Sunday, December 27, 2015

X-Mas at Great Wolf Lodge

I'm kind of behind in posting this. But we had a great time at Great Wolf Lodge and Williamsburg, VA for Christmas 2015. We asked C11 & Q9 if they'd prefer presents or a trip. They both chose a trip! Yay! We made memories.


It was super warm when we went, very un-Christmassy. See rainy arrival picture:

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So, for those of you who do not yet know, or have no reason to know, and never will find yourself in the situation of knowing, Great Wolf Lodge is basically an indoor water park.

This is the first view you get of it, from the lobby:

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Then you have to RUSH to your room as QUICK as possible to get your bathing suit ON so you can go IN!

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Here are a couple of action videos. I LOVED the thing C11 did. I couldn't get the kids to go with me enough times, and I kind of felt like a parental dork trying to hard to do that. But I managed to do it on my knees and surf for a while. No tricks and flips (the 12-17 year old boys were best at that), and I was flung off the board once and shot back up to the top in a jumbled mess and a misplaced bathing suit, which was hysterical. Wish somebody had gotten that on video!!!! Q9 didn't like this ride, but C11 did well here!

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The blue waterslide was a good one. My favorite was going down with somebody else on a double, it made it go faster.

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And me on a slide board. I only did the slide boards once. Not real fast.

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And the girls loved the wavepool (we'd body surf ... I still have a scab on my knee from scraping the cement bottom of the wave pool!)  and the giant dump bucket. I resisted this for a while, but it was hard to ignore. It would fill up every 5 minutes and at about 4 minutes a bell would start ringing ... Dong! ... Dong! ... Dong! and kids and adults alike would flock to that area just under the bucket. And the bucket would dump a huge amount of water on you.

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We were at the waterpark a LOT. C11 was done after two visits, but Q9 wanted to go all the time, for hours at a time. We got there the afternoon of the 23rd, and went in. In on the 24th. In on the 25th after Williamsburg. Q9 told me on the 25th she wanted to spend from 3pm to 9pm in the waterpark. We did not quite, but from about 2:45 to 8:30. Close enough for me. And the next, and our last day, she wanted to spend 4 hours (from 9am to 1pm) in the water. Unfortunately, she had gotten chaffed the day before with so much swimming, and the rub of her suit was too much for her after an hour. BUT, we were the FIRST on the tornado waterslide, AND spent a lot of time in the lazy river.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Santa Run 2015

This JUST happened minutes ago! Santa on the fire truck visiting the Hyattsvillagers .... I saw this for the first time 15 years ago after we moved into our house. I LOVE it.

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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Gingerbreading 2015

This year we made: Abby Road, A fox, a house, Gingerhenge, and a cup & saucer.

I think Foxy was my favorite:
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Abby Road won the "most frosting" award.

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Gingerhenge had lots of potential, and ended up FULL of random candy.

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Q9 wanted a cup and dish of cookies, and I love the way it turned out.

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And my house:
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I'm already looking forward to next year ....