5 Gilligans & the Hotel Wisconsin

This year Matt's Summer Sales Conference with his work took us to beautiful Wisconsin, on a LAKE! Yay! His company is so awesome and family friendly I LOVE it! We were all invited to come along at no extra cost to us. So vacation it was with the kiddos. They were beyond excited to embark on our journey to the exotic land of Wisconsin :)

They were so excited they could barely contain themselves...see.

They were super excited when they saw that our hotel room had this awesome little loft for "their room" with their own tv, closet and bathroom. They ran up immediately to unpack and get settled. I had let each of them pack a couple things of their own to bring with us in their backpacks. I was thinking a couple of favorite toys, maybe a book or two. Like Bailey bringing her brand new birthday Lava Lamp so that our hotel room could be "groovy." And groovy it was. Then I went up stairs to check on things and I discovered what Taitem considered top priority to bring with her.

How could we even think about traveling from home without bringing Taite's most prized possession and nightstand necessity...she had packed her picture of Oma of course.

The first night was so much fun. We had a big company dinner and a band played. People kept coming up to us and commenting on how cute and well-behaved our kids were. My motherly ego swelled :)

Bailey and Taite joined the band and brought down the house with their drumming skills and dancing abilities. It was a great start to the vacation!

Matt had meetings through this lovely vacation so really it was just me and the kids. Matt signed us up for a boat tour, I am thinking how fun is that?!? Well, I was never told or I didn't listen...I forget which one, but nonetheless I was unaware that this tour was 2 1/2 hours long. That is unaware until we were loaded and pulling away from the dock with 100 people aboard unwilling and unable to turn around and let the lone crazy lady with 5 screaming children off of the boat.

Here we are posing for a picture before we "knew" what was up ahead.

I'll tell you what was up ahead, only the worst "mothering" experience to date, that is what.

It started off on the wrong foot. Gus fell asleep before boarding the boat. So now I am outnumbered (like always) but left with one usable arm, my strangling abilities are severely limited by this. Not time to panic yet, the kids are still excited and happy. Surely everything will be fine. I've handled church plenty of times by myself with the kids. We go many places, no, we go almost everywhere just me and the kids, they are good kids...this will be fine! But I had this sinking feeling as land drifted from my reach that all hell was about to break loose, I could just feel it!

Cruising along. Wind in our face. Everyone smiling and oooing and awwwing. About 15 minutes in the kids begin to question and then later realize, this is what the "tour" is? Looking at bazillion dollar lakefront homes like these, with narrative and obscure lake facts blaring over a speaker positioned much too closely to our heads. Really? Really.

Oh so pretty these houses were. And being somewhat of a history nut in general, I enjoyed immensely this educational tour. The mood of my children upon learning that this was what the tour was all about turned to this....

There were still smiles. They were entertaining themselves. They were still my cute, adorable, well-behaved brood, for the time being.

The girls were alright for the most part, getting bored ~ yes. But not unmanageable...yet.

Cy on the other hand was s. l. o. w. l. y. beginning to crumble, to sink, to FALL APART! Don't let that cute face fool you, although he did adorably yell out at the speaker "Can't they play Wenny (Lenny) Kravitz?" He wanted me to hold him, but Gus was still drooling all over my arm in slumberland. Cyrus was hungry, never a good condition for a Johnson male to be in. Then he started to cry out, in true pain, that his tummy HURT!

We were snacking.

I was juggling.

It was working.

But only for a minute.

Then Gussy woke up. Gus was the one I was worried about in the first place. He is a wild man, the boat is a confined space, he is 21 months old. He likes to jump off of things, like the boat railing I envisioned in my head. He HAD to stay on my lap! He did not want to stay on my lap.

Then the girls began to whine and complain. I despise whining. DESPISE. They know it. I don't tolerate it. It stopped shortly after it began, but it was too late, I was already embarrassed and infuriated about it. I couldn't pack up and leave upon first infraction of my rule like I normally would have done, we were trapped.

I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and sang

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

a tale of a fateful trip......

a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour!"

Over and over again in my head. Hoping for a storm that would run us up on the land where I could grab my 5 little Gilligans and run away into the jungle.

Then poor Cyrus, writhing in pain, fists clenching, grasping his tummy, wailing. WAILING!

I thought he was going to puke for sure. People are staring. People are irritated. The boring man on the speaker is drown out by my son. He is inconsolable. I wanted to climb under my chair.

How much longer? How much LONGER!

Oh, only an hour and 15 minutes. You get the picture, it was lovely.

My mothering ego burst.

We ALL went back to the hotel immediately and took long naps. ALL of us! Forced naps :)

This was the only problem, thank heavens, on our trip. They were actually really good kiddos for the rest of the time. The kids and I tremendously enjoyed swimming, playing, eating out, games, walks, SO FUN. We even had more comments about their good behavior, obviously from people who had not joined us on the boat tour :)

The menfolk had some time off and so we went out on a boat the next day. It was a much more pleasant boating experience. We all had a BLAST with all Matt's friends. The kids just wanted to swim the whole day. Safety first nerdy Matt!

The only time Gus wanted out was to eat. Nice head band buddy.

I swear the camera just caught his face like that, he really was very HaPpY!

It was so much fun, Wisconsin is my new favorite place. The kids loved it and when I needed a quiet moment I just locked them out on the balcony like this.

Lots of fun, lots of this! Hugging it up.

It was a FaNtAsTiC trip

Cyrus cracks me up because he doesn't understand the whole state thing. He refers to the whole experience as the "Hotel Wisconsin". When can we go back to the Hotel Wisconsin?