Izzy's Corner

Hello. I'm sorry, I haven't been posting in a while. This trip I am about to post about was from about a month ago, so this is pretty old. Anyway, here we go. We came home from a wonderful trip to The House on the Rock and the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells with Granny and G-Pop!! It was soooo fun! Let me tell you all about it. We left on August 19th, Sunday. That day was also Sonja's Confirmation day, so Granny and G-pop came to the service. We all came home together and had a Crock-Pot roast for lunch. then, we changed our clothes, loaded the car, said goodbyes, and went on our way to Dodgeville!! It was a good 5-hour trip to Dodgeville, and we had a pretty fun ride, because Granny was being VERY hilarious reading the Culver's Flavor of the Day list, making up very hilarious flavors such as: "Rocky Road: Fresh Frozen Custard SWIRLED with Gravel." And such and so forth. Before we went to our Hotel, (The House on the Rock Inn) we went to the Country Kitchen and had our supper. After that we went to the hotel, checked in, and went to our hotel room. We had 3 beds: 1 for Granny and G-pop, 1 for Sonja and Sese, and 1 for Miranda and I (PLUS a pull-out couch which no one used.). Me and Miranda hardly EVER get to have a bed because the hotels we usually go to only have two beds, so we have to either sleep on an air mattress or a pull-out couch. We had two TV's, one in each room (Granny and G-pop's bed was in another room, and us girls' beds were in the main room. We watched Food Network, Little League baseball, and other things. We stayed for two nights. The House On The Rock was GREAT!! We did the first two tours on the first day, and then 3rd tour on the second day. Here are pictures from the first day.
This is a picture outside in front of the entrance. This is a funny flower pot.

You may not be able to see this very well, but you can click on it and it will be larger. This is a statue that is in the very entrance of the building. It is a man, with a snake or something.

This next picture is one of the little gardens in the place.

And this is a picture of a statue that is supposed to be Saint Francis of Assisi, next to a fossil rock.

The next part was a little part all about Alex Jordan, the person who built the House on the Rock. We did not take any pictures, because it was kind of boring. Then, we began Tour 1. The first picture on Tour 1 we took was of a model of a boat.

This picture is pretty dark, but you might be able to make out a three-headed creature that belongs on a Carousel.

We got our tickets punched and we began the tour. I can't really remember the very beginning part. We are just going to skip until you are just going to get to the Infinity Room. Just guess what we saw!! We saw a cat. Yes, a cat running up the path, coming to meet us. It was completely friendly and it just came up to us and rubbed us and allowed us to pet it. We got a short movie of it coming up to us.

Isn't it cute!!? But we didn't stay with it for long, and so we went on our way to the Infinity Room. Here are pictures. This is the entrance for the Infinity room, as you can see.

Here we are looking down in to the woods.

It goes on forever........

And yet another picture of the woods.

And here we are in front of a water wheel. (Sonja took the picture)

Here is the water wheel.

And then we entered the Streets of Yesterday. Here is a sign from one of the 'shops'.

And here is a lovely tea set.

Here is a picture of something like a horseless carriage or something

Here we are in the Whale Room. We did not take any pictures of the whale, because no one really liked looking at this huge, ginormous sculpture that is just SCARY! I didn't open my eyes for at least 5 minutes and when I did (for two seconds) I was horrified! But I finally opened my eyes and did not really freak out. Anyway, this is another boat model, the Delta Queen.

And a nice model of a ship.

Above and both the pictures below are all colorful masks made out of feathers.

Now we have skipped a lot of stuff. I don't know where exactly this was, but isn't it pretty?

Next we went into the Carousel Room. This is a sign that was by the carousel. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any good pictures of the carousel because it was moving, and it was really too dark to take a picture. The Carousel Room was the last room in Tour 2, so we went out the door and to the Fudge/Gift Shop. The fudge there was pretty good. I got a Maple Nut flavored Fudge and shared it with Sonja. Every body else just got Mint Chocolate Chip. After that, we went to the little Pendarvis museum. No one really had a good time here, because it was just old little houses and building, so it was pretty boring there. Then we went to The Red Rooster Cafe and witnessed Granny and G-pop eating their last pasty. We went to the cafe because Granny wanted us to see what a pasty was like, since the miners that lived at Pendarvis had those. It took a pretty long time for our food to come, and we were all really starving. Here are funny pictures of us. (Keep in mind, this was BEFORE our food came.)

When we showed Dad these pictures, he just cracked up at how funny we all look. The pasty was not that good, and the meat in it was all dry.
But after that, we just went to Subway and the Grocery Store and got some pizzas and other food to take back to the hotel. Now we go to the next day. We did Tour 3 on that day. We saw the little kitty cat that we saw the day before. It was sitting on the roof of the walkway!!

The first room we saw was the organ room. It had lots of old junk in it, such as old drums hanging on the walls, and a few little sleighs. Here are the organs that we took pictures of.

The next room that we went into was the Dollhouse room, but we really couldn't take pictures in that part, because partly it was really dark, and there were so many that you couldn't really keep track of all of them. After the Dollhouse room, it was the Circus room, and there was this big music structure in the middle, and there were all of these mannikins in circus clothes on the big elephants, and a mannikin orchestra on the wall.
And if you would like to see the picture bigger, just click the picture to make it full size.

Then we went into this Asian/Chinese/Japanese section that had some Ivory things in it.
Here is one of them. (Sorry about the flash. It was really dark in there, so we had to use the flash.)

And then we took a picture of an over-sized vase.

Then we came into this room that had several collections. On one wall, there were these poses of battle scenes, and it was kind of strange. On another wall, there were all of these replicas of crowns such as Queen Elizabeth the first crown and other peoples. And then on one wall there was this huge model of Buckingham Palace. Here are some pictures from that.

And that was the end of the tour. Then we went on our way to Wisconsin Dells! When we got there, it took a while to check in. But finally we got in and went to our hotel room. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, a full living space, and a hot tub. With 3 TVs. The only bad thing was, that us girls bedroom didn't have any windows and it only had a a little lamp, so even if it was really bright outside, our bedroom would be almost dark. The first day we went to the pool we hardly did any big slides. Sonja, Sese, and G-pop were at a grocery store, getting food for tonight and tomorrow. We went on the Action River, which was pretty fun because it had waves at the end that would lift you off your feet! So then when Sonja and Sese came, we just did the little slides again. The second day, we went on the outside waterpark. The first thing we did was a really slow slide that was not that fun. Then we went on a tube slide that was kind of scary because it was pitch black and it didn't matter if you had you eyes open or closed, you couldn't see a thing. Then we went on a really, really, fun red slide that is like the Giant Slide at the State Fair, except it is much longer. Miranda and I went together and we screamed so loud, Granny and G-pop, who were in the lounge chairs a little farther away, could hear us. That was all we really did in the outside. Then we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not. All of it was pretty disgusting. On the day we left, we went to the pool in the morning and went on some really fun slides inside. There was a 3-person racing one, that was really fun, and a fun slide that had a drop at the bottom so that was fun. And we went on some fun tube slides, and after that we went to the hotel room to pack up. Then we left, and headed back home. Granny and G-pop stayed over night, and they left in the morning for a different place. Anyway, now I will tell you about some normal life. I a now obsessed with all of the Narnia movies, and I am going to watch one tonight. I hope you don't fall asleep reading this. And school has started, and I am doing fine, except some of my writing books haven't come in the mail. I am reading The Story of King Arthur and His Knights for literature and I am enjoying it. I am also enjoying my Science book. Now I will let you go, and thank you for reading this. I will post soon!!!
~Izzy~

Hello.
Let me tell you what we have been doing these past months. Yesterday on, we came home from the Two Rivers Feile in Des Moines, Iowa. (for your information a feile is a dance competition.) We didn't take very many pictures the day of the feis, but the day before we took a few. Only Mom, me, and Miranda went to this feis. The other half of the family stayed home. We stayed at Chase Suites. It was not like a regular hotel at all. There were maybe 50 to 75 little two level buildings. There were two rooms on top, two rooms on bottom. Here is a picture for you to see.

It was very comfortable inside with a king bed, a full kitchen, a bathroom, two closets, and a living area. Here is another picture. This is Miranda and I sitting on the bed watching TV. We saw a little bit of the Olympics, but it was only Ladies Basketball and Men's Archery, so we just watched Food Network.

After we had supper, we went to the location of the feis to check it out. I took a picture of Mom and Meema standing in front of the place.

And the sign.

I took a picture of an interesting statue (or whatever you think it's called).

There were these bugs that were making SO much noise. It wasn't like crickets, it was like a bug screaming really loud. There were a few dead ones around the door to our room. This one was upside down.

After we got back from checking the feis location out, we got an ice cream cone at McDonald's. We watched TV for a little bit, and then we went to bed. We woke up at about 6:30 or something to put are wigs on, and then we went to the free breakfast area. Yes, people stared at us.

After we got to the location of the feis, we went to the camping room (which was WAY too small) and set up a camp. I went to check the stage out. We practiced our first dance a little bit, and then we went to go get dressed and get to our stage. Our softshoe went pretty quick and then was hardshoe. We did our Treble Jig and then went to go get a bit of food at the concessions stand downstairs. Shortly after that we did our last dance of the day, the Hornpipe. Miranda got a 5th in the Hornpipe, and I got a 3rd in the Treble Jig and a 5th in the Hornpipe. Before we packed up, we took a picture of ourselves.

Then we went to McDonald's and had some lunch. We got out of the feis by 2:30! Then we went on our 4-hour drive home. We had a surprise when we got home! Dad, Sonja and Sese redid the living room! We got two nice IKEA chairs and put a rug on the floor. I have to go now, so by!