Great Wolf Lodge -2013 Family of 5 Vacay!

Ben & I decided a few months back that we needed to attempt a mini family vacation this spring/ summer. He would use a few of his vacation days and we would attempt to do something fun with our 3 kiddos. Then the question became where to go with 3 kids under 5? What would be fun for all and least stressful. We landed on great wold lodge. I had been there before while visiting family members who were staying there. Neither of us had ever stayed there before though. We liked the idea of it all being "in house" and we wouldn't have to shuffle the kids to/ from places to play and eat and whatnot. That was particularly alluring since we knew that charley needs to nap at different times from the big kids. So april 7-10 off to the lodge we went...The deal with Great wolf is you supposedly can't check into your room until 4pm the day of your arrival but you can start playing at the park as early as 11:00. We wanted to get our full money's worth so got up and headed over there as soon as we could with the full expectation that we would have to keep our bags in the car until official check in time. Nope- not the case- maybe cause it's april? But our room was all ready and we got right in. 

We took our stuff up to the room and got ready to go PLAY!!! 

Advantage of indoor waterparks? It stays a nice 84 degrees in there! And you don't have to lather everyone up with sunscreen! Double bonus! 

Aiden & Hallie both took off running, Needing no instruction whatsoever. Ridiculously excited and happy! 

                                     

Look at this girl. I gotta admit as a momma my heart was in my stomach letting my baby girl go down these slides the 1st couple of times. She goes on slides all the time but adding the water element was nerve racking. 

Hallie, however, has absolutely NO FEAR! 

She loved it, Absolutely LOVED it! Over and over and over again they did these slides. 

It was about 5pm the first day when we were absolutely beat. Getting up early and heading out there, then no naps and playing hard will wear you out!!! So back to the room we went to take baths and rest a bit while daddy went to pick up pizza. From where you might ask? Oh ya know just the pizza place downstairs. Sooooo nice to have it all right there! :)

Aiden & hallie laying in their bunks watching some disney channel and trying hard not to fall asleep. 

I kind of adore this picture. I love that the kids are getting to ages where they actually play together and love each other. So sweet little tuckered out angels. 

This is the outside of their "room" It's like a bunk room for the kids inside the larger hotel room. IT has 3 beds in there so when charley is jus a wee bit older this will be a perfect set up for us! 

Eating pizza in the bunk room. Tons of fun. 

We held out till 8pm so we could take the kids down to the lobby for the story time with the wolves. 

Doing some singing, dancing, chanting stuff they do before they read the story. 

Story the 1st night with Violet the girl wolf

And a picture with violet. Hallie only walked up long enough to guve her a high 5 and then ran away. 

So we just got aiden! Oh well. 

Then it was promptly back to the room and to bed!!! Aiden & Hallie fell asleep within like minutes. They were so exhausted. Then it was just ben & I to hang out with our littlest! 

He was the only one who had gotten a couple of naps while he was being held at the park and while we ate dinner so he wasn't nearly as exhausted as the rest of us. Happy Charley. 

Bright and early the 2nd Day, kids are awake and ready for fun. We brought a lot of groceries with us so that we could at least save some $ on breakfasts and lunches. The kids preferred to take their meals in the room out on the balcony. 

The view from our room. Its a good thing great wolf is an indoor play space cause these were not beautiful days while we were there. Overcast and rainy and muggy. 

I just like this picture

Oh and this one too. Sticking her head through her bunk room window to see what we were doing!

As soon as we would step outside of our room this is what would happen. They would take off!!! So excited! 

We started our day 2 down at the arcade letting the kids play a bunch of games. They had a set amount of $ on their play card (great wolf doesn't use tokens) and when the card was empty then we were gonna be done. 

Aiden won some dinosaurs. He was excited. 

Hallie chose to spend her time in the arcade "driving"

And aiden really wanted to play these bigger kid games but he had some trouble. Not too long from now though!

Family race!!!

Back up to the room to eat lunch and change clothes for the waterpark. 

And look who came to play with us for the afternoon. Gigi in the kids bunk room. 

This was about all CHarley was able to do the whole time. Sit in the water, kick & splash. Next time buddy!! 

Happy Hallie 

Aiden in his life jacket. Aiden is big enough to do almost everything. There's 2 BIG slides in the very back that he's not tall enough for but he can do a lot by himself and then there's 2 bigger slides that he was able to do in a tube if ben or I went with him. He had to wear a life jacket in the deeper water or on the Big slides. He can swim but even so, better to be safe than sorry. 

Now The afternoon on day 2 is when my phone met its unfortunate demise :( hey fyi to all- phones & water don't mix. Boooo! 

Night 2 we went to eat at the restaurant inside the hotel and Charley got to sit in a high chair for the 1st time!!! His carseat was way down in the van and he'd been doing so well sitting up that we thought ehhhh we'll try it? It worked ok. Sure he chewed on the table some but all in all not bad! 

Oh and of course he's happy wherever he is! 

The boys at dinner

After dinner the kids got to pick a treat. This is what they chose, Like gallon size icee's. Awesome. 

Then back to story time on the 2nd night 

They're getting sleepy by this point

Oliver the Raccoon was the one telling the story this time and he got a hug from hallie! 

And at least she didn't run off, I was able to catch this picture. Then off to bed we all went!!! 

Day 3

Again we started off at the arcade. Letting the kids use up the ret of their arcade card. 

Then we explored the hotel a little. Let the kids pick shirts from the gift shop, sit in the lobby by the big clock, and then go do some arts in the cub club. 

Brother sister pic. 

The Boys 

In the Cub Club Aiden chose to paint a piggy bank to bring home. 

Hallie didn't have the attention span to really do anything. 

She did color a picture....for like a minute. 

Aiden however was very meticulous in his painting. So many colors. So much paint.
After the craft it was again time to change and get ready for water time. 

This was just a random photo op on the way to the park. This is outside the Bear paw sweet treat place that smells amazing and has wonderful sweets & treats in all the windows so that its next to impossible to get kids through the hotel and to the park without someone straying in there and asking for a cookie, an ice cream, a fun drink, a cinammon roll, a donut...Well played Great wold lodge. Well played. 

More water park 

Starting to get adventurous going down slides on our backs and then on our tummies. The funny thing is that it took 2 days for aidento work up to being adventurous and hallie saw him do these things ONCE and then walked right up there and did it too. No fear. 

My little dare devil. Gotta keep your eye on this thrill seeker! 

Sharing a snack and a rest brother/ sister. 

With Charley Bear

My happy little one. There definitely arent as many pictures of him this trip as the big kids but this pretty much sums up his vacation. He wore a bathing suit. He smiled a lot! :)

The final night of story time. With Wylie Wolf. 

Yeah yeah we caved. Giant cookie for a late night treat. It's vacation right?? 

The 4th and last day. We got up early and packed our stuff. You are allowed to stay and play until 9pm on the day of checkout but we asked for a late check out and were given till noon so we went to the water park bright and early and played our hearts out till noon. 

Aiden had seen a bunch of other little boys/ friends who didn't wear swim shirts and so this was a big deal. He didnt want to wear a swim shirt the last day. By the way it's never been my rule that he had to.  We started doing it cause his skin was so fair and he burns so easy and ever since then he's just thought he needed a shirt always. So this was a big step for him! haha

Playing on the last day. 

These expressions are priceless!

Ok so right here...on the 4th day is when Aiden's lightbulb went on and he realized I was taking action shots of him. SO then I started to get these big goofy grins while he would be sliding. Such a mess!!! 

                                     

Love this kid! He cracks me up!

For those who haven't been to great wolf lodge, here's a section. This is the big indoor treehouse. It would be impossible for me to describe what alls in there. A bunch of wet fun. And if you think ehhh maybe I can play in there and not get wet??

You'd be wrong!!! Giant bucket of water over the treehouse continuously fills itself and then douses the whole area. Fun right? 

We thought it was anyways. These smiles from my kiddos made absolutely all of it worth it. 

And this is as good a place as any to tell you how special it was to watch aiden play with hallie. He is so sweet with his sister and genuinely loves her and looks out for her. She would fall down in the water and he would be over there quicker than I was asking her if she was ok and asking everyone around "who pushed my sister??" and besides that Aiden made a TON of friends while we were there (more on that in a second) but he would get to the top of these 2 yellow slides side by side and just wait for hallie. He wouldn't slide down next to anyone else and told everyone he was waiting to slide with his sister. 

It's really becoming a very sweet relationship. And makes my heart so happy to see them playing together. 

Ok so back to aiden and his never meeting a stranger. He met sooooo many people while we were there. It seemed like every few minutes he had a new buddy to play with at great wolf. He talks to everybody. Kids his age, older than him, younger than him, adults....Aiden is a friend to all. It amazes me how quickly he can make a friend. One time it was just me and him in the lazy river and he was of course running up ahead of me (I definitely got my cardio in on this trip) and he passed by an older guy lazily floating on a tube. I couldn't tell that the guy was with anyone, I'm sure maybe his family was somewhere around but not in the river. Anyways aiden goes "hey you want to try and catch me?" and the guy looks around like uhhh what? and aiden says again "come on I bet you can't catch me! Let's go!" and just as I''m about to catch up to apologize to this man- he gets off his inner tube and says "ok GO" and he actually ran after aiden through the lazy river trying to catch him!!! AMAZING! I swear this man had to be at least mid 60's and there he was enjoying his time lounging and aiden talked him into chasing him. Silly, amazing, infectious little kid. 

After the waterpark we went and changed quickly so we could get out of our room and spend what little time we had left in the hotel before heading home. The last things the kids wanted to do was get these glitter/ face paint/ tattoo type things. 

Getting their wolf tattoos and wearing their souvenir tshirts. 

Aiden got oliver -also the one he chose for his shirt. 

Hallie got violet of course, she's the girl wolf. 

Charley didn't get a tattoo, no paint on the baby thanks. But he got the Wiley t-shirt. 

Trying to get a pic of all 3 in their shirts before heading out. Ehhhh

In front of the big windows  in the lobby overlooking the park. This one is a bit better! 

And that's alllll folks. It was such a great time. A really really fun family of 5 getaway. Of course stressful at times but that goes with the territory. The kids absolutely had the time of their lives and ben and I loved every minute of getting to watch them. Aiden has already started the countdown to when we can go back and I most definitely think we will. Probably not as soon as aiden would like but we'll take the family back for sure. So much fun. So grateful we had these special days together. Wonderful memories!