Frank and who?

Frankenmuth, Michigan is described as a quaint German village. I've never been to Germany but I would gather that quaint German villages don't look exactly like Frankenmuth. It has been built up as a tourist area with restaurants and specialty stores and it is almost tradition in my family to visit there during our vacations.

We decided to try to squeeze in that little adventure on Wednesday. It's about an hour's drive from my grandparents' house and we arrived during lunchtime. We ate lunch at Zehnders, which is a restaurant known for their chicken and will vouch that my chicken club was delish. Not complaining but Zehnders is a very large restaurant and always very busy. We were seated fairly quickly for a party of 12 and didn't have to wait a super unusually long period of time for the food but the girls were a bit restless by the end of the meal.

I do have to say that listening to Allie as we waited for our food was quite entertaining.

"I'm really hungry from that long drive."
"That was a really long drive."
"It's taking a really long time for the food to come."
"What's taking the servant so long to bring the food?"
"Look! That lady has a plate on her head."

Yeah, she somehow turned server into servant.

After lunch, we visited the store next to the restaurant as they have a section dedicated to dollhouses. There are some nice, wooden dollhouses completely furnished on display. They also sell dollhouse kits and real wood (expensive) dollhouse furniture, tea sets, etc. Basically anything and everything you could possibly want for a dollhouse. The girls loved looking at everything. I feel so old because when I was little, my dollhouse was wood along with all of the furniture. They didn't sell all the plastic stuff like they do now.

We then hit up the Frankenmuth Fudge Kitchen. YUMMY! Need I say more?

It had started to lightly rain by this point and Rich and I wanted to jump ship before the girls hit their limit so we left. I actually had to sit in the backseat with them and provide entertainment because two minutes into the drive, they had "the look." They basically thought that they were going to nap and there was no way I wanted them awake until 10:00 that night.

The girls had been asking over and over when we could go swimming again so we decided to do that when we returned to our hotel. Prior to our vacation, the girls had only had three swimming lessons. On Monday, we had helped them out a little bit with their floating and swimming. This swim time, I could see things clicking for Allie and Em. They were definitely getting used to floating and kicking their feet on the surface as opposed to the doggy paddle/treading water type of swim that they had been doing.

And then Allie just got it. She pushed off of the bottom step, her little mouth closed through a smile. Her legs floated on the surface and she began to swim. Granted, she was still wearing her water wings but this was a huge breakthrough. And then she flipped over onto her back in a perfect backfloat.Needless to say, I was ecstatic.

Em also showed significant improvements in terms of understanding how to swim and of being more comforatable in the water. She is just not a technical perfectionist like Allie is.

And then there's Anna. Oh, little Anna. She still wanted someone to hold her and was obviously fearful of the water. After seeing the progress that Allie and Em had made, I decided to push Anna outside of her comfort zone. We were about two feet from the side of the pool and I said, "Okay, Anna, just swim to the side." I let go of her and she lasted for all of two seconds before her little face went plop under the water. That ended that experiment.

Any progress with swimming is good in my book. I am taking the approach that it will take time but they will eventually get it.