How come we never knew about the Wolf?!

For our last summer hurrah we wanted to take a family vacation but couldn’t decide where the heck to go. Then at the last minute I Googled “best waterparks on the West Coast” and hit what looked like paydirt! We took a blind leap and booked The Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA, and Oh My Word it was fabulous!

We loved everything about it, plus (and this is a huge plus) it’s one of the only family vacations we’ve ever taken that we didn’t come home exhausted from. Wheeeee!

Flying there was half the fun (as usual). And the girls (as usual) disdained my suggestion that they wear comfy jeans and tennis shoes on the plane.

Once there, Ro and Ree screamed with joy to see that we had an actual little-kid log cabin complete with bunk beds smack dab in the middle of our hotel room. Seriously, they must have let a five-year-old design this room it was just so perfect.

I think this funny sign (which we stumbled upon outside a local Church’s chicken establishment) sums up the girls’ new attitude toward swimwear on this trip:

Yep, that’s right, Ro and Ree suddenly decided that one-piece swimsuits are SO last year, and gleefully scoured the clearance racks at the mall for $3 bikinis before our trip:

The waterpark was huge, kept at a constant balmy temp, and completely indoors -- so we didn’t need sunscreen the entire trip. (squeal!)(could there be anyone in the world who detests sunscreen as much as I?). There were a bunch of thrilling three-story-high rides, a crazy wave pool, a soaker-play area, a deep pool with fun climbing things, and a toddler play area.

The girls got free wolf ears at our first dinner and wore them pretty much constantly after that -- during dessert, an emergency hotel evacuation, to bed, while coloring in the lobby, for the nightly story-time, and over breakfast hot chocolates:


And they LOVED the lodge game called MagiQuest. I was pretty skeptical at first, but let me tell you that game is genius. The kids buy custom wands at the lobby store, then they’re off on electronic, animated, wand-based scavenger hunts all over the lodge. Each quest has a series of clues, and the lodge is tricked out on every floor with magical forests, animated paintings, treasure chests, wizards and pixies, and I don’t even know what else. The girls had fun for days tearing around on their quests (Ro called them “questes” which cracked me up):

Goodbye for now, Great Wolf, you can be SURE we will be back.

If anyone has other cool suggestions for neat family vacations or questions about Great Wolf, lay ‘em on me! And if you’ve been there (to any of the locations), I’m so curious to hear what your family thought.

PS: Did anyone notice that we’ve had another scissor incident (gritted teeth) and Ro is now sporting self-styled bangs? I guess their teacher will easily tell them apart again – remember that they started school last year with Ree’s arm in a bright pink cast...