*Badger Country*

This weekend was a busy one for our little family! Friday night we spent our time doing laundry and getting packed for our travels down to Lake Geneva for Ryan's graduation party. Ryan is one of the two boys I used to Nanny for. He was nine when I started working for his family and he was going to turn 13 when I left. Thus, I have missed out on most of his teen years, and to this day I still am in denial about his age and where he is in life... so I asked him to just pretend he was graduating middle school :)  He is a great kid with a wonderful future ahead of him. He is accepted into and attending college at UW-Madison for Pre-Med.

Hunter wouldn't sit right next to Ryan for the photo so we got the next best thing!

So we arrived at the party on Saturday at 2pm. It took us about 5 hours for the drive down. The kids did really good in the car and were quite happy when we got there. The party went really well. It was great to see some familiar faces from Denver that I haven't seen in a while. The food was also very good :) Hunter required his typical warm up period from people before he was able to interact with anyone, but there were a few who he opened up to in our short 4 hours that we were there. The one he warmed up to the most was Papa Al! Although, I think Al had a very sharp advantage over the competition because he had a new John Deere lawnmower that Hunter was allowed to sit on! Abby had a wonderful time at the party and loved the interaction with the women at the party. She just loves a crowd!

After we left the party, we traveled back to Madison for our hotel stay. I had gotten a great deal on a room at the Crown Plaza (yay hotwire.com!). I was excited to get the kids into the pool before we settled down for the night. We headed down to the pool right after we got our stuff into the room. Hunter and Abby both enjoyed the pool so much! Although it was a bit chilly, it didn't seem to affect Abby in the slightest. She didn't even wince when I put her in to her shoulders! Hunter however, held onto me like his life depended on it and kept saying he was cold. Abby automatically kicks her legs when you drag them behind her in the pool. She is a natural swimmer! I think she will end up being our fish. Hunter has never really taken to a pool without hesitation and fear first. Hunter did however, take the the girls at the pool that night! By the time he left, they were doing tricks for him to watch and he was yelling "Bye friends!" as we were leaving...

Abby was wide-eyed and enjoying the pool!

Hunter pulled out his 'cool factor' behavior when we were in the hotel room that night. I cannot explain this behavior really well, but sometimes he just acts so 'cool' like nothing can bother him. It is really, way too cute. He was walking around the room trying to find something to do/get into/explore, I loved watching every minute of it. The funniest thing was that he couldn't figure out the phone in the room and he kept picking it up saying he was going to call everybody (literally, he said "I call everybody"). At 9:40pm he was being told to fall asleep and he was still trying to come up with excuses to refuse sleep!

This morning we woke up with a cheery "Today we go home!" and an enthusiastic "Yeah!" when I asked if he wanted to swim again this morning. We enjoyed our swim before we hit the road again. It was a quicker drive home since we were already 1 hour closer to home due to the location of the hotel. We were happy to be out of the car by the time we were back!

Now, I'm just one blog off from my goal of three this week... hopefully I'll be able to do another one in the next day or two!