Our tiny jumper

It's been a really long time since I talked about my little jumper, and little is literal. Paul took this video of her one evening at a practice, she's the one in the middle, the smallest one. 

Hope was promoted this year to the Demo Team, which basically means she's part of the team that goes to other schools to show their stuff and hopefully recruit. She really enjoys it, especially the part where they get to go out to eat after performing.

A few weeks back all the teams got together to put on a performance for friends and family. This included some of the high school girls who still perform, made me wonder if Hope will be one of these girls someday....

This performance was a little different, they turned off all the lights and used light up ropes. Pretty cool to watch, but the pictures? Well it appears as if it was the 1960's and I was trippin' on something.

Turn on some Zeplin man.

Just look into the light....

You get the point, the pictures were wild.

But she did a really good job. I'm so impressed with her foot work and stamina.

Our tiny jumper.

She makes us smile.

My NYE with a killer cat

So the end of our visit in Wisconsin I was completely useless. I just sat around in pain . LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN. 

While everyone else was off having fun on New Years Eve, I sat in a chair and hung out with Hoda and Kathie Lee.  Oh and I hung out with the cat Sonny.

He sat in this window by me and we chilled out like homies, that was until he acted like he might kill something.

I'm not super versed in cats, so his moaning began to FREAK ME OUT. I decided to video him, you know in case he decided I would be his victim. At least everyone would know how I went out of the world. I finally started to text Paul and he came to my rescue, turns out Sonny saw a tomcat outside and just wanted to defend his territory. Seriously cats, you scare me. 

I hate that I ended our visit feeling bad, but it still was such a great time together.

Pam and Tom have taught me that where you live doesn't mean if you are close are not. It really is in the heart.

So until we meet again....

Going to see the eagles. The birds, not the band.

When I say that we went to see the eagles, do you picture this? 

Well I know I sure did.

Pam and Tom would say "let's go see the eagles!" and an image of four famous rockers would pop in my head. But no, we didn't go see the band, but the actual birds.

Where Pam and Tom live bald eagles migrate down from the North to reach the open waters of the dam so they can feed.

I've only seen a bald eagle at the zoo, never in the wild. Which by the way, the eagles at the zoo are always sad what with their sad little messed up wings.

But here in WI, we had the chance to see them being free and all bald eagle'ish.

You can see we obeyed the rules.

In their defense, the first day we went there were no eagles out.

But second and third trip? HOUSTON, WE HAD EAGLES. People travel from all over and bring the big guns with them to capture these bad boys.

I obviously do not have that caliber of a camera, but we did manage a few good shots.

They are so close that it's pretty amazing.

And probably most amazing was that we saw close to THIRTY at one time.

Just being majestic and all eagle like.

Not gonna lie, pretty cool.

Whicky whacky house

Ever heard of this place?

Yeah, me either.

Well I mean I have now, but I never had before our visit.

And let me just say, I am completely unsure how to blog about this place. First of all, it's been like two weeks since our visit, and I have the WORST MEMORY EVER, and second, this place was WEIRD.

This dude named Alex Jordan, started to build this house in 1945, and worked on it until his death in 1989.  And this is where my mere explanation of this place will stop, because I simply CANNOT EXPLAIN THIS PLACE.

The new owners had over SIX THOUSAND Santa's in the place.

I mean I have no problem with the man in the red suit

But SIX THOUSAND? Yeah, it was on the verge of insanity.

The house was in sections, and to get to certain areas we had to go outside. This sign and view taunted me as we went outside in the 6 degree temperatures, and everything was DEAD.  Including my soul, as it slowly froze as I ran to the warmth.

The house is probably most famous for the infinity room.

This is a picture of a picture, but it's a room that juts out 218 feet without any supports underneath.

The kids begged me to go out there with them

And I did.

However, it was not pretty. Maybe it was the anxiety attack that thew my back out?

Once I had recovered from my brush with near death, I was once again traumatized. This time by rooms full of DOLLS.

THIS IS THE STUFF NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF.

Like I said, I can't explain this house.

My favorite part of the house were the villages.

We walked though towns inside the house, and they were beautiful.

I could have stayed in this part all day.

I think Hope felt the same way too.

In the 2 1/2 hours in the house, we spent a majority of our time in the villages.

Pierce kept getting distracted by these, 'test your love thingies'

As you can see one of us is exotic.

But don't get too relaxed with the beauty and fun, because NIGHTMARES are just around the corner.

After miles of walking we finally had made it to the moment we had all been waiting on.

This house has the largest carousel in the the world.

When your camera has a prime lens you can't capture the magnitude of certain things.

This is a mere fraction of this carousel, and of this GIGANTIC room. Might be time to get a different lens, so I can capture some things better.

I may have not captured the images in the way I would have hoped, but I will never forget how much fun we had exploring that crazy house.

The evening ended with a great meal out, and back pain that nearly crippled me, but we'll just focus on the fun day exploring that whicky whacky house.