Spring Break

Our spring break was amazing and just what this family needed this year. 

We only do friend birthday parties every other year in our house and then do something fun as a family instead on the off years to celebrate. This year was an off year from friend parties so we combined celebrating both boys birthdays into one fun family mini vacation which was super fun by booking a night at the Great Wolf Lodge!

We started Spring Break by giving Dad a day to get stuff done in his classroom on Monday, but then on Tuesday we left straight after breakfast for the four hour drive to Great Wolf Lodge in Washington.

We arrived at about 1:30pm and checked in to our room, then went exploring some.

Great Wolf Lodge is a family resort that has an indoor water park, arcade, Mom/Daughter spa, normal spa, magic quest adventures, art room, story time and shoe among other things. After exploring some and playing a few games in the arcade, we got the swim suits on and headed for the water park.

Most of the pictures I took where at the water park, but here are the ones I took:

Clark was barely tall enough to go on the tube rides, so he and Brian went once on one of the slower ones, but once was enough. Clark though it was a little fast for him and Brian said it was a little scary for Dad too...as Clark really doesn't way enough to stay in the tube well, so poor Brian was trying to hold onto the tube with one had and keep Clark in the tube with the other hand/feet. But they made it and I managed to capture there exit.

Clark spent most of his time on these slides:

They exit into slides of water instead of the big pools which Clark loves and he thought these slides were "awesome".

In fact, most pictures I tried to get of Clark's excited face or him in general on the slides turned out like this:

Too busy getting off the second he clears the bottom to run toward the stairs to the right and climb up to do it again! So fun.

Both boys also enjoyed the wave pool. Though there were many areas and things we let the boys do and explore on their own, the rules were to come get Mom or Dad if you wanted to go in the wave pool. (Mom was a little worried they would get too adventurous on their own when the waves weren't on and be out too far when the waves started again, so it was a good rule to have and the boys did a great job of keeping it the whole time we were there.)

Dad tried to teach both boys to do some body surfing on the waves...Logan loved it in case you couldn't tell:

As you can see from this picture, Dad was more willing to stop for a picture then Logan. Logan was a little annoyed by the 1 minute break for a cute picture with his Dad...silly boy.

So the first day we were in the water park for about 4 1/2 hours and the boys would have stayed longer, but it was 6:30pm with some reasoning that we were all hungry...and could come back tomorrow....we headed to our room to change and get some food. We enjoyed a yummy pizza and chicken finger dinner that night and the boys definitely were hungry!!!! They even ate so much dinner they skipped the cookie dessert?! That's what we call a good dinner.

After dinner we headed back to the arcade for some more game playing (we had both sets of Grandparents give the boys money for their birthdays, so what little boys doesn't like to spend money on video games when they knew that is what they had been waiting to use it for). Clark even hit the jackpot on one of the games that night winning like 300 tickets on that game alone. Wish I had pictures of any of that fun, but lets be honest, one parent for each kid leaves no extra hands for cameras.

At 8pm we headed down to the lobby for the creature show and story time. The animals, trees and people in this clock tower display come to life and do a fun little presentation with songs, dancing, talking, etc. It's a pretty cute little show.

If you look close you can see Clark's head poking up with his cute expression on it while watching the show:

This is the raccoon in the show:

Then after the 8pm show, one of the lodges critter mascots come out to read a story to the kids.

Here is Violet (at least I think that is the girl wolf's name). She was they to read a silly bedtime to all the kids. She had just said she lost her book, but smart Clark saw here toss it over the little fence, so here he is looking for it:

One cute picture with both boys and Violet when the story was done:

Then we headed up to bed....and it was definitely bed time for all of us. Brian and I thought we might take turns going out after the boys where asleep to get some more play time in on our own, but we were super tired too.

The next morning we had a lazy day around the room and some more in the arcade and art room. Then it was back to the water park.
Clark joined Logan in the kids zone a little more on the second day (Logan lived here or in the wave pool as he didn't enjoy the slides and tower like Clark did). The both loved riding the squirting waverunners.

Though I apparently only took pictures of Clark on them.

Logan loves to splash and was always up for a splash match either with Dad in the wave pool or by himself in kids zone. What a cutie!

Logan did tackle the little slides in kid zone...those were more up his alley:

Again, after like 4 or 5 hours in the water park we finally decided we were good....some took a little more convincing then others. Then after a quick stop back in the arcade to redeem all the tickets for a stuffed animal holding suckers for each boy, we called it good.

There was so much we didn't even do at the Lodge, so I am sure were will go back again sometime, but we had a wonderful time as a family and packed a lot of fun into our short stay.

Next up was a short drive to Nana and Papa's house. I had no pictures from the rest of spring break, but we spent the last few days of spring break at Nana and Papa's house. Making it an even more fun stop was the fact that cousins Emily, Lauren and Abby were also on spring break and their mom had brought them up to visit as well, so we had extra cousins to play with for a few days too.

Mom got in plenty of shopping (got to stock up on baby things at Babies R Us and Target while you are close...among other stores of course). Daddy got in some golf time with Ryan and we all enjoyed general conference as well before heading home.

We got home late Sunday night with boys sleeping in the back, but after such a fun vacation it was a little easier to face reality again early Monday morning. :)