites, the Superman rollercoaster. After waiting in line for about a half an hour, we got an up close view of the people getting stuck on their take off. At least they werent upside down. If I had known the whole day would involve these kinds of delays, I would have taken pictures to document it, but you will just have to take my word for it. 

Bumper cars

Hot air balloons

After being up in a hot air ballonn, we needed a cool down, so we headed over to Roaring Rapids. Waited another long while in a line watching empty rafts go down the river and thinking it all looked like it was functioning, so it should be opening soon. 57 empty rafts later, we decided to finally get out of line and try another ride.

The dreaded Busy Bees...Brylees favorite, Zacks most hated. The look on his face says it all.

 Batmobile. Yes, Batman the ride was closed down. 

Sometime after this point, we made it to Cartoon Camp, the kid friendly ride area. We were shocked to find the kid rollercoaster...shut down. Sigh...time for lunch! 

We decided to ride the train back to the front of the park. We waited the entire 15 minutes for it to arrive, at which point the manager picked up the intercom and announced that when the train arrived, there would be a "slight delay" to fix the speaker system. After Willie expressed some frustration from this announcement, he went on to explain to the manager the kind of day we were having. He then provided us with one flash pass for all of us to get directly onto one ride of our choosing, hoping it would make up for some of our lost time waiting in lines of broken down rides. Of course, none of the kid friendly rides have long lines, so we decided to divy them up among us adults and get into 3 bigger rides with no wait. Sweet! well it would have been. Continuing on!

On our trip back to the car for lunch, Erin decided to try her luck at the ladder climbing skill game. You have to understand, we really thought she could do it. She has amazing strength and skill from doing gymnastics! We know better...all those games are definitely rigged. The worker down at the start wasnt helping either when he kept moving the ladder with his foot! Lame!

On our way back from lunch, we decided to try our luck at the rapids again. Eureka! We all got slightly wet.

Back toward Camp Cartoon, we ran into a lady making free balloon animals. It must have been some sort of promotion or a filming for a commercial, because there was a cameraman filming the whole thing. Plus, Six flags never gives away anything for free! So watch for us in future Six Flags commercials! Maybe our luck was starting to change!

Hmmm...spoke too soon! We made it to a couple more rides before the storm moved in. It was expected to be a pretty big one, so Willie took all the kids and headed for the car. Ryan, Madi, Tina and I wanted to get some use out of those flash passes and tried to hit the Raging Bull Roller coaster real quick! We made it through the line, up the stairs, were the next in line to get on...then they closed it down because of lightning. So close! 4 wasted flash passes, a heap of malfunctioning rides, and an eventful drive home in a raging violent rain storm later, we made it home. Atleast we created memories...right? 

Now onto the next adventure!