Great Wolf Lodge

We had the most amazing opportunity at the beginning of November. We got to go the the Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA, over by Seattle. It is this huge hotel with an indoor water park. When the kids found out what we were doing they were so excited. I can't tell you how many times Abbie and I spent looking at their web page.

While Terry was in meetings the kids and I went swimming. Afterward, we planned on doing some activities in the Kids Club during the afternoon. While we were walking around the hotel we saw most of the kids running around the hotel with these wands. Riley wanted to find out what they were for, so we went to the gift shop that sold them. We found out that you can buy these wands that are infrared wands, like a remote control for a TV. Than you go on a quest to earn ruins that help you defeat a dragon at the end of the quest. Of coarse Riley wanted to do this. I sat down with my kids and told them that they each could buy one souvenir and each choose one activity to do. Pretty much every activity they had cost extra money. I wanted my kids to have fun, but couldn't afford to have them do everything. Riley and Abbie both chose to buy wands. Than Riley chose to do the quest and Abbie chose to do the jumping with bullfrogs activity. It worked out well. We were able to put Abbie's wand on demo mode for free. This meant that she could light things up with her wand but she couldn't participate in the quest. Also, while Abbie was doing her activity, Riley got to listen to all the information. He just didn't get to make all the fun stuff that Abbie made.

We stayed pretty busy while Terry was in his meetings, and got in some good exercise at the same time. The quest required you to do a lot of walking. The quest was spread out over five different floors, and you had to walk up the stairs most of the time, because they had some clues on the stairs. There were a lot of times we would walk up five flights of stairs to turn around and walk back down five flights of stairs. Than repeat it.

After Terry finished his meeting we went swimming again. I felt sorry for Terry because by the evening we were all worn out and feel asleep, were he was ready to have some fun. The next morning we tried to finish the quest while Terry went to his last meeting than we went swimming one last time. Unfortunately, we didn't defeat the dragon. We got to fight him and got close to beating him, but we ran out of time and had to leave.

Eating breakfast!






The kids trying to figure out what all these decorations were for. We later found out they were part of the quest.

This was the TV that was on our floor. It was a snoring tree trunk. They were excited when we got to wake up the tree and have him talk to us.


Abbie with her plant aquarium she made during her Jumping With Bullfrogs activity

My little bullfrog

Taking a rest during our quest.

The kids sitting in front of this big fire place in the lounge. This was a huge lounge

Riley getting some more clues for his quest.

Lighting up the lantern with his wand

Swimming with dad. The indoor water park was awesome. I wanted to take lots of other pictures, but is cost $10 to rent a locker. I didn't' want to spend that much, so I took a few pictures and than took the camera back to our hotel room. They had all these fun slides you could go on. Riley, Terry and Terry's coworker went on the Howling Tornado first. This is the description that there web page gives for this ride, "Our most thrilling adventure. Grab up to 3 other members of your pack willing to drop into the 6-story funnel. You'll quickly learn how this ride earned its name. Repeatedly swish and swirl 30 feet up the sides of the funnel, before making a safe splash landing." Terry said he was to scared for Riley and keeping him on the ride to be scared for himself. After this we couldn't get Riley to go on any other rides. We had Abbie crying because she was to short to go on most of the ride and she wanted it to, and Riley who was tall enough refusing to go on the rides. Finally, right before we went Riley agreed to go on another ride with Terry. Which he enjoyed a lot more.





Going on part of the quest with dad.




I never got a picture of Riley trying to defeat the dragon. We were in a hurry, but this is Riley and Abbie right outside the room were the dragon was.