Better Than Disneyland!

(Alternate Title: You Might Be Getting Older If...)

After so much discussion about what we would like to/can afford to/have the time to do this summer, we realized the summer has been passing us by and we have just been hanging out at home. We decided to book a last minute trip to Center Parcs in Belgium over the 4 day weekend we just had for Belgium's National Day. This place is all about kids and they had an amazing time.

Our kids repeatedly said it was the "best vacation ever" and each day they claimed was "the best day" of their lives. They also coined the title of this post, "Better than Disneyland!" Hmmmm....

We left late on Friday afternoon. The parents were exhausted before we began. I spent the entire day packing, doing laundry and cleaning up after the kids, who woke up super early and excited about the trip. We had lots of neighborhood kids stop by during the day and a short goodbye to friends headed back to the US just before we left. For some reason, Sarah thought it would be a great idea to take all of our Christmas ornaments out and break 1 or 2 of them. She also managed to pull the Wii from the shelf and break the eject button.

As an aside, I have a love/hate relationship with the Wii. I really don't like for the kids to be so into video games that they forsake all else, but as far as games go, it really is fun for the whole family and the kids are learning to play well together. We bought it from a family moving away and I was afraid it would be my worst enemy this summer, but it turns out we have managed to keep it from becoming all consuming so far...

On top of all of the packing distractions (namely Sarah), Joe's conference call ran quite a bit over our time schedule and he was not home until a while later than we intended to leave. He was rushed to pack his things (he had been in Germany part of the week and couldn't pack before) and the kids were tired and hungry and grumpy...as were the parents. Fun car ride!

Mercifully, we only drove for about 1 1/2 hours and the kids were entertained by a My Little Pony DVD.

There was so much to do that we had trouble fitting everything in, but we tried.

The parents had a hard time keeping up with the kids! They were like the Energizer Bunny and we were like "the other name brand". (Hence the alternate title of this post). We also found ourselves complaining about hard beds and scratchy sheets, loud clinking sounds of rain on the roof, and really loud music played until well after midnight each night. How old are we, anyway? We are learning to appreciate all of those trips our parents took us on as we were growing up where we had all of the fun and they did all of the work. I think I told Joe about one day into the weekend, "Unless you are a kid or you don't bring kids, vacations certainly are a lot of work!"

In spite of all of our complaining, we did enjoy ourselves. It was a nice little getaway and we did love watching the kids have so much fun. We laughed a lot, swam a lot and played a lot. We learned that Nathan is no closer to appreciating farm animals, as he refused to step foot in the animal petting area. The girls both even managed to pet one or two animals this time--progress.

As has become our usual around here, we discovered that some parts of Belgian holiday life are distinctly different from the average American vacation experience. For instance, we quickly discovered that everyone (and I mean everyone) locked up every bike and every stroller/buggy/carriage every single time it was left unattended. We brought the kids' bikes along and ended up buying a lock (which were readily available) to lock them together. We've been burned too many times here. We actually do have locks for their bikes and we managed to bring the locks, but forgot the keys. Hey, that's progress...a year ago, we would not have even thought to bring the locks. We also quickly discovered that the water park area (Aquamundo) is very sparsely supervised. If you don't watch your kid, your kid will not be watched. There were lights controlling the timing on some of the water slides, but one of the longer ones was not monitored at all and we found ourselves struggling to keep our children being trampled by other people (including ourselves--several times I could not stop myself from falling onto and crushing our 2 year old under water!). Good thing the big kids have been taking swimming lessons for 1 year and a half and Sarah seems to be part fish. She seriously has a gift, but she also has no fear, which is scary! We also were reminded of one annoying thing we learned on our trip to France last year. For whatever reason, it is acceptable to provide a family of 5 (who did tell the truth and admit to having all 3 kids and paid the correct amount of money for the extra child--we often find it hard to book a room with 3 kids because they want the extra child to have his own room...right, or perhaps they expect us to split up and one of us take one kid while the other takes 2?) with only 4 sets of towels and 4 sets of linens. Oh sure, we could get extra...for a price. Ridiculous! I also use the term "sets of towels" loosely...one small towel and one very small towel, but no hand cloth. That was it. Wait, do I sound old again? Who actually complains about the size of towels and no hand cloth?

We found many instances where lack of staffing or supervision was strange (at least to us). The petting farm was completely unmonitored and there was a hole in the fence where baby goats kept escaping. We saw several guests bringing them back as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do. When one escaped and almost gave our farm animal loving son a heart attack, I decided to carry him back myself. He was cute and the girls enjoyed seeing him up close. Also, he did not pee or poo on me. Always a bonus. In this unmonitored area we saw animals being fed random things. Not quite what we are used to, even from other petting areas we've to locally had signs. Here, not so much.

After 3 nights and almost 3 full days, we were ready to head home. We enjoyed one more day at home with Daddy before he headed back for his short work week. We've been entertaining friends here at home and are getting excited planning for our visitors coming in less than two weeks! We can't wait!