Travel with Kids: Wisconsin

At Betty Brinn, in the space shuttle area

Last weekend,  my sister, Lydia and I took a trip to Wisconsin to celebrate my and my mom's birthdays. We went last year in November, too, and were pleasantly surprised when the temperatures were at least 20 degrees warmer than last year.

Lydia still proves to be an excellent traveler, and I think it is just her personality that makes it easy.  Her iPod Touch and our iPad definitely helped pass the time, and I'm grateful for the amazing apps that people create, and how easy it is to load episodes of kid-friendly shows.  I also absolutely love that Netflix has a streaming app for the iPad, because when we had wifi, she was able to watch things straight from our queue.

The trip was short, but we were able to spend some great quality time with my parents, visit downtown Waukesha (including the gelato shop) and the Fox River, visit the Betty Brinn Children's museum (where they accused my brother of being a pedophile since he arrived before we did -- that was fun!!), saw my in-laws and even visited a dairy farm, thanks to my brother's girlfriend.

Even though she wasn't feeling great (she has a lingering cold), it didn't stop her from being gregarious, independent and a delight to everyone around her.  We packed carefully so that we didn't have to check any bags, and she was great about carrying her own backpack through the airports.  She didn't even complain at being woken at 4:30AM so we could catch our early morning flight home.

She said a lot of amusing things, but she kept asking about things in "this world" and how they were different in "our world."  Things like the leaves falling off the trees, and the dreary, gray skies.  I wasn't sure why she was thinking we lived in different worlds, until I came home and continued reading The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis to the boys.  I have been reading it as a read-a-loud for a couple weeks, and there is much talk of different worlds.  It makes perfect sense that she would see the landscape and lives of those in Wisconsin as a completely different world as the one we live in here in Arizona. 

Traveling with one child is much simpler than traveling with three.  It helps that she is an easy traveler!  (Doesn't mean I didn't miss my boys though!)

(ETA: I realize this post is a grammatical nightmare . . . but I'm exhausted (Did I mention that I came home in time to see Bo off to Minnesota for a week? And that Lydia is sick? And so is Nate? And I have work commitments like crazy to take care of?) and I wanted to get this up before too much time went past because mostly I wanted to remember about Lydia and her worlds.  So, forgive me. )