A Little Vacation

This Sunday, we set out for a quick family vacation.  Abbie had Monday off of school, and I scored a great deal, so it seemed the perfect opportunity.  We first stopped in Cornelius to visit my parents.  The kids had a great time "driving" Dad's new (if you can call it that...) car.

Then we enjoyed a delicious lunch and headed over to Great Wolf Lodge in Concord, just 30 minutes from their house.  We were able to check in and go to our hotel room right away, then spend the rest of the afternoon in their indoor waterpark.  We had so much fun that we didn't get to dinner until about 7pm.  After a yummy dinner, the kids enjoyed the evening activities of group dancing, a little show and bedtime story read by one of the lodge staff.  On the way to bed, we stopped to play a quick  target shooting game (it was hard to say no to Jason with it being just a few yards from our room!).

Storytime

Target shooting

greeting the bear in the morning

by the fireside

Despite a rough night's sleep due to various kid issues, we also enjoyed our second day.  We had a late buffet breakfast that carried us over enough to play in the waterpark until 2pm, at which time we showered, got lunch, and headed home.

Great Wolf Lodge is a really cool resort.  It's located adjacent to the huge Concord Mills shopping area, but there's truly no need to leave the resort.  There are several eating options, arcades, laser tag, and other fun games, plus souvenir shops, in addition to the awesome water park.  Inside the water park, there is a little kids' splash zone with small slides and fake jet skis that shoot water (one of Jason's favorites).  Another section has a tower with tandem water slides and an enormous bucket that dumps 1000 gallons of water every few minutes.  Then there's a wave pool (another of Jason's favorites), slides with inflatable tubes you ride, and a mat race slide where you go down superman-style on a mat with handles.  The coolest thing was that Abbie loved literally every bit of it.  We did avoid the one pool/obstacle course and the slide that she was too small for, but she did absolutely everything else over and over.  I loved hearing her carefree giggles and screams as we went down the slides together, then seeing how brave she was doing other slides on her own.  I wish I had a few pictures, but we were having so much fun as a family, that we didn't even bring our phones or a camera into the waterpark.