A Quick Family Vacation

Our family went for a quick three day vacation to Santa Claus IN and Louisville KY in early June.  We had been told that Holiday World is a fun place to bring young kids so we decided that this was the year to go.  I will say that this park has spoiled me with their perks - ALL soda/tea/Gatorade is FREE throughout the park at self serve soda stations, sunscreen is free outside every bathroom, plus the park admission price is so low!  We found the park to be a lot of fun for all ages - tons of roller coasters (that we unfortunately did not ride), lots of rides besides the roller coasters, and their water park was HUGE with about 13 different water slides, 2 wave pools, splash parks, lazy river, etc. (no pictures of the water park, though).  

Here we are just outside of the town.  I loved the town sign with the cows in the background.  You will notice in just about every picture that the sky looks gray - we battled rain every day of the trip, but we were still able to see everything we wanted.

Welcome to Holiday World!  This Santa is just inside the park, and there are 4 main areas of the non-water park with corresponding rides - 4th of July, Thanksgiving (yummy food there!), Halloween, and Christmas.

Enjoying some of the rides.

This red, white, and blue funnel cake hit the spot (and I'm not one who really loves funnel cakes).

Me and the kids posing with the original Santa town statue.  It was a very nice statue with many quotes on it.

Visiting the Santa Claus original church, the original post office to write a letter to Santa (they promise a response in December so we will see), and going through the Santa museum.  The museum is tiny, but they have collected letters to Santa dating back to the 1920s and the letters written during the Depression broke my heart!

Visiting the Candy Castle - a store filled with candy, homemade fudge, and the famous Avalanche frozen hot chocolate.  If you go to Santa Claus IN I also recommend stopping into the Christmas Store since it is a huge collection of ornaments and other decorative pieces.

The frozen avalanche is 96 ounces of pure yumminess!  It has a pound of chocolate and 48oz of whole milk in it, so we really didn't eat much lunch that day!  The glass was so tall that Ethan had to stand on a chair to reach the straw.  A competitive eater ate the entire thing in 40 seconds last year.  It took all four of us to eat it in about 10 minutes, and by the end we were really pushing ourselves to finish so that we could receive our bumper sticker to "brag" about our feat.  There were also smaller 16oz sizes but where is the fun in that??

About 10 miles away from Santa Claus IN is the Lincoln Boyhood Home and Living Farm National Park.  This is where Abe Lincoln lived from about age 9-21.  Here is Olivia posing with the museum.

We visited Lincoln's mother's grave (his birth mother).

They excavated the original outline of the Lincolns' log cabin.

A reconstruction of the Lincoln home.  When the Lincoln Presidential Museum was being built, this was the model used for the log cabin inside the Museum.

Unlike the Presidential Museum, the kids were able to explore and climb around this cabin!

Louisville KY is only one hour away from Santa Claus IN, so we decided to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum and the Muhammed Ali Museum.  Both of these places were fantastic and kid approved.

Joe and Ethan posing with the Louisville Slugger replica bats of the Cardinals 2013 starting line up in the World Series.

There was also a fun Looney Toons exhibit in the Slugger Museum when we were there showing baseball in their cartoons.

The Ali Museum was nicer and more interesting than I had thought it would be.  I had no idea about so much of his life, and it was set up in a very interactive format.  Here are the kids shadow boxing Ali.

And Olivia "holding" Ali's Olympic torch.

Spring Activities for the Family

April through May is always jammed packed with activities - sports, school, family time, etc.  Here is a summary of our time...

Ethan at his 1st grade animal research presentation on gorillas.

Joe and Kate with "Abe Lincoln" at the Springfield Art Association 100 Year Anniversary Gala.  I am now on the Board of Directors at the SAA and hope to be a part of many more future activities here.

Ethan at his school field trip - they visited the Illinois State Museum and the new State Capitol building.

I guess the field trip got a bit stressful!

Kate with the Springfield Old Capitol Art Fair board of directors.  For this Fair, I was the Exhibitor's Chair.

Spidey Ethan.

Olivia at her school's 4th quarter celebration.

Olivia was the emcee at the Kindergarten/1st grade music concert.  This role involved introducing each song and using puppets to keep the crowd entertained.

Ethan (in the back row) during his music concert.  Here they are singing "Give Peace a Chance".

Olivia and her soccer team, the "Rockstars".  Posting this silly picture more accurately shows the team's personality!  We love this soccer team - she has been with them for many seasons.

Olivia with grandma and grandpa after winning 1st place in her soccer tournament.  Her team has never won the tournament before, and unlike other organizations, only the 1st place team receives a medal so this was very special to her.  To top it all off, her team was undefeated for the season!  Way to go Rockstars!

Ethan and his soccer team the "Sharks".  He has been with this team for about 4 seasons and this year Ethan has shown so much improvement in his play.  Before he would spend his time picking grass in the field, but this season he was actually showing assertiveness.

In addition to soccer, Ethan is also in coach pitch baseball.  He is so excited that his team is the Cardinals!

Joe (the 3rd base coach) giving Ethan some pointers.

Our budding Yadi?

After each game the coach picks a player to receive the game ball based on their growth and play on the field.  Ethan was so excited to receive the ball one game!

Baseball season!  The family before a Cardinals/Giants game.

We attended the Cardinals game with friends, and stopped at the City Park to have fun before the game.

Posing in front of Busch Stadium.

Ethan hoping for a ball to be thrown to him between innings.

Cooling down after a hot (and disappointing) baseball game!