Our 3rd Year Anniversary

Just thought I would put up a few pictures and leave you all clueless as to what we did for our third Anniversary! Okay maybe I can spare a few words for you....

It seems that the time went by really fast. Honestly the last three years in high school went by way slower than these past three years, and who'd have thought I would have three kids in 3 years! Lucky for us Amy (my sister) volunteered to watch Wesley and the Twins (Kairi and Katelyn) so that Chris and I could escape for one night. It was way nice-Thanks Amy!

Heads up for everyone, there is no particular order the following pictures because I was not going to spend the time to get them all in order. he he


For our anniversary we went to The House on the Rock. For all of those who never knew this, I didn't at first after all, it was not built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and he thought the place was rubbish. It was made by Alex Jordan who "climbed the rock and had an extraordinary vision. What began as a lofty retreat with an awe inspiring view grew through the years to become a spectacular complex of dreams made real, designed to delight and amaze visitors with hundreds of displays of the exotic, the unusual and the unique."

We saw all three tours.
The first section included: the Gate house, original house, infinity room, Japanese garden, Asian garden, and Alex Jordan center
The second section: Mill house, streets of yesterday, heritage of the sea, tribute to nostalgia, music of yesterday, spirit of aviation, and the carousel.
The third tour had: carousel, organ room, inspiration point, doll house room, circus room, galleries and doll carousel building.


If you plowed through all of that don't worry. Basically the building had a lot of stuff. Cool stuff and old stuff, and stuff that I wouldn't want in my own home and stuff that I wouldn't mind having in my house. After all who would not want their own carousel?

This is one of the gardens. So pretty.

These screens were one of my favorite parts. They were hand crafted by a guy in India and were everywhere. I thought they were pretty crafty!

This is a typical statue thing that you could see lining the road and front entrance of the place.

Here is Chris eating left over Olive Garden in our hotel room.

Here is the cool fish water slide submarine attraction at The House on the Rock inn that we stayed at. It was a fun place. Behind it is a swimming pool.

Here is a thing.

Here is Chris looking though a distance viewer.

Here is Amanda outside.

Here is a stained glass window that I liked. There were tons of them.

Here is Amanda in the infinity room. Actually the room is just a long enclosed catwalk that tapers to a point at the end to create the illusion.

Another window, as you probably guessed.

This is a three story whale statue that was chomping a boat. On the first floor you could see that the whale in turn was being eaten by a giant squid. Surrounding the statue you spiraled up to see a bunch of model boats, and old war things.

Here is a shot from the Streets of Yesterday. That place was pretty cool. Who would have thought to put a street with two story buildings and stuff in the middle of their house?

Here is one example of a Japanese chest. It was hard to get some good pictures because the places were all inside and dark. Sorry, but I really liked the lacquer work on here.

This was a wall of glass inside the girls bathroom. While I was there another tourist commented that this may be the most photographed bathroom.

This is a sled that I thought was adorable. Wouldn't you want to ride in it?

This was one of our Dr. Who shots. Lets see lets pull the cooper lever.

This is our second Dr. Who shot from the same room. We had to go through all these weird twists and turns and stuff.

Here is a closeup of the worlds largest carousel. Because it is worth a bunch of money they didn't let us ride on it. That was disappointing. The thing does not use a single horse head.

Here is the carousel from a little father away.

As part of the random stuff that we saw, there a bunch of old crowns and jewels, and of course a security guard.

This is a picture of a creation made out of ivory. It was behind glass as you can tell, but really neat. I wouldn't want to take that long to make something like this.

Here is part of the circus miniature characters room. I don't know how they came up with so many different circus scenes, but the room was full of them.

Here is a doll house.

Oh and that was the last of the pictures that I put up here. The tour took us three hours to do. Our whole trip was pretty amazing except for the part when we discovered that I had packed Chris' shorts not his swim trunks. We made a stop at Walmart for some new swim gear and popcorn.

Bye!