Mini Vacay

Last week, we headed to the booming metropolis of Hays, KS. Exciting stuff, huh? ;0) Jeff had a conference there (where he was one of the speakers; for the first time, and he did a great job!!). Sometimes we like to tag along with Jeff on his work travels if we can. Since school starts next week, we decided this could be a fun little getaway for all of us.
When Jeff was booking our hotel, he saw one with a cool indoor pool and water slide!!

We decided that this would be where we were going to stay. When we got there, we decided that we are hotel snobs. It wasn't quite what we were expecting. But, the kids did have a lot of fun in the pool and on the slide, so that's something......isn't it??
Anyway....they boys practically spent the entire time going down this slide:

Lily spent her time just walking around the pool:

When Jeff got back to the hotel, he talked Lily into going down the slide with him:

She didn't hate it!

She even went down a second time! But after that she told Jeff she would go again next year. (Whenever she doesn't want to do something she says she'll do it next year, no matter what she is talking about. "I'll take a shower next year, I'll eat that chicken next year....you get the idea.)

While waiting for Jeff to get done at his conference the last day, we found the Statue of Liberty!!

The kids were pretty excited to see it. I told them the real one was quite a bit bigger than this one. :0)

Then we headed to the Sternberg Museum. This was one of the reasons we went to Hays with Jeff. None of us had ever been & we thought the boys would find it interesting.

There were a lot of cool exhibits. This is a skeleton of a fish inside another fish!

Glowing rocks!

That is one big leg!!

There were a lot of hands-on things the kids could do too!

There was even an art project!! You know I made them do it!

You cut out a little world, wrote what you would do to help the earth on it, and then traced you hand and cut that out and then stapled the earth to the hand.

Zach & Lily wrote "recycle" and Riley wrote, "save water".

Then we headed to the dinosaur section! The kids thought this sign was funny:

The dinosaurs moved and made sounds!

Lily said this one was nice because it was eating leaves.

After the dinosaurs, there was a little spot where you could pretend to dig for fossils. They got to wear little hats and use brushes to brush the sand away.

When we were done at the museum, we headed home. On the way, we stopped in Victoria, KS to see the Cathedral of the Plains. We had been told by several people to stop and look at it since we were so close anyway.

It is a beautiful church. It is also one of the 8 wonders of Kansas. I didn't even know there were "Wonders of Kansas"!

They built it by hand, and it is pretty cool to see how big it is and how much work went into it and that it was made by the local people.

This is one of the beautiful stained glass windows:

We didn't stay here long. One, the kids were NOT interested in this (and they thought we were going to make them go to mass), and a two, Zach was not feeling well by this time. In fact our trip home was not fun at all. Poor Zach threw up 4 times on the way home. :0( I felt so sorry for him. He was already feeling better the next day though, so I'm glad it didn't last long.

That was our mini vacation. It was actually kind of relaxing to just be away from home and not have anything that needed to get done, and the kids had fun just swimming and watching movies. I usually feel like I need a vacation when we get back from vacation, but not this time. =)