Great Wolf Lodge

Bo had vacation two weeks ago, and since we knew we wouldn't be traveling to Washington, or some other place, we decided to see what the area nearby had to offer.  Some friends had recently traveled to Cincinnati (2 hours away) to go to the Great Wolf Lodge and told us how fun it was.  We figured, why not??  At first we were going to keep this trip a secret and surprise the kiddos, but then Bo and I couldn't stand waiting, so we just went ahead and told them.  Bad idea in that they kept bugging us as to when we were going to go, good idea in that they were SOOOO PUMPED when that day came!

So Bo and I were trying to work out the times of when we could get in the room, when we could actually swim, would we have time to visit IKEA before ( I love that store) we went to the lodge, and when to leave home to actually drive the 2 hours to get to Cincinnati, that we decided maybe the least stressful thing would be to get a cheap hotel in Ohio the night before, and then not have to worry about being rushed. As soon as that was decided, I suddenly remembered that we had some friends, Jenn and Kyle Timmerman, that had recently moved to Ohio, looked up where they were, and realized they weren't that far away.  Oh i was sooooo excited when I discovered we would get to visit them!  We ended up staying the night with them and our kids had the best time playing with Kyle and Jenn's little boy, Max, while Bo and I were in heaven chatting it up with our friends and holding their darling baby Oliver. Unfortunately I got NO pics.  Darn it, I'll just have to go visit again! Twist my arm.



Great Wolf Lodge was the best!  Our family was in love with the place.  First off, that place is HUGE. There were tons of different sections.  There were like 12 different water slides, some of them only for kids under "48, some only for people taller than that, and the rest were in between.  There was a lazy river, where you could float on tubes, or not. There was a wave pool, Carter's favorite.  There was a huge water fort.  There were also a couple just plain swimming places.  Megs and Derrick spent most of their time in between the little kid pool, which was huge, and the wave pool.  Carter pretty much went everywhere, but as mentioned before, he really REALLY loved the wave pool.  Megan went on the little kid slides over and over and over again.  Derrick loved playing with the little fountains coming out of the ground.  I loved going down the slides with Carter, and I think that might have been Bo's favorite part too.

Pretty much the trip went like this:  We got into the hotel at 1:30 and swam till about 5, when we stopped to take a dinner break.  We went back to swim from about 6 to 7 pm and then Carter and Megan and I went to this kids club room where they got to make masks and color.  After that it was bedtime.  We pretty much all of us were zonked out by 9.  The next day we went to breakfast at an IHOP nearby, and then back to swimming from about 10 am to 1:30 pm.  At about that time in the afternoon the kids were DONE.  They loved the place, but they were tired, and they were done having their toes and fingers being raisins. :)  We changed, left, went to Mc Donald's for lunch, and heading home.  I think that was the quietest drive I've ever been on.  The kids never took a nap, but they were still out of it.  Carter even commented on it at one point. hahaa. 

So in order to do the slides, which the little kids couldn't go on, but Carter could, Bo and I had to pretty much be split up the whole time.  I'd go on a ride with Carter and Bo would watch the other two, then we'd switch and Bo would head off with Carter to some other rides.  While it worked, and we still had lots of fun, we both agree that next time we go, because we're definitely going again, that we definitely need to go with another family.  Carter could use another buddy, his age, to fall off the tubes with in the wave pool, Megan could use a little slide friend to race with, and Bo and I would have fun going down other slides together along with just some good chatting time with friends. It was a fun trip though and we had blast.  Good family times.  Awesome family times. 

Partying in the room.

The wave pool! No waves yet. They come on every 15 min. 

You could take tubes in the wave pool.  Megan loved playing in the super shallow area on them.

Derrick loving the fountains.

These were the only two slides, besides the kids ones, that you didn't need water tubes.

The yellow slide was Carter's and my favorite. We refer to it as the toilet bowl slide, because you go round and round in that bowl until at the bottom you go through this little hole.

I love this picture and the way it got the wave going over Carter.

And the hot tub, who can forget the hot tub! Or as Megan likes to call it, "the warm pool."