great wolf lodge

Jacob still brings up our trip to Great Wolf Lodge on a daily basis. Sometimes when he's waxing poetic about it I remind him that he's been to Disney World twice and that at his age, those vacations should have left a greater mark upon his soul than a weekend at an indoor water park in the Poconos. He remains unphased.

Jon planned and booked this trip all on his lonesome. He wanted me to look into things and give him feedback, but I never really did. (Sometimes he hates me. And in fairness, he should.) But even without any direction from me the weekend was spectacular. (Get over yourself, Anna). Spectacular might be a little generous. It was a surprising and wonderful success.

The first surprise was that I wanted to drive there. Dear readers, I never get behind the wheel. Especially in large cities. I've never been allowed, or remotely interested, in driving in San Francisco or New York. And as often as Jon tells me I should just rent a car and do mid-week Costco runs on my own, I respond with, "Do you want me to die?" I would only go if I had someone to watch the kids so I don't have to worry about my children getting hit by a wayward crosstown bus or a reckless taxi cab. Or even worse, one of those illegal dirt bike / atv gangs as seen in this video here. (Cassi, look it's Matt Maroon). Where was I going with this? Oh that's right, I drove. No one died. And it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be. My friend Sharon summed up NYC driving best with, "Just think of the lines on Amsterdam as vague guidelines and the city as a huge, flowing, amazing river that requires constant vigilance."  

Less than two hours later we'd arrived. Jon couldn't get over how lame the "mountains" are out here. He's a Rocky Mountain snob. Really they looked more like vibrant green rolling hills. This is the year I'm demanding we go for a drive when the leaves change. I'm an old person in a youngish person's body. 

Is anyone still reading this? Lets get to the pictures:

Dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. This town near GWL called Stroudsburg had every chain restaurant imaginable (except Chick fil A). Texas Roadhouse wasn't open for lunch so we settled for a Longhorn Steakhouse. It was cheap, but it lacked those tasty Texas Roadhouse rolls. Clearly we were glad to have survived my driving. 

We like a cheap haircut when we can find one. Jacobs had so many bad haircuts in his young life that I'm just thrilled when things are more or less even and cost 15 dollars or less. 

Got a lollypop and balloon. 

Target stop for breakfast and swim supplies. 

The mural inside the kids "Wolf den"

Lousy picture, but you can kind of see that the table was inside a tent thing. Food at this restaurant was buffet, and not terrible. Pretty good variety as well. 

 Dessert faces

Part of some package deal that the kids shared. Jacob colored his own pillowcase, and made a personalized book about his adventures at Great Wold Lodge. He also got some wolf ears. 

 Rebecca got to make a stuffed animal, like a build a bear. 

Watching TV before bedtime

 Doing some birthday shopping at the outlets. 

Birthday lunch at Olive Garden. I think our whole bill w desserts, drinks and appetizers was less than 50 bucks. I

Outside view of the kids Wolf Den

A few lousy pictures of the water park. Lots of slides that Jacob wasn't big enough for, but Jon enjoyed trying them out when the lines weren't too long. 

Wave pool. We spent most of our time playing in here. Or in the lazy river that we didn't take pictures of. 

Both of them liked the slides they could go down on their own. 

Ice cream parlor/ candy shop

Spent a fair amount of time in the arcade yet only manged one picture. Maybe because there were two entrances and Rebecca was constantly running out one or the other. Lots of lights and noises and buttons to push. It was kind of a dream come true for both of them. I played some skeeball, Jon excelled at the basketball and soccer games. In the end Jacob had enough tickets to get a toy car and some red vines. He was stoked. 

We're hoping to go back this Winter sometime. Get us out of the February doldrums. Maybe drag some friends along. We liked that there was plenty of things to do at the resort besides play in the water (we didn't even make it to the bowling alley, story time performances, etc), there were a ton of life guards all over and (most importantly for me) the whole resort was really clean. I know there are similar resorts, some smaller scale, that our friends have been to so we might need to check some more of these out. High fives to Jon for making this happen. 

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last day

I'm remembering why I stopped blogging. This is taking way too long. I stayed up late last night and while I'm finishing up this morning the living room is getting trashed.

We had an 8pm flight and all day to play with Jon so it was hard to narrow down where we wanted to take him. He comes to Chicago fairly frequently but never with time to sight see and in NY I rarely drag him to children's museums so we decided to walk to Navy Pier.

Breakfast was the bomb diggity. That's right, I said bomb diggity.

Pancakes with nutella. Blew his mind. The commercials say its healthy, right? 

Didn't spend enough time in Millennium Park.

 "Why is there a mountain on the bus stop?"

The outside of the Art Institute

Family pics at the Bean

(You have to read this in a Batman voice)
The narrows

 Crossing over the river on the way to the Navy Pier

Pets 

Water play 

Do you see Jon's happy face? He had never been to a children's museum and had a good time. 

Not sure if you can tell but he was watching a drawbridge open and close. 

She played at this little table almost the whole time we were in the water area

Kidville 

She peed through her pants somehow so she was pantless until we got back to the hotel. 

Treehouse

Dinosaurs

Michael's Museum

A random collection of tiny things to look at and play with.  

Dinner at Unos was totally worth it. I was stuffed after one and half slices, but I wanted to keep eating more. It was so much better than the chain. Chain Uno's, you should be ashamed of yourself. We also walked to Michigan and Ohio to see where Isaac proposed to Kari. I wanted to take a panoramic picture of of all four corners but Jon's camera was dead. Lame.

Midway was an easy 30 minute ride away from the Loop. Made me even more bummed about the time in March when I spent five hours at Midway because I was an hour into my layover before I realized I'd be there for four more hours. If only I'd done some planning and I could have run around downtown Chicago a few months ago. I hope to not ever have a five hour layover again but if I do, I hope it's at Midway. 

Cute chairs at security at Midway. 

Familiarizing herself with safety information.

So to recap, I loved Chicago. I would love to go back. Soon. Jon's conference will be there again in Spring of 2015, so I'm already planning on pulling Jacob out of Kindergarten for a week to go play. I'm not kidding.   Food was great, public transportation was easy to navigate, lots of free or affordable things to do, short flight. Lots of awesomeness happening there. Maybe next time I'll even meet a fire fighter. Or an actor who plays a firefighter on TV. Baha.  

Jen, if you're reading this, I would you meet you there in a heartbeat. Let's do a long weekend. A house on the lake. Tell Jordan I promise not be annoying.