Our trip to nationals in Madison, WI for tumbling this year took us through Dyersville, where we made a pitstop to see the Field of Dreams.
It was so neat to stand on the field where they filmed the movie.
Craig was super excited about this. I'm not sure the kids totally understood the significance, ha! But it was still fun.
Standing on the pitchers mound
Then we continued on to Madison and when we got there we joined friends and hit the pool right away!
Andrew loved having Rylee's brother there to hang with.
These three had fun!
Janessa is the daughter of Kerigan's coach
After swimming we had baths and relaxed in the room a little while before meeting friends in the lobby for pizza.
This sweet man was playing the piano and the girls were singing and dancing! They loved it!
Bright and early the next morning, ready to compete! (And who knows where Rylee's other shoe was?? ha!)
There were 42 girls competing at their level. Kerigan had 8 in her flight and there she is holding the #2! I was so proud of her to come out second among these 8 girls.
Waiting patiently with ice cream to see if she made it in the top ten!
And she did it! Only the top ten get to go on the podium and receive trophies. This is a huge honor at nationals, as there are girls there from every state. We think 8th place out of 42 girls is pretty impressive!
She's our champion!
She was so proud
These two rocked the podium! They got 8th and 9th!
Family pic with our girl!
This is her awesome coach Tasha
After awards, we grabbed lunch and headed to the zoo!
I think we saw half the tumbling teams there. It was a busy place!
This was a fun little free zoo but it had lots of animals! We were surprised it was free!
See the rhino back there?
This was one of Andrew's favorites
We always love the giraffes too!
Checking out the lions
That's a pretty big wingspan!
This girl was so happy!
Andrew was freaking out about getting to see this aardvark (And I have to say here that Andrew was looking at my blog and had to tell me that aardvark has 2 a's! Who knew?)
He says this is his favorite animal, and he had never seen one before so he was excited to get to see one in person.
Andrew insists this is a Bison... I thought a buffalo was the same thing! Ha! Thank you, Wild Kratts.
The kids both loved the prairie dog habitat. We could have watched them all day!
And then we saw the real Wisconsin badger!
We headed back to our hotel room and I had to take a picture of it. Ha! We somehow got an upgraded room for free, so we took it! The kids had the upstairs, which worked out awesome!
The next day on our way to campus, Andrew spotted this mini golf course. I'm telling you, that kid can spot one of these from a mile away.
It was such a fun place and we were glad he saw it!
Of course, part of it was animal themed, which was a hit with this guy!
They had to take this picture for Ga Ga! (she hates anything with feathers and they love to tease her about it! Ha!)
There were all kinds of neat slides, tunnels and things for them to climb on in between holes.
Our package included a game outside and inside, so here we moved inside!
The inside course had to do with things in Wisconsin
They had a glow in the dark hole!
The kids gave us a puppet show!
They loved this giant basketball. As you can see, Kerigan was mad Andrew was touching it because she wanted to! Ha! #siblingprobs
The last hole they got to slide down inside a golf club!
After mini golf we headed downtown to see the campus and the lake!
Andrew found the badger again and decided he's coming here to college! Ha! #goals
And I can't say I blame him with this scenery!
I'm afraid if I'd gone to college here I wouldn't have learned a thing! Ha ha! #ilovelakelife
Just chillin'!
There's the capitol in the background!
When the walk back to the car is the most fun you've had all day. Ha!
Next we headed to a place I went as a kid and couldn't wait to take my family there! The house on the rock!
I hadn't been there in years but I remembered a lot of it
Selfie in the courtyard!
Andrew loves unique creatures!
Humpty Dumpty!
Christmas in June!
They have their sweet moments
They loved walking all the way to the end of the infinity room
This is the room that sticks way out off the rock and just hangs there!
(photo credit: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/house-rock)
I pulled this from online so you could see it from the outside! So crazy!
Looking out the windows!
Then we went into another section of the house
The kids loved doing this
There were so many neat places and it just felt like everywhere you turned there was a new room with cool things to look at!
She loved these little china sets
An old fashioned movie theater!
Then they had this huge room with a giant octopus! The kids were super impressed.
It's hard to tell from the pictures how massive it is
Then they had this giant whale
This room was two levels and when you walked up the stairs you could see the top of the whale
Here we are on the next level, looking into the whale's mouth. He swallowed a boat!
It's hard to tell from these pictures just how cool this room was!
We found a Cyclone car in Wisconsin! Awesome!
Then they had this delicious ice cream store and of course we had to stop
They had this little brick road in another area where it felt like you were walking outside
An old gas station!
I think my favorite part was the end- the carousel
This room was amazing
Pictures do not do it justice, but that is an enormous carousel all lit up with tiny lights
The mermaid is behind Kerigan- she loved that one
The family picture didn't really turn out great, but we tried!
Andrew loved this tunnel!
After the tour of all the rooms, we headed outside through the courtyard on the way back. It was beautiful!
And that concludes our summer mini vacation! We are always so happy that Kerigan qualifies for nationals so we get a vacation out of the deal! Ha!
See last years trip to Tennessee here:
(It was a longer trip than Wisconsin so I broke it up into parts!)
