I love spending time with my family. All five of us together. Something about being together...and everyone having a good time...it just fills my heart up full.
At the beginning of this last school year, my kids won a night at The Great Wolf Lodge, an awesome hotel/indoor water park. I had looked into a couple of years ago...but just about croaked when I saw the price. I knew for sure that Tim would never go for such extravagance....so I assumed that we would never be able to go and experience this fun place. When we won this night, I was so excited. Kind of a God thing, in a way. I think I even doubted that we would ever even use it. Water isn't one of Tim's strong points, so I thought it would be another opportunity that would slip through our fingers.
With a planted seed of celebrating the end of a school year...and hoping to miss some of the crowds, Tim decided it would be a good idea to use our prize this last weekend. What fun we had!! The fact that we went on a Sunday/Monday was really wonderful. We beat some of the people who were still in school...and people who had to go back to work. Even though I thought it was kind of crazy busy, apparently it wasn't. There were times, especially on Monday, that there were no lines and we could go down the rides as quickly as we could climb up those nasty stairs
Tim, being the Numbers Man, counted the stairs. To get to the upper rides, it was 91 steps. The lower set of rides was 70 steps. I lost count of how many times we did each ride, but it is needless to say we climbed thousands of stairs in those two days of playing. I was continually thankful for the running that I had been doing the last couple of months. Without that, I would have been one sorry mama. Even so, I couldn't hardly keep up with my kids and their boundless energy. I rode Daria's favorite ride, the Howlin' Tornado, several times when there was no waiting line. She still had to wait for me at the top of those 91 stairs a couple of times. Her Awesomeness and my Aging Body side by side again!!
So how do I even begin to tell about all there is to do at The Lodge. I have oodles of pictures, so I think I will use that to tell the story from here on out. We each had our favorite parts of the park. I loved the River Canyon Run. It was one of those 91-step rides! It was fast, curvy, with a few splashes in between. The part I liked about it the most was that it could seat five riders. That meant that we could all go together...and we did...several times. Here is a picture of a few of us at the bottom. Unfortunately...its hard to get a picture of all five of us riding when one needs to take a picture. Luke isn't in the boat because he was running out of steam about the time we got to this picture. Tim, of course, took the picture.
Because Tim took the pictures, there aren't a lot with him in them. The thing that impressed me about our vacation to The Lodge, is that Tim seemed to enjoy himself too. And that is saying something, in my opinion! (I'm sure it helped that our night was paid for by the kids' winnings!) Tim enjoyed just going and going and going. I'm pretty sure that he climbed those stairs a lot more than the rest of us. I'm secretly pleased that he was complaining that his hips were hurting by the end of our stay. Mr. Macho rarely complains of anything in that department and he's always smokin' the rest of us with his prowess. So there! I think one of my favorite pictures is of him at the bottom of one of the slides. For me, it says a lot!
Luke, for whom all of life is an adventure to experience, The Lodge was the little man's paradise. I was impressed with how much he went, and went, and went. He did have a few times where he needed to rest...but after a little snack...he would be off with a jump and a run. When he got tired of climbing the stairs, he would run to the wave pool, to the shooting guns pool, or hop to the lily pads.
Each slide he went down, he would throw his hands up in the air and yell: "No hands, Mom! Are your hands up?" Usually, mine were...but near the end of the time, I just tried to relax while we roared down the slides. As I was glancing through the pictures this morning, I had to laugh at how many times he had his hands over his eyes as we went into our splash landings. Silly boy...he even had goggles on!!
True to his differences from his brother, getting Caden to experience the whole of The Lodge was kind of like pulling teeth. A friend of his had told him that he had fallen out of one of the rides and would have drown if his dad hadn't grabbed him. I'm sure that was just Little Man Testosterone playing up the story, but Caden had taken it fully to heart. Our first time down the Canyon River Run, we literally had to drag him up there. He thought for sure that he was going to die. We climbed into the boat and he grasped those handles with all he was worth. We tried to play up the fun as much as we could. We held up our hands, we laughed and smiled...but Caden had his death grip going on both his hands...and his eyes!! Wish we had had a camera at that point. When we made it to the bottom, he declared that it wasn't that bad. Even so, I noticed throughout the day, that when we roared down that Canyon Run...four of us had our hands up high, laughing out loud...and the last one managed to maybe get his hands up to about shoulder high. When we finally got him to go on the Howlin' Tornado, I thought for sure we had made the ultimate victory. We got to the bottom...and if that boy had known cursing words...I'm sure he would have told us a few! Oh well....we tried. The picture I loved of him, was the one where his hands are up high....not on the Canyon Run....but a victory none the less.
Daria is an animal on the soccer field. She throws her whole body into the experience and loves dominating her opponents. I hardly recognize her when she is on the prowl...kind of like her dad. She took on The Lodge with the same gusto. On one of the rides that can be a two-person ride, I rode with her a couple of times. She would sit herself up high and throw her body into the corners, squeezing every last thrill that she could out of the ride. I thought for sure she would tip us over with her enthusiasm. You can see her attentiveness in this picture:
Her favorite ride was the Howlin' Tornado. It has this 30 foot drop in one section that just about makes my stomach flip every time. My first time down that one was going backwards and that was a little gut-wrenching. Daria loved it. When the lines were low, she would race to the top and giggle with excitement when she would head down that drop backwards. She could hardly contain herself. I was always thankful to be going down frontwards! So...we both won. haha. Here we are at the bottom:
There was a lot of other things to enjoy there. The kids really enjoyed the wave pool. I didn't so much. Maybe if I had taken a tube out there, it would have been better. I found that there were just too many people for me to really find it worthwhile.
The kids also enjoyed the pool that had a floating beaver and a floating snake in it. It was fun to climb on and push each other off. We got a few laughs doing that as well.
Well...that is a pretty good summary of our Lodge experience. Even though we were tired, and our bodies were a little rashy from the chemicals, we all were a little reluctant to leave. Even as we were walking out the doors, the kids were begging to come back again some day. I'm hoping that someday we will. It's not often that we find something that makes all of us happy! Here we are as we are headed out the door....tired...hungry...and happy!
And that's all she wrote!
