Thursday, August 21, 2008

Skateland

A couple of weeks ago, we went with our church group to Skateland in Danville for roller skating and laser tag.
Elijah was a wall hanger.

He never did quite get the hang of it, although Katie pushed/pulled/dragged him around the rink a few times.

Dan tried to help him too, but unfortunately Elijah seems to have inherited his mother's natural balance. You will notice there are no pictures of me out there. I will never go skating with Dan again. The one and only time I ever went ice skating he tried to kill me. He denies it, but it's true. :)


Mackenzie had no trouble zipping around the rink.

Even with all his falls, he managed to have fun.

But laser tag was more fun and he was better at it.
He made the rank of Cosmic Seargent.

Cool blacklights.

While the big kids were doing laser tag and skating, Eleanor and I checked out the mini golf course. After the first two holes, she decided it was much easier to just drop the ball in the hole than to mess with the putter. It goes a lot faster that way, too.


She was very distressed when her ball went into the water the first time, but once she found out there were nets to fish it out...well, that's even more fun than dropping the ball in the hole!

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Rend Lake

Earlier this month, we went to Rend Lake in southern Illinois. Dan had a continuing education conference he needed to attend, so the kids and I tagged along to play in the hotel swimming pool while he was in class.






After his class one evening, we visited our friends who live nearby and the kids enjoyed swimming in their pond, until a thunderstorm chased us all indoors.





Mackenzie really liked the zip line.




Look! A giant golfball on a giant tee! You don't see one of those everyday, do you?


(This is a family joke from our trip here two years ago)





The last day, we drove several miles across the lake to visit this custard stand we'd been told about. Rend Lake is so big compared to anything near here. It was a beautiful drive, which is a good thing, since the custard stand was closed when we got there!

Eleanor the future supermodel

Mackenzie took these pictures, and I'm not really sure what they were doing, but evidently this is what you get when you tell Eleanor to "strike a pose."