Dads Vacation

Because the new residents come into the hospital in the summer, after they are done Medical School, Brent does not get summers to take vacation. He has to be at the hospital training newbees. This year he opted to take some vacation time over Labor day weekend. We had a wonderful trip to The Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA. WE had a BLAST!!!! It was so worth every penny to go. It was just a quick little 2 day vacation, but so so so much fun! I couldn't believe how much we had to do. The Kids just swam and swam and swam. WE arrived at about 2pm on Monday afternoon, I was a little worried that we would be running into a whole lot of labor day holidayers, but we didn't. We got our little wrist bands and headed into the nearly empty pools.

We played our hearts out until about 7pm when we decided to go and grab a bite to eat. The kids absolutely loved everything about this park. I think that the majority would rule that the "Family Slide" was the favorite. We could sit in a raft type thing, all together and slide down this enormous slide. They loved it! One time we went down this slide and our little raft deal got stuck at the end of the slide, you should have seen the panic on Alex's face!!! Boy did I wish I had my camera then! He was so worried that someone was going to come behind us and CRASH us. !!! It was so funny to see the panic and see him try to stand up and get out of the boat. He has always been a little high strung (can't imagine where he gets that from ;-) ) . They also have a fabulous wave pool that doesn't get any deeper then 4 ft at the deepest point. It was perfect for my kids, they LOVED that wave pool.

At one point on day 2 sweet baby Katie took a nap on Brent's chest while floating on 4 or 5 sets of waves! They just sat out there and rocked on the waves (that is how few people were there) If you have ever been to a wave pool with the waves on, this is no place for napping. But it was so peaceful out there, Tori almost fell asleep on me! On with the story though, so we went to IHOP, my kids favorite, for Chocolate Chip Smilie Face Pancakes! They loved it!! We then hobbled out bellies back over to the hotel and Brent stayed with Katie while I took the kids BACK to the park.

At this point it was dark outside, but they keep the water park open until 10pm. The kids were begging to go on the "Family Slide" again, so up we went. We were very SURPRISED when we found out that this water slide was lit by sunlight!!!!!!! AHHH, we went down in pitch black, the kids were terrified!! LOL, I was even a little upset. ;-( When we got to the bottom, I reassured them that there would be sun again in the morning and that the slide would no longer be dark inside.

At this point we stuck to the lovely 2 slides that were open on top and stayed indoors. They were a little quick for Tori at first, but she ended up LOVING them, and the best part is, that they landed in 6 inches of water in a little trough type thing. It was really cool to know that they were relatively safe climbing up that climbing apparatus (in picture #1) and then sliding down into little pools of water that was monitored by their own personal life guard. I then took Tori and Alex to our cool Hotel room to watch some TV so that Liza could take daddy on the Tornado at night. She was a crazy girl and just climbed and climbed stairs both days.

And any one who knows Liza would believe that we still had trouble getting that stinker fart to go to bed!!! She has SO much energy! What a nut. Anyway, after much excitement over our cool hotel room that had a little Kids Cabin in it, with their own personal TV and bunk bed, they finally slept. Oh yeah, and I forgot, on the way to take the younger two back to the room, the kids stopped in the lobby and watched a little bed time story that was told by these animated character things in the lobby. They quite enjoyed that, and i quite enjoyed sitting by the warm fire in my bathing suit while they watched.

The next morning the kids heard me say that the water park opened at 8:30 and every minuet past 8:30 was time being lost!!!! We were back in the water having a grand old time by 9 am!!! I packed us some Yummy POP TARTS for Breakfast. Yes Yes, I know, Super MOM!! :-) They ran and played and climbed and slid until noon. Tori discovered that she liked the slides where she could double with us on the tube and slide down together. It was very fun to go down with her. One time she said to me on the stairs "Okay mom, this time, you're not aloud to talk, just me. You have to be quiet okay?" I agreed and waited in great anticipation for what would be said. She said all the things that I would normally say "Here we go, down a hill, whoa big corner, through the wall, weeeeee, see that was fun!!" It was so cute.

Brent's favorite part was the wave rider, a body surfing thing, it was really cool. His goal for the trip was to get up to his knees, he did it eventually. I did it a couple times and just ended up getting tossed up in the air, flipped over and landed at the top of the wave on my butt! It was rather fun though, especially the time that the kids came and watched Brent and Liza and I. The lazy river was also a hit, especially with Alex, he quite liked the pace of that thing. He did not like the big slides where we doubled with him on the tube. He stuck to the river and the slides off the climbing thing.

We left at about noon and went to Sonic (yes there is one right there!!! YUM) and had a yummy yummy lunch, and then headed BACK, yes, back to the water park!!! On our way back to the water we got side tracked by the hotel doing "free Milk and Cookies" with a movie. We went and got a yummy little treat and then made way for the water where we played until 4 pm, when I finally pulled them out of there by their hair!!! We had such a wonderful time, the life guards were starting to know my kids, we never waited in line for more then 2 or 3 people! Even that didn't happen very often. We didn't get to take Katie on Anything because she was just too little, so that was kind of the down side, one of us always had to be with her. After spending the better part of 26 hours in there though, Brent and I were so pooped, we decided that we both needed to take the breaks that we got by sticking with Katie off and on. (we're just getting too old.) That night I couldn't sleep, I kept feeling like I was still moving on the slides. :-) It was so fun! I highly recommend it!