Spring Break to Minnesota......with a little hiccup.

I'm a bit behind in my blogging, but here we go!  For spring break we took Kate & Will to Minneapolis to the Mall of America.  They were SO EXCITED!!!  We had reservations at the Waterpark of America right across the street from the mall to make the trip even better.

Our first stop was the aquarium in the Mall.  Ever since our Clearwater, FL last year, Kate & Will have been obsessed with the ocean and all the animals in it.  The jellyfish in the aquarium were pretty awesome I might say.

More pretty fish.

Will loved the starfish and finding Nemo the clown fish.

The underwater shark tunnel was by far the highlight of the aquarium.  We were lucky to go at a time when it really wasn't busy at all, so we were able to stay in the tunnel for quite awhile and watch the sharks.

They were pretty large and scary!

Then the girls and the boys split ways.  Kate & I headed to the American Girl Doll store!  Kate has been dreaming of going to this store and we finally made it.  She really wanted to get her doll's  ("Anja") hair done.  I had no idea there was a whole salon for the dolls.  It was an 1 1/2 hour wait, but Kate wanted to do it.  So we shopped until the appointment time arrived.

We were able to watch the stylist do her hair which was nice because Anja's hair was getting pretty ratty and I needed to know a few tips in hair care for the doll.  The stylist was wonderful!  She said she actually was a stylist for 20 years in a "real people" salon and then decided to move onto something different.  The perk of doing doll hair all day long......"They never complain or talk too much!"   I thought that was cute!

You can't see the final product here, but it's super cute!  Kate chose the Style of the Month.  It included several braids on both sides that come together into a ponytail.  I think the style will hold for quite awhile too!  Making it worth the money!

At the waterpark resort it was a toss up on if the kids were more excited for the waterpark or the bunk beds they were going to sleep on! 

We also had an room that overlooked the wave pool, so there was a lot of entertainment right from our balcony.

And this is the last photo of our happy times in Minneapolis.   Little did we know that around 9pm our 1st night, our trip would take a nasty turn!  Will began complaining of a tummy ache at bedtime.  He moved into bed with me, and poor Brett got booted to the lower bunk.  Will was up and down most of the night.  My mind kept thinking of appendicitis since he really didn't have any other symptoms but tummy pain.  He finally crashed at midnight.........BUT THEN at 1am I woke up to Kate vomiting all over!  I have never jumped out of bed so fast in my life!   The poor thing was sicker than a dog for the rest of the night!  And there's nothing worse than being sick away from home!   On a good note, Will never actually vomited, and woke up at 7am feeling just fine.  However, poor Kate was miserable.  So we all got cleaned up and checked out of the hotel and drove the 4 hour trip right back to Des Moines.   A HUGE BUMMER!  The only positive was that a big snowstorm hit Iowa and Minnesota the following day and we were able to get home before it hit.  Kate & Will were real troopers about the whole thing.  We told them that at least now we know how much fun the mall and waterpark are, so we will plan to head back up there again soon.  Let's hope without any illness the next time.  This trip will definitely go down in the memory book!