Great Wolf Lodge - A Christmas Present

For Christmas we gave the kids a trip to Great Wolf Lodge, a fun, kid-friendly hotel with a water park, themed rooms, and a fun interactive magic wand game called MagiQuest. (These kind of gifts take up no space in our home! Who-hoo!) We've been there once before for Eben's 8th birthday, but Opal had never been and the kids were excited to go back and visit again. We left Berg and Pella with the Schocks on Monday, February 11th, and headed on our way. We stopped for lunch at McMenamins. Peter had said that they have a really great old movie theater inside where you can eat your lunch while watching a movie. It was amazing! We had the whole theater to ourselves. The girls claimed a comfy couch and the boys chose to stand up and eat their burgers while they watched the movie before reclining on their own couch. They even put on Wreck It Ralph for us, a kid movie we'd never seen before. Lunch was a great beginning for our fun little weekend. (The girls really loved the bathroom sink too. All of the 10+ faucets worked!)

The first thing the kids wanted to do was head to our room and check out their cool Wolf Den! Then they changed into bathing suits so we could head over to the water park.

The big kids loved the water slides while Opal was a bit timid at first. She mainly walked around the little kid land, but the second time we went, she was a champ and loved the tube rides. Eben and Kivi took off by themselves and went on as many rides as they could. 

 They all loved the wave pool!

Since Eben, Kivi and Jasper did the MagiQuest before they totally knew what to do this time with our borrowed wands - yeah! They even did some of it on their own while I waited in the lobby for them and Dada got to take a nap. Opal and I rested too at one point while the big three went with Dada back to the water park. The next day we had pizza in the lobby (since we were already checked out) and then they were ready to battle the dragon! We beat the first dragon, but we could not beat that silver one. Opal watched some movies with Dada while they finished up the last part of their quest. Then Eben and Kivi were ready to go back to the water park with Dada for a third time while Mama stayed with the middles in the lobby. They had pictures for the kids to color, fun dance music, and balloon animals and hula hoops. I knitted and watched the Duggars. Ahh. A perfect afternoon.

After a while, Jasper, Opal and I were ready to join them in the water park again, so we put our suits back on and joined the big kids and Dada for some more water fun before we headed back to pick up Berg and Pella. It ended up being a late night. We got the most out of our 1 night accommodations and park passes. A very fun time - and we get to do it again! The day before we left, we were at church and we found out we won a contest that our church was having to encourage families to pray more. The grand prize was a trip to the GWL! Stomp, stomp, clap, clap, HOWWWLLLL! See you soon Great Wolf Lodge!