I have a lot of fun
10 years, 3 incredible children, 1 wonderful decade of marriage.
Then…
…and now (of course we have no recent pictures of just the 2 of us).
Wait, I found one! This is a late edit to the entry, as this picture was taken at my mom’s house the day after our anniversary, right before we went out for our fun celebration in downtown Chicago.
I’ve been remiss these past few months and haven’t yet posted about the 2 great vacations we took this spring. So sorry.
But here I finally am, and I brought pictures.
Just 1 thing I learned during our second vacation before I get into all the details, though. All-driving road trips totally suck. I mean sure, we went to some cool places and did some fun things along the way, but a 5-day trip that is spent primarily in the car is not exactly all the fun it’s cracked up to be. Especially when a good chunk of time is spent navigating detours on super boring, “scenic” back roads in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Now that we have that out of the way…
First up was our trip to Hawaii in April. We were lucky enough to get to spend a full week out there again with my mom and stepdad, and it was glorious. We flew to LA on Good Friday, then flew directly to Maui that Saturday before Easter. We came home overnight the following Saturday into Sunday, and the girls both did great on all the flights.
Since having kids, my idea of a true vacation has changed dramatically. Nowadays (did i really just say nowadays? geez), I don’t consider anything a real vacation unless it’s adults only. Honestly. I love my kids more than life and more than I ever thought possible before I had them, but when we go on vacation just the 4 of us as a family, it’s really just more like parenting them somewhere besides our house. Anyone agree, or am I the only mean one?
Obviously family vacations are a wonderful way for the girls to see new places and everything, and we do always have fun, but Ryan and I often find we get home just a little more tired than when we began. That, clearly, is not the definition of a vacation.
Anyway, back to Hawaii. This truly was a vacation. The girls got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa, Ryan and I actually enjoyed many real vacation days, and we all came back happy, rested, and relaxed. It was beautiful, recharging, and all around amazing. Maui is by far one of my favorite places on Earth.
i just adore what the humidity did to her hair.
our beloved tiki bar at the hotel where we spent the maui portion of our honeymoon. such wonderfully fond memories of those 8 years ago, so we have to make a stop each time we’re back.
could there possibly be a cuter hula girl? i think not.
the first time those beautiful little toes touched ocean waves. pure happiness.
our updated balcony family drinking shot. had to add in the new kid.
forget the baby rafts. this girl wanted to swim!
Next up was our annual Wisconsin family vacation. Almost annual, I guess, since we forewent this one last summer and did our Great American Road Trip out west instead.
Now this trip originated a few years ago as just a long weekend for me and Ryan. I think the first one we did was the year I was pregnant with Della, which was 2010. It has since evolved into a 5-6 day affair, and we try to visit a different part of the state each time. We have now seen pretty much the whole thing, so we’ll just start repeating our favorites. We usually aim to work as many breweries in as we can along our chosen path of travel, but this year every place we wanted to visit that would have fit our route was closed during the days we’d be passing through that particular area. Of course. Because why not?
Also this year, we discovered one area that is definitely not on the favorites list. Wisconsin state highway 35 north of Hudson, WI, is one of the most annoying stretches of highway we have ever traversed. It’s marked as a scenic highway on the map, so we decided to give it a whirl. Bad idea. Especially since getting to it involved a 1-hour detour on back roads that of course were not on said map.
But let me back up and start from the beginning of that trip. Because parts of it really were fun. It started on a Friday in early June, with Ryan taking a half day from work and all 4 of us heading over to Madison. We ate some great food, spent some nice sunny time at Memorial Terrace, then stayed the night at our good friends’ house in Cottage Grove. The next morning we stopped at the National Mustard Museum in Middleton (actually very fun, surprisingly) before heading up to Eau Claire to spend the weekend at my aunt and uncle’s house.
stop 1 – vintage, a brewpub on the west side of madison.
terrace fun. such a different brand of fun now than the countless hours i spent there as a student and recent grad.
who knew the mustard museum would actually be great?
nigh-night the green monkey and crayons. road trip staples.
can’t beat good times with family.
That was as far as we had planned our trip by the time we set off, so the rest was totally play-it-by-ear. We spent Saturday and Sunday nights in Eau Claire and enjoyed a great meal with more of my family at one of my other uncle’s houses over in Hudson, WI, Sunday afternoon. Monday morning we drove all the way to the top of the state and checked out Superior, WI. Ryan wanted to see the ice that was still hanging around on Lake Superior since our “spring” had been so cold, but we missed it by about a week. We spent that night in Duluth, MN, which seems like a really cool city.
this is so much fuuuuuuun!
enjoying the shores of icy lake superior.
by far, their favorite part of the entire trip – hotel bed jumping.
Tuesday we began our trek down the west coast of Wisconsin, because I really wanted to drive the Wisconsin Great River Road. It’s the only national scenic highway in the state, and it runs from Prescott, WI, which is roughly half an hour south of Hudson on the Mississippi River, down to Potosi, WI, which is just north of the IL border, also right on the river. We’d been to Potosi during our second WI vacation, so we knew we liked it there.
That whole section in between Duluth and Potosi was what we were not familiar with, however. Here is where WI highway 35 comes back into play. Leaving Duluth, you can either get on Interstate 35 through the northeastern section of Minnesota, or WI 35, which runs straight south out of Superior, slightly inland from the St. Croix River and the western border of WI. This, then, carries you the entire length of the state down to Potosi, becoming the Wisconsin Great River Road in its southern half.
Ryan intended to get on WI 35 and just take it all the way south, but of course we ended up on I-35 instead and drove directly into Minnesota. Which is not Wisconsin, and we were on a Wisconsin vacation. (yes, i know we stayed in duluth, but from then on, wisconsin was our goal) So, after a few miles, we decided to try to get back to WI 35 and forgo the 70 mph speed limit we had been enjoying. We soon learned the error of our ways.
For as soon as we got off the interstate, we were hit with back country road detour after detour. For about an hour. At one point Ryan claimed he didn’t want to do this trip anymore, and we were just going to head home. Baby. He’s obviously not a road trip veteran.
Guess where we finally hooked back up with WI 35? 5 miles south of Superior! Yes, that’s correct. We spent all that time making one gigantic, slow, utterly miserable circle. So not only did we waste the hourish just trying to get to WI 35, we also wasted about 2-3 more hours of total travel time, since we essentially started our day’s trip over at the very top of the state instead of winding up all the way down in Hudson to start the Great River Road like we would have had we stayed on I-35, cruising along at lovely highway speeds.
So. Now that we were all in a foul mood, that part of the trip was just dandy. There were a bunch of stops we actually wanted to make on the southern half of that road, but since our day ended up really starting so much later than when we actually got in the car, we didn’t have the luxury of enjoying all those stops. Plus we couldn’t exactly just keep the girls in the car all night so we could get to where we wanted to be to start the next day, so we stopped Tuesday night in La Crosse. Not on our original agenda, but whatever.
one of ryan’s must-stops – red wing, mn, where the world’s largest boot resides. it scared the crap out of lana.
Wednesday was our last day, so we drove south to Potosi, finished the whole Great River Road, turned back east to go to a brewery and a hamburger stand that Ryan had bookmarked as must-stops, then headed to our final destination, and one of my favorite places in the state, New Glarus brewery.
fun in potosi. i have no idea what they were doing with their eyes. goggles, maybe?
her first root beer float. she obviously hated it, can’t you tell?
rau family christmas card 2014.
this girl does love her ice cream. and what better to do on a 5-day road trip than eat cheeseburgers and ice cream? that’s my kind of trip!
Oh but wait. Nothing can go quite swimmingly for us, so at what time did we arrive at New Glarus? Closing time. That’s about right. So we went home. The end.
But we have now seen pretty much the entire state, and we know that we never have to travel on WI 35 north of Hudson, WI, again. So we did learn something on this trip. Fortunately the girls are excellent car travelers, so we really never had to worry about them at all. 1400 miles in 5 days around Wisconsin is in the books.
To top it all off, 2 days after we got home from that trip, I ran my half marathon (yes, i did have to get my last 2 training runs in during our wisconsin vacation. oh so fun.), I drove the girls down to Peoria for a night, then we went up to my mom’s house for almost a week. More driving, but that trip was wonderful because the whole thing involved seeing and spending time with family. Plus, being at my mom’s house really is a vacation for me, because the girls play with Grandma and Grandpa again, and I actually get to read a magazine or two.
fun with grandpa in the hammock.
this is about as good as we can hope for when trying to get these 3 kids to cooperate for a picture. we should have gotten my dad in there to complete the 4 generations. duh!
take 2…
what screams summer more than 3 little kids covered in blue ice cream in an inflatable swimming pool? nothing.
and we just keep trying…
As much fun as was had everywhere, I was very glad knowing that no more travels were on the calendar for a while after I got home from that last leg. Good thing, too, because the car needs new brakes.
Then…
And now…
Think we’ve changed much?
Happy anniversary to me and Ryan! 8 awesome years so far, and counting.
May there be 80 more. Well, probably not 80, but hopefully a lot!
If you need a refresher, here’s where we left off in “Part 1”. Let’s hit the road again…
Day 9: Time to say adios to my sis and nephew (bro-in-law had to go out of town on business a few days earlier). The compass didn’t point east just yet, though, as we took a northerly route home instead of simply backtracking. First up was Deadwood, SD. Yes, the same Deadwood from the HBO show, where we learned of it in the first place. Low and behold, it’s actually on the National Historic Register.
To get there, however, we had to drive through the most gigantic expanse of this country I’ve seen yet – eastern Wyoming. Do not undertake a road trip through this two-lane section of the country with anything less than an overflowing tank of gas and rations for weeks. I’m not kidding – there are literally hundreds of miles between the tiniest hints of civilization out there, cell phones don’t have a chance of working, every gas station we came upon was boarded up, and cows outnumber humans by probably about 20,000:1. It’s no joke. If something were to happen to you out there you’d be screwed. Thank god we got new tires put on the car in Colorado. Wyoming is wide open spaces to a tee.
We did find one diamond in the rough out there, though – Ft. Laramie. This little historic gem is smack dab in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, but is a really, really cool place. We spent a good hour walking the same grounds so many soldiers and Indians did before there was anything out there but wide open spaces. It was once a major stop on the Pony Express, and taking the same sets of stairs that some of the first people to settle this country did was an almost indescribable experience – humbling, maybe?
one sarsaparilla and one cream soda, please
But we finally rolled into our destination for that day, Deadwood, SD, that evening. Unfortunately it was seriously disappointing – every place has been taken over by gaming, with window upon window full of crappy slot machines. We found what appeared to be the solitary business in the town without a casino stuck in it to take the girls in for dinner. It’s a shame too; it could have been preserved as a very cool historic place, but now it’s not so much. I hate casinos, so I was ready to leave. After driving through the famed Sturgis, we decided to stop in Rapid City, SD, for the night.
Deadwood, SD
Day 10: Mt. Rushmore day. We woke up to thunderstorms, however, so got a much later start than we would have liked. On our way to see the big faces, we went to the Crazy Horse monument, a big mountain tribute to the Lakota Sioux leader in progress. Very cool.
the mountain in the back is being carved in the likeness of the statue in the forefront
so far only the head of the statue is complete
Some of Ryan’s friends had said that Mt. Rushmore was very underwhelming, which really bummed me out because I had been looking forward to this part of the trip for a long time. I don’t know from what planet they hail, though, because it was honestly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. From the moment I first saw it from the highway driving in to the last glimpse we got on the way out, I was in awe. I literally could have spent the entire day just standing there staring at it instead of the couple hours we had. Not only is the memorial itself simply incredible, but the park and buildings they have set up around it are pristine. Definitely put this one on your must-see list. You will not regret it.
There are a couple other national parks in that area that we would have liked to have seen, but we just didn’t have time – Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, and the Minuteman Missile Silo. The Badlands, however, we were not going to miss. So we hightailed it out of Mt. Rushmore and headed east another hour or two to highway 240, the Badlands Loop.
This was another unbelievable area. The highway that winds through the park is about 40 miles long, and it takes you from the top to the bottom of the Badlands (or bottom to top if you come from the east). Words can’t really describe its beauty, and I’m sure our pictures don’t do it an ounce of justice, so just go see it for yourself. Again, you won’t regret it. We want to make another pilgrimage out there just to see these 2 places again and get to explore them more in-depth. You can easily spend at least a day at each park.
Badlands, SD
When we left the Badlands it was already evening, and I wanted to get the girls fed at a normal time that night instead of pulling into a hotel super late and getting them all out of whack again. Unfortunately central South Dakota is apparently not known for dining hot spots, so we had to settle for a little hometown diner in Kadoka, SD. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. You can skip that place. Double unfortunately, massive thunderstorms were rolling in as we ate, so we quickly got the girls cleaned up and into pj’s so they could fall asleep in the car until we stopped for that night, wherever that was going to be.
Something else I learned – thunderstorms on the wide open plains of South Dakota are NOT to be taken lightly. We drove through over 100 miles of non-stop lightning, and I have never been scared of a storm like that before. When you are the only thing on the horizon and lightning is flashing around you like a strobe light, you just hope and pray you make it to shelter before getting charred. Thankfully we did, with the storms accompanying us the entire way. Our last hotel for the trip was in Sioux Falls, SD. We had made it all the way across the state!
this was our view for the entire eastern half of SD. too bad we couldn’t enjoy all the daylight on the 1st day of summer
Day 11: Homeward bound! We hadn’t gotten settled into the hotel room and the girls put to bed the night before until about 1 a.m., so we pulled the shades and let everyone sleep as late as possible. We were finally all up around 10-10:30 and got ready to head home. Checkout wasn’t until noon so we took our time and finally left Sioux Falls around noon, after breakfast and a much-needed Starbucks stop. Minnesota seemed to fly by compared to Wyoming and South Dakota, and then we entered the homeland once more.
say french fries!
After a stop in Madison for dinner with some friends at one last brewery, we pulled back into our driveway late that night. Whew!
This was an outstanding trip, and I am so happy we decided to do it. The girls were absolute dreams of travelers – barely a peep from either side of the backseat for all those miles and hours in the car, countless stops, and 3 different hotel rooms. Ryan got 5 new stamps and stickers in his National Parks Passport, Della got her own Junior Ranger National Parks Passport to start, and Lana, well Lana got to chew on a red Solo cup to her heart’s content. (note to self – keep a red solo cup in the car at all times to placate a restless baby)
Thank you, America, for gorgeous scenery, an established interstate roadway system upon which we can travel to said scenery, and memories our family will cherish for a lifetime.
A few weeks ago we undertook our longest road trip yet as a family. It spanned 9 states and put 3,172.4 miles on the odometer. And we all survived!
We left Milwaukee on a Wednesday morning, drove through parts of Illinois and Iowa, stopped for a dinner of world famous BBQ in Kansas City, MO, then spent the night in Topeka, KS. That Thursday we drove through the rest of Kansas before reaching our main destination in Evergreen, CO, for the next week. The return drive took us through part of Wyoming on our way to South Dakota, then finally one last day to get through Minnesota on our way back to Sconnie-land.
This would seriously end up being a novel if I tried to describe everything we saw and did, so I’ll just cover the highlights. You’ll notice this is “Part 1”, so in here I’ll show you some of the sites from the drive out and our stay in Colorado. The reason we went out there was to visit my sisters, brother-in-law, and brand new nephew, so we figured we’d see as much of Middle America as we could along the way. Here we go…
Day 1: Our goal of this leg was to get to Kansas City, MO, where Ryan was dying to try Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. So we did, and it was delicious. We had some daylight left after eating, so we drove another hour or so to Topeka, where we called it a night.
yuuummm!!
Day 2: We started off the day by visiting the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. Very cool. But the rest of Kansas is boring. So is eastern Colorado. We finally pulled into my sister and brother-in-law’s driveway in Evergreen, CO, that evening and let the engines rest.
jumping on hotel beds is fun!
don’t do this. and no, that’s not our car
it was very hot and windy on our drive west
Days 3-8: Fun had by all in central Colorado. Our nephew is completely adorable; the girls, my mom, sister, nephew, and I went on a train; we experienced a rodeo parade; we took in a concert at Red Rocks; we tried out as many breweries as we could manage in a day; and we saw some cool petrified stuff. We even got to experience the scare of forest fires starting while we were there. Thank god none reached my sister’s home, and no one we/they know was hurt by the handful of ones raging during our stay.
Georgetown Loop Railroad
rodeo parades and catching all that candy are simply exhausting
happy father’s day!
s’mores!
Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, CO
New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins
Left Hand Brewing in Longmont, CO
Oskar Blues Brewing in Longmont
“Big Stump” at Florissant Fossil National Monument
Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs
cousins! lana was most uncooperative
Ok, that’s enough pictures for today. Stay tuned, for there will be plenty more in “Part 2”. I can sense your anticipation building already, my friends.
Ok, 2 things today…
Last week I got a total “Mama Fails” award. The event I had been fearing and dreading finally happened. Lana fell off the changing dresser. Ugh!
I knew this was going to happen since she is now so squirmy and rolly when you put her up there, so I can’t believe I actually thought I was going to get away with what I did. I put her on there after she woke up that morning (i think it was tuesday last week. or maybe wednesday) to take her out of her sleep sack and change her diaper. And with “don’t walk away and leave her there alone” ringing in my head, I turned and walked over to the window to open the shades. I slid one side opened, checked to make sure she was still staying put, turned back to open the other side, and that’s when it happened.
Rustle, rustle, THUD!!
Oh my god, I about died. I turned around when I heard the rustling and saw her mid-fall, then landing smack on the hardwood floor. The poor thing sounded like a melon dropping onto the ground, and I almost threw up when it happened. Seeing her little body, still zipped up in her jammie sack heading face-first toward the floor was mortifying. I tried to reach out to stop her, but I was too far away.
I seriously wanted to cry. She rolled off the changing mat from her back, so that’s why she was falling face-first, but she must have been continuing the roll during the fall, because when I got to her she was on her back. But holy shit, that sound when she landed… I think it’s going to haunt me forever. It was this solid thud that reverberated to my core. And hers, obviously.
She started screaming instantly, and unfortunately so did Della, because she was standing right there with us. D said she was so upset because one of her Fruit Loops had gone under the dresser from which Lana had just fallen, which it had, but I know Lana’s fall scared the crap out of her too. These girls love each other to no end, and they get upset when the other does too.
I scooped her right up, not even considering the fact that that may not have been the smartest thing to do, and just held her as close as I could to try and calm her. She bawled for a good 5 minutes, but eventually I got both of them calmed down so we could get on with our morning.
I was terrified that I had given her a concussion or brain damage or something, so of course I looked up signs of a concussion in infants immediately. Thankfully her instant screaming was a good sign – she never lost consciousness, not even for a split second. Also, she had no bleeding out of any orifice, and she had only the tiniest bump on one side of her head that disappeared within the hour. I did speak with a nurse at her pediatrician’s office, and she confirmed that the fact that she cried immediately, had no bleeding or vomiting, had eaten fine since the fall, and was up and playing as usual were all great signs that nothing was wrong. She even said Lana was fine to take her morning nap, since she was getting sleepy by that point.
The nurse said the first 2 hours after an accident are the most critical time to watch out for any signs of trauma, and fortunately Lana exhibited none. I cannot even express how relieved I was. I still felt like the worst mother on Earth for allowing the fall to happen in the first place, but knowing that I hadn’t permanently and severely damaged my baby did help me breathe a little easier for the rest of that day.
So a word of advice – as soon as your baby starts moving, do NOT leave him/her on top of high places. I know that is the most obvious advice ever, but I just kept pushing and pushing my toe over that line figuring I’d never actually let it go so far that she would fall, but obviously I pushed it too far. If you’re worried that they’re going to fall, they probably will. So just keep them safe. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to hear that noise of their child crashing onto the floor from 3 feet up.
But on a happier note, I’m going out for a girls night tonight! Yippee!! I can’t wait. It’s Downtown Dining Week right now here in Milwaukee, so we’re trying out one of the restaurants on that list. It will be so much fun catching up with my girlfriends and having a few delicious cocktails on a nice spring night.
Have a great weekend, everyone! See you next week.
