Swimming Trip

From Jan 31-Feb 2, we took a weekend trip up to Minneapolis to enjoy the indoor Water Park of America. This fancy place is across the street (well, freeway) from the Mall of America.

The hotel is attached to the water park, so once we checked in we never had to go outside. (Ok, that's not entirely true. Jeremy braved the cold a couple times to get us take-out and necessities from Walmart. That was very awesome of him.)

We got a great discount on our hotel rooms since Jeremy is a Hormel employee. We also got our waterpark tickets for free, which must be a blessing for paying tithing because we should have been charged like everyone else.

The hotel was so nice! We always enjoy hotels because the boys can explore and mess up everything and it doesn't matter. But we REALLY enjoyed hotel living this trip. We watched lots of TV, ate lots of snacks, giggled and cheered and jumped on beds and, best of all, blasted the heater as high as we wanted! 

Jeremy and Tanner played sumo wrestling on the bed by stuffing their shirts with pillows.

Saturday was the big swimming day. Dallin looked so cute in his swimming diaper. I realized this was going to be his first time in a swimming pool. Turns out, he is a little FISH! He squealed and gasped and giggled and splashed. He kicked his legs and his entire body when we held him in the deep pools. He crawled fearlessly through the shallow ends. He was mesmerized by the bubbling water in the play areas. And he loved splashing and getting water all over him. What a happy little guy!

Ready and excited to swim!

The park was super fun- and WARM. We had to be cautious with Tanner though because he was running a fever and complaining about his ears hurting. We successfully kept his head above water the whole time. (It helps that he hates getting his head wet or being splashed on. He's always been like that--quite different from Dallin). And don't worry, no ear infection came of it.

We played around this playground and enjoyed the fountains. 

We spent two hours exploring the park in the morning, went up to our rooms for naps and lunch, and then enjoyed a few more hours of the park in the afternoon.

The most fun was spent floating down the lazy river. We rode it both in the morning and afternoon, floating through the park over and over and over again. The boys LOVED sitting in the tubes with us. Tanner and Dallin made each other laugh and giggle uncontrollably.

In our double inner tube, we floated along singing songs, playing "I spy" and tickling games, and just watching all the people coming and going. This was one of those amazing moments where I was overwhelmed with joy to be a part of this little Zavoral family. 

On Sunday, we attempted to go to church near our hotel. But the crowded situation with the hotel elevators (and no access to stairs) made it take forever to get out of the place. So we jumped to the next item on our plans, which was Mall of America to see what free fun we could find. Jeremy's coworker took these family shots of us in the Mall of America. We ran into her and her family several times that weekend!

We were very entertained by the Legos at LegoLand and other toys in a bunch of other stores. Then we ate lunch and went home.

It was the perfect weekend trip to brighten our spirits from all this cold!

Here's my favorite picture from the trip. It features Jeremy's new teeth with no more braces, Tanner's T-Rex face, Dallin's adorableness and my new haircut.

Isn't our family so good looking!?!