Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Return from the Great Wolf Lodge

This past weekend Whitney, Will, our dear friend Anastasia and I headed up to the Great Wolf Lodge for an overnight.  The overnight was sponsored by Philadelphia Family Pride so we were able to partake in discounted room rates and a couple discounted meals.  Now, I was not familiar with the Great Wolf Lodge until recently.  It is a resort with an indoor water park geared directly to and for kids.  The Lodge is in the Pocono "Mountains" about two hours away.

We left midday Saturday so Will could nap in the car.  Once we arrived, we unloaded our bags and hit the water park!  At first it was a little much for Will, who wasn't quite sure what to make of the place.  But then he got into the spirit of things.  The Lodge has an entire section dedicated to toddlers which is wonderful.  There is a zero-entry pool, which means no steps or anything for Will to worry about navigating.  He was a little wary of the slides at first, but he realized they were just like the ones at the playground- only with water - he had a blast!  

The toddler section had three different types of slides:  First was an orange one that had a bump in the middle and certainly got the kids wet and dumped them into the pool, so one of us had to be ready to catch the little dude.  The second slide was blue and was just a straight forward slide with water.  It flattened out at the bottom so that Will rarely made it to the pool.  The third slide, was a little more traditional in terms of water park water slides, it was curvy and spilled into a pool.  By the end of the first day, Will had tried all three!  Although, after multiple runs down the third type of slide, he got turned around and came out face first.  He was pretty scared and decided that was enough of that particular slide.  One word to describe Will though is resilient!  He bounced back and was back on the blue and orange slides pretty quickly!

There also was a wave pool!  Will thought that was awesome!  The waves weren't too powerful if you stayed near the "shore" and Will loved just sitting down and letting water come up on him.

That evening we had a group dinner with PFP and Will was a champ.  After dinner and getting back to our room, the little man was exhausted!  We changed into jammies and went straight to bed - well after his normal 7:00 pm bed time.  He had a great night's sleep and didn't wake up until almost 8 the next morning!

Once everybody was up and ready to go the next morning, we again ate with PFP at the group breakfast and all compared notes as to which water slides were our kids' favorites.  Then we headed back to the park!

By now, Will was an old pro.  He toddled right up to his favorite slides and kept on going!  After a brief chat with one of the lifeguards, we decided to try the big family slide.  We had to climb to the highest perch of the indoor water park.  Once up at the top, Anastasia, Whitney, Will (in a life jacket) and myself climbed into a giant circular raft and down we went!!  There were lots of turns and water splashed all around.  Will loved it!!  He was giggling and squealing and had an enormous smile on his face.  Until the end.

When he saw the big pool of water waiting to catch up and white water that was bubbling at the end of the look of shear and utter terror flashed across his baby blue eyes.  But once the raft stopped and he blinked a couple times (probably realized he was alive), he quickly signed and said "More?"  I guess it was a success!

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures because we were too worried about breaking our nice new (and third) digital camera.

In other news, Will is doing great!  He is loving the Spring weather and loves wandering around the lawns outside the main building and saying "Hi" to everybody!  He also know hows to give fist bumps.  Very exciting!  Especially since half the basketball team will now come up to him and give him fist bump.  The latest developmental milestone is writing on the wall - thank goodness it came off!

And a final quick cuteness story:  Today is Whitney's birthday.  William colored her a birthday card and then wandered around the house looking for his Mama to give her his present.  It was adorable!