Great Wolf Lodge 2012

After a 2 year hiatus (due to the birth of Caroline last December), we returned to Great Wolf Lodge for our third Christmas in almost-a-row. I was a little apprehensive, having 3 kids this time, and with Joel having to work it wasn't guaranteed that he would be able to meet me there to help out. Fortunately all three kids did pretty awesome, and Joel was able to meet us there around 4pm yesterday and stayed until 9pm, and met us again this morning around 10:30 or so and stayed until we left in the afternoon.

Thanks to a convalescing toe (Joel had his big toe nail removed this past week), I had to do all the water slides with Ben (Joel was not supposed to go in a pool... a likely story ... ;) Of course Ben wanted to go on the scariest water slide (The Howling Tornado) and I had to do it like six times with him. You go on a raft, and there has to be at least two people on it, and you go down this really steep drop, practically a free fall, and at the bottom of it instead of continuing straight you go sideways up the wall, then back down and up the opposite wall, before finally continuing down the slide again. My neck and back are killing me today, I think I got whip lash ;) But Ben was so happy, I couldn't say no (well until like the 6th time).

Rebecca was happy for the most part to play in the wave pool and on the climbing structure, which had a couple of easier water slides that you don't need to be on a raft for and although they are tall and loop around a lot, they don't go very fast. She would have been tall enough to go on the other slides (except for the Howling Tornado) with an adult, but after climbing to the top of one of the slides with her, she balked at getting into the raft, so we turned around and came back down :)

Caroline is at a pretty easy stage right now, because she is kind of tired of crawling but can't walk yet, so all she really wants to do is pull up and try to stand for a few seconds. So she was happy sitting at the edge of the wave pool and trying to stand, and splashing in the water a little. She never tried to crawl away or crawl into the water. Next year, she will probably be a pain ;)

We did a lot of MagiQuest playing this year also - probably a good three or four hours. Ben brought his wand that we got him last time we were there, and we got Rebecca a pink princess wand which of course she adored. Since she was getting her own wand, Ben talked me into getting a dragon wand topper for his (the pommel or whatever of the wand unscrews and can be replaced with other, fancier ones). Of course the price of the wand topper turned out to be almost the price of a new wand, so that plus Rebecca's wand and wand topper, plus the $12.99 or whatever it was to activate each wand = an expensive game ;) The kids had a blast with it though, and completed several quests. I did get a bit tired eventually of traipsing all over the lodge looking for the items they needed for their quests - good exercise ;) We tuckered out one quest short of having all the runes needed to try fighting the dragon.... that will have to wait for next time ;)

We also gorged ourselves on the Christmas Eve buffet last night and again on the Christmas day brunch buffet at lunch today, before heading home this afternoon. We had a couple hours of quiet time and then headed out for the obligatory Chinese food on Christmas dinner. So a good (and tiring!) couple of days! Some pictures below--