Water slides and theme parks

On our family vacation this summer, we (re)discovered a fun part of traveling...water slides and theme parks. We decided to camp in a tent for most of our trip, but for one night, we splurged and spent the night in a hotel. It was in Fargo, North Dakota and the big draw for this Ramada Inn was the 150 foot water slide. After a long day of driving, it was so much fun to swish around on a fast slide and swim in a big pool! It was Ellie's first time on a water slide and she had a great time!! We felt like we were living in luxury with plush beds and a fancy bathroom (compared to the middle-of-the-night trips to the bath house at the campground). So, we definitely enjoyed our night at the Ramada!

On our way through Minneapolis, we stopped at the Mall of America to see Dora the Explorer and all of her friends at Nickelodeon Universe. What a blast!! Michael and I were expecting all kiddie rides (which there were plenty of), but there were a couple of roller coasters and some fun parent-friendly rides too. I'm including some pictures from our afternoon at the Nickelodeon Universe. If you're ever near the Twin Cities with kids, I recommend it!

5 Years and Counting

This May we celebrated our 5th year anniversary (wow, it really doesn't seem like 5 years - time has really flown by!). So in celebration we traveled to Victoria, BC and spent the night. We rode aboard the Victoria Clipper (which I would highly recommend) and stayed at the James Bay Inn (a quaint little hotel with some nice charm).

Some interesting things happened along the way. As we were getting off the bus at the local gardens, we heard someone call out our name. It took me quite by surprise (we were, after all, in another country) when I turned around to see our good friends Paul & Mary Mabry who we hadn't seen in over a month - very unexpected. We ended up seeing some of the city together and enjoying some great seafood.

The next morning proved to be quite the adventure as well. It turns out that Victoria was hosting a sailboat race that same weekend. I had the bright idea to go out to the coast and watch the start of the race. Several miles later (on foot) we finally arrived (honestly, it didn't look that far on the map...). By then we had worked up quite the appetite and fortunately (so we thought) they were serving a pancake breakfast. So paid for our tickets and jumped in line - this is where the "fun" began. Apparently they were having trouble keeping the grills lit, so we ended up waiting in line for over an hour. This would have been okay if it hadn't been right on the coast with winds around 30 miles per hour. By the time we finally got our food, we were so cold that it was all we could do to stuff the food in our mouths as fast as we could to get out of there (and to top it all off, we pretty much missed the whole race while we were standing in line for the pancakes - oh well, at least we got some good pics).

Fortunately, the rest of the trip turned out much better & we ended up having a great time. So just remember, if you ever travel to Victoria, beware the pancake breakfast - other than that I'm sure you'll have a great time!

This is a picture of the sunset we enjoyed on the way back (you can click on it to view it full screen).