great wolf lodge!

it’s birthday time around here, and this year, we celebrated with a family stay at great wolf lodge. an indoor water park is a relatively new (and much needed) addition to western washington and the kids have been begging to go every time we pass it (which is with surprising frequency), so we decided to surprise them with an overnight stop there on our way back up from portland.

everyone was very excited and it took forEVer to get everyone to sleep that night. (side note: I’m convinced that putting kids to bed in a hotel room is a new level of hell.) in the morning (layla’s 6th birthday!), we opened a few presents, helped her with her new puzzle (a gift from gramma and papa that she’d been dying to get at), and then got our suits on and headed to breakfast.

looking through the lobby window at the water park:

after breakfast we headed in to the water park and had a BLAST!!! this place is really family friendly and has stuff for kids (and adults) of all ages. layla was about half an inch too short to ride the BIG slides, but that was okay. they had 2 kids’ play areas with slides and squirty things and splash pads, plus the bigger slides that are on the top of the big tower thing that has water EVERYWHERE w/ the big bucket on top. they could also go in the wave pool and the other big swimming area. they had life vests there that you could use too. so they had a ton of fun.

dave and I took turns riding the big slides with shane, which were SO much fun. I wasn’t going to do the ‘howlin’ tornado’, but shane made me. it was really fun and a little bit scary (I’m not a big fan of drops), but I survived and did it again after that – this time, I was the one going down backwards! holy cow that is way freakier! at any rate. the slides were loads of fun, and we were thinking about how awesome it will be when the little kids are a little older and we can all ride them together.

everyone had a great time. layla had a very fun birthday, shane was equally happy(which is good, since this counted for his birthday too), and I don’t think I’ve ever seen micah that happy!

I didn’t take a ton of pictures, since I was too busy having a good time and don’t have a waterproof camera, but there are a couple.

micah, on the squirting jetskis in one of the kids play areas (and layla running away – pink swimsuit bottom):

family picture when we were getting ready to leave. micah is tired and mad that we were leaving:

attempting to get a shot of the kids sitting in the big bear chair by the entrance. micah, grumpy, didn’t want to share with anyone:

layla wanted to have a picture taken of JUST her in the chair:

the three of them by the entrance:

all in all, a great time! I can’t wait until we save up a million dollars again so we can afford to go back!