A Vacation and an Anniversary

Ah, Great Wolf Lodge, I adore you. Especially in February.

It is a rare vacation, in my experience, that meets the needs of parents and a wide range of ages of children (from 14 year old boy down to 5 year old girl). And vacations with kids are rarely vacations for parents. Maybe I’m alone in that assessment, but there you have it.

Two years ago, under crazy weather and driving conditions, we made the short trek (which became so much longer) to Great Wolf Lodge for the first time. It was a raging success, and we have been longing to return ever since.

Russ and I decided that our 20th wedding anniversary was occasion enough, so we returned to Great Wolf Lodge this past week. This time around we had much better driving conditions, and our stay at the resort was fabulous. It started off even better than expected when, during check-in, our basic room was upgraded to a suite with a separate master bedroom and bath (for free!). Bliss.

Two strange things happened while we were there.

The first: I heard a knock on our door at 3:30 am the first night. It was a staff member who informed us that a young child had wandered into the lobby and they had to knock on every door to make sure all kids were accounted for and find the parents of the lost child!

The second: We decided to try out the lodge’s buffet restaurant the second evening, even though it was a little more than we might have spent otherwise. We dried off, got dressed, and hit the restaurant as soon as it opened at 5 pm. We were impressed by the great food selection and filled our plates with food. We had barely sat down to our meal when the power went out! We ate in the semi-darkness until they had to close down the buffet because they could not keep the food warm. We still had our fill of delicious food, and they did not charge us! The power was out for more than an hour and a half (across a large section of the town, as I understand it), and I felt sorry for those families who were swimming at the time and were wet and hungry (the restaurant did not open again that night). We were happy as clams, however! The boys still had a little time to swim in the evening after the power came back on and Lola and I were in the Grand Lobby for the Great Clock Tower Show.

We were able to truly relax and enjoy ourselves. The boys are completely independent in the water park, and Russ and I took turns hanging out with Lola who is now old enough to go on the big waterslides with us (other than the Howlin’ Tornado—and I was perfectly content not to go on that one). She had a blast.

Other than a couple pictures on Instagram, I didn’t even take pictures. These are from two years ago. It all looks the same. [grin] I spent my time relaxing, playing, and reading books. That’s my kind of vacation! Honestly, two nights here is just about perfect. Guests can swim starting at 1 pm on the day of check-in and they can swim until close (9 pm) after checking out (and use the locker rooms after swimming).

Speaking of anniversaries…

My 9th blog anniversary came and went without even a hint of celebration this year (blog slacker that I’ve been). February 17th marked nine years of blogging here at Mt. Hope Chronicles.

NINE YEARS!

I think I’m going to have to plan something extra stupendous for next year…

Now it’s time to return to the real world.

We need to buckle down and FOCUS for the next three weeks.