Life as a Yowler

Yesterday, Brandon had another business meeting. He dropped us off at a Chic Fil A close by. They had a play place and we always love the food.

Like I said, we love Chic Fil A…..however Brandons’s meeting went long and we were there a total of 3.5 hours. It got to be a little long. The kids made plenty of friends who came and went in the play place all morning. We ordered breakfast first things when we got there. Later in the morning I sent Joah up to order a snack. The lady behind the counter was so impressed with Joah’s good manners and independence, she gave him the snack for free. One of the many reasons we love this place!

During Brandon’s 3.5 hour meeting, it snowed like crazy. It probably snowed around four inches in that time. Our original plan was to head back to the Mall of America’s theme park for a few hours after Brandon’s meeting, then start the drive home. We knew we had to rethink that plan, because they would most likely shut down the highway. They didn’t shut down the highway right away, so we had a few hours to drive. They did something, though, that I’ve never seen before. They  had 3 snow plows blocking all the lanes. They were only going 30mph, making sure no one could speed.

We almost completely lost visablility for awhile. It was really scary. At one point a semi came over in our lane and cut us off. Brandon had to slam on the breaks. Luckily we were able to stop. We didn’t want to drive in the horrible weather for too long. We did some researching and discovered the coolest place to stay, that I’m sure we will use in the future. Our kids were really bummed to miss out on going to the amusement park, and we wanted to find a fun hotel to stay at.

We found a place called Mount Olympus Resort in Wisconsin. They had huge discounted rates with it being this time of year. We stayed in Hotel Rome. We had access to an indoor water park and an indoor theme park.

Our room was huge with 2 queen beds and a set of bunk beds.

We went to the water park first. The older two kids were tall enough to ride the big slide. Joah was so excited. My kids are used to Splash Village. At the end of Splash Village’s slides, you jump out of the raft right away. Out of habit, Joah jumped out of his raft as soon as this ride ended. Long story short, he got caught in the current and had to be rescued by the lifeguard, as in the lifeguard jumped in the pool and saved his life. 🤦‍♀️ We are always causing some sort of a scene wherever we go. Hello world, the Yowler’s are here!

We made sure to tell Brielle “DO NOT jump off the raft until daddy tells you to!”

It takes a lot to wear this kid out, but we did it. He was beat. We went back to our room to eat dinner and he fell asleep as soon as he was done eating. I had to wake him up to brush his teeth. We all slept like rocks.

We woke up the next day and checked out the arcade. We were wasting time until noon(when the theme park opened). We decided to spend until early afternoon at Mount Olympus Resort since Michigan was being hit with a huge ice storm. We wanted the worst of it to be over, before we headed for home.

Brandon is amazing at these claw games. He knows which ones are rigged and which ones are winnable. According to him, they have to have light objects(heavy ones always fall) that are out in the open(not surrounded by anything else).

He won a big ball for both Joah and Brielle.

There were no other balls that Brandon thought he could win. It worked out well though, because Caed really wanted this “panda bear rubber duck.”

Right at noon, we headed to the theme park. We were so excited to find they had a rock climbing wall. This was a first for us. On a previous trip, we had plans to go to an indoor climbing place, but ended up not having time. Joah volunteered to go first. The little monkey climbed all the way to the very top, twice. He wanted to go a second time to count how many steps it took him. It took him 30 steps, in case anyone is wondering.

Brielle was up next. She made it about 6 steps and panicked. She wanted down and she immediately started crying. She was embarrassed and realized rock climbing is not for her. Caed didn’t even try. He said “dad, I’m too little of a boy.”

We did lots of rides. There were barely any other kids in the theme park, and had the place almost to ourselves. The kids kept riding over and over again.

The boys were in love with the airplane ride. Caed loves airplanes. He rode it about 20 times.

He was not so thrilled to go on the swing ride. Branadon made him, and he ended up loving it. I’ve mentioned before about Brandon’s parenting methods at theme parks. If a kid starts crying and is afraid to ride something he isn’t like “oh you poor little thing.” Nope. Instead he’s like “get on this ride right now. You’re gonna love it.” About 95% of the time they actually do love it. Brandon believes in pushing the kids to step out of their comfort zones and be brave and courageous.

We had so much fun. We also learned a good lesson. Sometimes plans change and we all need to learn to be flexible. Everyone was disappointed and frustrated, but something even better came out of it. We got to experience something totally new. A lot of fun memories were made. Now here’s to driving home in hopefully good weather and getting our sweet little baby. We all miss her like crazy!