Special Days

When Bethany, my two oldest cousins and I were younger my grandparents on my mom's side, Grandpa Dave and Grandma Elaine, did this thing where they would take us on a special day(s). Each of us would get a day or a few days and they would take us somewhere he had never been or we just did things we didn't get to do very often. My very first special day was in 2002 and had a special day each year from then on until 2004. It was this year that Grandma and Grandpa decided to do a group special day and take the four oldest cousins to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, together. At that time there weren't near as many cousins as there is now. It was just Isaiah, Eli, me, and Bethany. We thought this was great because we didn't get to see each other as often as we would have liked. After this special day we decided that every third or fourth year we would do a group special day. Our next group special day was in 2007 when we went to Branson, Missouri. During this trip we decided that we did a bunch of different stuff including spending a day at Silver Dollar City, it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with my cousins, and I suppose my sister. The next year in 2008 we did a guys special day in June. Grandma and Grandpa took Isaiah, Eli, and myself to Minden, Nebraska to Pioneer Village.  Then in July of 2008 we all went to Branson again and didn't do anything similar to the year before. Actually Grandpa had bought a timeshare in '07 and this was the grandkids first time to try it. We went to the Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was this year that we believe we set a record for how many buffets you can eat at in a week although I don't remember what the grand total was. It seems like we ate at them for every meal. In 2009 we took one of our longest special days yet. We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That was a long drive. We did a lot of stuff while we were there too. My grandpa has this thing where he makes it so you need a vacation, to recuperate from your vacation. It is incredibly exhausting but tons of fun. While in Tenn. we went to Dollywood which is similar to Silver Dollar City, went to a comedy show, and stopped and played in a stream along the road, which is actually fairly common in Tennessee. They actually have parking areas and steps leading to the streams. In 2010 Isaiah and I graduated from eighth grade and Grandpa Dave took us to the AGCO plant in Hesston, Ks, or for those who don't know what AGCO is. He took us to a plant that makes tons of farm machinery. Isaiah loves farming more than I do for those who are wondering why we went there, we loved every minute of it. We saw how they made balers, planters, swathers, combines, headers, and more. Also in 2010 Bethany and I went to Wisconsin with Grandpa Dave our uncle Josh and younger cousin Gracie. Grandma Elaine wasn't able to go on this trip because she had just started a new job and Isaiah and Eli weren't able to as well. We went to the Wisconsin Dells and since it is the waterpark capital of the world. We went to a water park. We also went on a boat tour of the Upper Dells, which was beautiful and we got to see some really interesting rock formations. On the way home from this trip we stopped in Illinois at the John Deere Pavilion, which I thought was neat, although I don't think Bethany and Gracie thought it was.

2011 was kind of a sad year. We had our last special day. We decided to go back to Wisconsin but this time Isaiah and Eli were able to go. We went over Spring Break and the whole family had been at Grandma and Grandpa's on Sunday to have dinner. Then the four cousins spent the night and when we woke up on Monday morning of spring break, there was eight inches of snow on the ground. It was gone by the time we got to Nebraska though. When we got into Wisconsin, they still had feet of snow on the ground it was awesome. We had intended to go skiing but for some reason they close the ski slopes at the resort the week before spring break. So instead we slid down the slopes on our feet and we also rolled snow balls down them. We would make a big snow ball and then see how much bigger it would get when we rolled it down the hill. Once again during this trip we went to a water/amusement park although this one was inside and it was huge. We had a lot of fun on this special day but because we were getting older and our lives were getting busier we decided this would be our last special day. It was a hard decision to make.