A Trip to Sheboygan, WI (With a Detour to LegoLand)

For the last two years, we have been having annual family reunions with our Elsesser relation (Sara's maternal grandma's family). This year, one of Sara's mom's first cousins, Roger, was celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife, Sandy.  Sara's Grandma was one of 12 kids in the Elsesser family, and was one of the youngest (I think maybe 3rd or 4th youngest? I'm not totally sure).  So Sara's mom has LOTS of first cousins throughout a large range of ages.  So Roger and Sandy were married 50 years ago on May 18, 1963. Their kids decided to throw them a surprise 50th wedding anniversary party in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. So the rest of the Elsessers decided to forego the stand-alone reunion this year and just get together for the anniversary party.  Unfortunately, Roger suffered a pretty severe stroke just a few weeks before the party, so it ended up not being a surprise, but the party was still held. Roger was even able to get a day-pass from the hospital to come to the party for a couple of hours!  He looked good and was in great spirits!

But let me back up here a minute... We decided to leave on Wednesday morning and make a stop in Schaumburg, Illinois to take Carson to the LegoLand Discovery Center. Nana and Papa decided to join us. We all had fun watching Carson, totally in his glory, at LegoLand. It's pretty over-priced, in my opinion, but luckily I found some coupons for $5 off each ticket, which cut the price down to $17/person for admission. We did get some free Duplos in one of the exhibits and Carson scored a (free) quart sized bag stuffed full of Legos and Duplos (whatever he wanted to fill it with) for showing one of the guys his creation, which was pretty cool.  But seeing Carson's excitement, smiles, and pure joy made it all worth the price of admission.

Bristol actually had a lot of fun herself. She loved walking around, feeling things, looking at things, and building with the Duplos. She knows they go together and tries to stack them, but mostly just bangs them together to make noise. :)

Carson got to pick out a Lego set as a souvenir. He's really into Batman right now, so he picked a cool Batmobile set. He was very excited about that and could not wait to build it once we got home. He also got to build some Lego figures as a souvenir, too, which he thought was pretty fun. Because of the Batman Legos, he declared LegoLand better than Disney... But later on said Disney was more fun, he just wishes they had Batman Legos there. :)

On Thursday, we headed up to Sheboygan.  We first made a stop at the Kohler Design Studio to get some ideas for an upcoming bathroom remodel.  They had some really cool stuff to see.  Everyone enjoyed it, even the kids, surprisingly!

Then we headed over to the Blue Harbor Resort where we met up with Great Poppy, Marion, Aunt Sharon, Uncle Reno, Aunt Jeri, Uncle Mike, Mackenzey, Kristin, and Kyle. What a beautiful place! They have an indoor waterpark which was a lot of fun, too! We spent lots of time in there and ate at some really good restaurants, too. On Friday, lots of other Elsesser family cousins joined us at the Blue Harbor for the weekend, which was very cool.

Saturday was the 50th anniversary party for Roger and Sandy, which was so fun.  It was great to see everyone, meet even more cousins I've never met before, and just have a good time.  Carson and Mackenzey were the first ones on the dance floor and did not stop the entire time we were there!  It was so cute and hilarious!

It was a quick, busy trip, but was a lot of fun! Carson and Mackenzey had an absolute blast together, between the waterpark and dancing at the anniversary party! Bristol was a great little traveler and was so happy and easy-going the entire time. And it was nice to spend time with family and see (and meet) lots of extended family! We can't wait until the reunion next year!