Spending turkey day with the wolf

We hopped on a plane early Thursday morning and spent a fun Thanksgiving at Great Wolf Lodge.

 

Ro and Ree were thrilled to once again stay in a cute room with built-in kid log cabin and bunk beds.

And they were even happier to hear that MagiQuest (the wand-based, interactive fantasy game that’s integrated all throughout the lodge) had just rolled out a new game. Our two little Magi (Ree in teal and Ro in pink stripes) wasted no time embarking on the newest adventure ShadowQuest.

TubaDad was an excellent quest assistant. He covered way more miles than I did (the new game runs you around for a total of 10 miles if you make it to the end). But eventually even he plopped down in the lobby and let the girls continue on their own (I spied him from the overhead bridge):

Thanksgiving dinner at Great Wolf was great. I can’t even imagine how many pounds of potatoes they went through keeping this full buffet going all day from lunchtime till 8pm. We were all quite happy with our food. They had something for everyone -- SO apparent if you contrast Ro’s fruit-and-sushi plate with my hand-carved prime rib plate. Heh:

The water park is always a hit. This year Ree (blue) and Ro (fuschia) were tall enough to go down any of the hair-raising slides, but still spent most of their time in the wave pool, just like in past years:

A little tip for you if you spend time at the Wolf: the Critter bar can set you up with kid hot chocolates and extra special grown-up hot chocolates (hello Baileys!) in to-go cups that you can bring out to the lobby to enjoy by the fire. Oh yeah!

Another tip: the pumpkie pie fudge they make onsite is beyond divine. Oh My Word. If anyone has a recipe for this stuff, please share:

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday:

PS: On our way back to the airport we said hello to some of our fave cuties. Do these little ladies look familiar?

Wolf tails, wands, and spray tans

The little purse camera is failing. Have I dropped it one too many times? Is it just completely overwhelmed by the weird orangish yellow lighting in this wolf’s den? Have some hidden internal settings been screwed up by tiny fingers without my knowledge? Every snap looks like we all just got spray-tans at the spa. Whatev… I fixed those that could be easily fixed, but some are just going to stay odd.

I like the look of wolf tails and wand belts.

Or wands and pajamas. Or wands and costumes. Or wands and puppets. It’s all good. And the funny thing is that as weird as Ro and Ree’s get-ups are, they are guaranteed to be topped by someone else walking these halls.

See, I did set up the mini tripod and sneak in one family photo. :)

We hardly ever leave the room until lunchtime. That’s just the way we roll on vacation (as anyone who’s travelled with us and wanted to meet for brekkie can confirm). All meals are at weird times, we stay up until 10 or 11pm, sleep in till 8:30 or later, have breakfast in bed, then laze around and talk, sing (not me, don’t worry), read, play on computers or iPads, watch tv. It works for us.

The girls have completed all of the MagiQuest wand quests and adventures and moved on to compass quests. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, I’d wager you haven’t visited a Great Wolf Lodge with kiddos lately:

Carry on young Magi.

PS: Since cutting Ree’s hair we don’t get the “are they twins?!” question anymore. Like ever. And we used to hear it about every 20 minutes. Does that few inches of hair really make that much of a difference? It’s hard for me to tell since I always thought they looked so different from each other.

Spring break with the wolves

Holy cow Ro and Ree look big in this picture for some reason. I look at this and imagine them jaunting off for some wild college spring break destination, those leopard suitcases stuffed full of flip-flops and bikinis. Wait, that’s pretty much how they’re packed right now! Oh except that they also have hordes of fancy princess dressup clothes, stuffed animals, and fairytale books crammed into those suitcases. Whew. ;-)

We almost missed the flight because we tarried too long this morn talking to our contractor about hood vent ducting. (Who knew there were choices to made for hood ducting?!!!) TubaDad grabbed the big luggage and ran in one direction to check it in while the girls and I grabbed the carry-on stuff and sprinted in the other direction to the security line and the plane. We all made it, but TubaDad was the last one down the jetway before the doors were closed. Yeesh. Alaskan Airlines has the best Ro and Ree food choices, though (and we’ve tried them all), so that was a pleasant diversion from the panicky running. The girls adore everything in the kid box except the turkey stick. And I (of course) adore the cheese and fruit platter. (Side note: if I had to pick one thing to live on it might be cheese platters.) With wine, naturally, but I didn’t order any this time because it was only 10am and seemed somehow inappropriate…

You know one of our vacations hasn’t truly begun until we’ve either stopped for a McDonald’s breakfast or a vanilla-dipped-in-chocolate cone. It’s been that way since I was a kid. Anyhow, today we went for the cone kick-off, and (as usual) you can see that Ro’s treat is lasting far longer than anyone else’s. Seriously, the girl takes 45 minute showers (and that’s with 3 or 4 reminders to please hurry) and stretches her desserts out for almost an hour.

After our last travel experience with the girls, we got a second iPad, so now there is blissful golden silence during any long drives, like this one from the airport to the lodge. Ahhhhh. Don’t know why I resisted so long.

Finally we were here! Ah Great Wolf, we’ve missed you. The girls plopped down on the faithful door bear and wouldn’t budge until I snapped a pic. Yeah, they like this place.

First it was full tilt into the MagiQuest game -- before even seeing our room or hitting the waterpark – yep it is that big of a draw for our little bitties:

After swimming we grabbed some food (yummy scallop salad for me and potstickers and steamed rice for the girls) and yes yes it is yet another picture that I’m not in. But TD and the girls sure look cute. :-) I’ll try to grab the spider tripod tomorrow and sneak into at least one:

Then it was into jammies and skipping (never walking) downstairs for storytime:

Now the girls are finally asleep, and I’m waiting for TubaDad to finish an international business call and come to bed.

So, what did everyone else do for spring break?

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...