Great Wolf Lodge

Our original local water park was finished being converted to a Great Wolf Lodge, so we booked a room there for our annual February excursion. The kids loved that we all received wolf headbands at check-in.

 We love coming in winter because it's fun to be reminded how cold it is in the outside world.

Ready to get this party started.

The water area was mostly the same as it was before renovation. They changed a couple things in the kiddie area, stuck a Wolf barrel at the top of the play land, and added an extra outdoor slide. The main update was the addition of the wave pool room. One thing that definitely needs improvement is the size of those towels.

Wyatt loved the squirt gun addition. He declared that the "cat pool" was his favorite part. It took us a few minutes to figure it out, but he was talking about the "kiddie pool".

Charlotte was trepidatious about most of the park, but she did go down the slide once or twice. She may have needed a little push to help her down.

Here's a great video of Charlotte not going down the water slide.

https://youtu.be/VWGqxn6wtM0

We tried dip n dots for the first time.

And we spent quite a lot of time playing Magic Quest. Noah really got into it. It was kind of an exhausting game that forced you to walk around both levels of the hotel hundreds of times finding different objects.

 Resting while we figure out our next clue.

 Since we were close to home, we were able to spend a lot of the next day there as well.

 Waiting for Noah and Daddy to come down the big tube slide.

There it is behind us. Noah loved that one.

Check out that smile as he's climbing out

https://youtu.be/_h8TJq9eFvI

Hikes, Cookies, and a Large Plastic Duck

It was still cold in February. The whole family went to the February walk at the Little Red Schoolhouse, but Charlotte and I headed back early to hang out in the nature center.

 They had a really cool igloo in there that was built entirely out of milk jugs

Wyatt had to bring along his school pet, Fluffy, for the hike. He was in charge of caring for him that weekend and we had to write about what they did together. Kind of like the Curious George project that Noah did in Kindergarten, except this was a huge plastic duck that we had to lug around.

Here was our entry into the journal.

We forgot to take Fluffy sledding, but that's for the best. It was too cold for sledding and we didn't stay long.

Wyatt and Nick Sledding:

https://youtu.be/0q4KHJhq_6M

Noah didn't mind the cold and had a great time sledding by himself.

Noah sledding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2e5bC6Qp9M&feature=youtu.be

Charlotte was a little miffed about it.

But she did enjoy one thing: pushing Daddy and Wyatt down the hill.

It was also Wyatt's About Me week at school. Here is the poster that we made. He drew the pictures.

Charlotte had a school project too. She had to decorate this heart.

I bought Wyatt a shark tooth t-shirt and he discovered that his Megalodon tooth actually measured up to the Chubutensis tooth. Grandpa explained that the existence of the Chubutensis is questionable and so it's probably a Megolodon tooth pictured.

While waiting at a stop light I noticed that a disgruntled fourth grader had hurled his recorder out his car window. And I also realized that means we are only two years from having a recorder in our house.

We love to eat at Mindy's and the kids love to watch the gamblers.

The kids went to a Valentine cookie decorating class at the neighboring park district. It was a great bargain compared to how much it costs the kids to decorate cookies at the culinary school.

   

 

The boys and I joined some friends and went on an Owl Prowl. It was cold, we didn't see any owls, the fire wasn't nearly warm enough, and we had to stir our hot chocolates with our fingers, but it was an interesting experience.