Before we get to our family mini vacation, here are a couple of quick pictures to share. The girls and I made a poster so that Great-Grandma would still have her “kids” around her. It also appears that Great-Grandma has two new doctors on her case!

Now on to our family mini-vacation! Kevin lost his accrued time when he switched jobs. Although he was paid for the unused time, he still wanted to have a little time with us.  He took off a single day, Monday, so that we could take a two day trip. We decided to go north once again. For the past two years, the girls and Kevin have wanted to go to the zoo. We also talked about going to the Wisconsin State Fair. Turns out, the zoo and fair are about 2 miles apart. This became our weekend plan! We start with the zoo. First thing we found were the flamingos.

As usual, the special exhibit this summer was the stingray encounter. We know from last year what awesome “handlers” the girls can be, so we visited the stingrays. Each girl fed them some cut up fish and shrimp parts.

Then we went into the monkey house and found an old familiar statue. This was taken on Sunday.

This was taken 8 years ago…..

Funny thing is that I didn’t pose them! They sat on the same sides as they did before. Kind of sad to see how little maintenance is being done on that statue.

We wandered on to the elephants. I really need to hire this elephant to weed my lawn! She was reaching right over and plucking out weeds with amazing dexterity!

Here are girls with that elephant.

Kayla was being stalked by a jaguar.

The zoo was so busy that waiting for our train ride would have been way too long. So we took a zoomobile ride instead. We all look so excited….. (and tired)….

We then went to a nearby hotel for the evening. It seemed silly to drive all the way home to drive back to the same place the next day. Instead, the girls got to spend some time swimming and relaxing. Dinner was their favorite Jimmy John’s, but I had to get creative with sharing the pickle. So they got…..Pickle in a Cup!

Kevin decided that being on vacation meant steak. Our hotel connected to an Outback Steakhouse, and usually any beef ordered in Wisconsin just tastes better than Illinois. He had a carpet picnic! That steak was perfectly cooked and Kevin had them hold the seasoning mix, so it was good.

We got up super early (for the girls) the next morning and headed to the State Fair. Kevin had been there over 20 years ago, and the rest of us had never been. What a pretty morning! This picture will be useful for comparing later on…

We wandered around while the fair was getting started. We saw all kinds of strange things and people. This root beer stand was cool.

Jelly Belly was a special sponsor that day, so the girls got free bean samples and spun a “Wheel of Beans” to win even more. I won a special Star Wars Galaxy Mix pack of beans for Kevin. The girls got sparkly beans.

We went to see some pig and goat races.

Here is the baby pig race.

And the baby goat race. The goat for our section is wearing the green tutu and was named Tinkerbell.

The girls rode a giant slide while Kevin was checking out a Wisconsin wine tasting. Both girls are on the far left – Ashley first followed by Kayla.

When it was time for lunch, we got the kids their food and grabbed some seats at the puppy dock diving show. This company rescues dogs (sometimes even grabbing strays on the street) and trains them to catch frisbees and dive into the water. The first dog is a Golden name Kenga. She was so excited to fetch and swim that she couldn’t wait and kept creeping forward. Once, she lost her toy in the water. She backed up the ramp, looked around until she spotted it, then went and got it.

They ended the show with a dog called Rocket Ray Ray. He did a jump off of his trainer’s back and into the water. Kevin got a nice shot of it.

It was a lot of fun.

We wandered through some animal barns. Kevin did some shopping for a future steak.

By afternoon, it was getting pretty crowded. It was also a family day, with half price admission and kids under 11 free. Too many people!

Remember that pretty picture of the morning sky? By 2PM, this is what we saw…

It thundered a bit, drizzled a bit, then passed on by. We went back in and the girls rode a couple of rides. Then we came home. We had exhausted kids and parents, but we all had a really good time. We all start school two weeks from today, so now it’s time to get the school supplies and clothes and shoes and dig out backpacks and on and on…….