Mid-Autumn Vacation!

Every year, every school in the entire state is off the third Thursday and Friday of the month for the MEA (Minnesota Educators Association) conference. All the teachers attend and the kids have a few days off. We decided this would be a perfect time for a little family getaway. Andrew usually travels a lot in September and October because The Famous Group is working on NFL, NHL and NBA packages simultaneously. We thought it would be great to spend some time away from home and away from work so we headed over to the Great Wolf Lodge in the Dells. We went there last December and had a great time and the kids were very excited about going back again!



Believe it or not, Andrew and Ella are both under that deluge of water!! A bell clangs every few minutes to warn you and then that big bucket at the top dumps water on all those below. Ella did it once or twice, but the girls got a big kick out of Andrew standing under there and getting soaked.

We were so proud of Lily. She branched out quite a bit from the last visit and had so much fun! She did two other waterslides, crawled across these log stumps and played in a splash pad area. Ella of course did any and all slides she was tall enough to go down. Sidenote: I was at the waterpark and in the water despite the lack of photos of me. Andrew just never grabbed the camera to shoot one of me. :-)

Great Wolf had a new feature on this visit to the hotel. A virtual scavenger hunt game called MagiQuest. Basically, you purchase a wand and game and then go through the forest area collecting treasure, gems, objects and other things just by flicking your wand toward various objects. A laser reads your wand and stores information in the game piece attached. You go to multiple video screens throughout to find out your status in the quest based on what your wand has collected. The girls really enjoyed this!



Before we left for our trip, we received an email from the hotel letting us know they were doing a trick or treat trail through the hotel and also a family storytime. So we threw the girls' costumes into our bag. They were excited to get to wear their costumes a full two weeks before Halloween.




After trick or treating, we headed back to the room to get pajamas on and then ventured out in the hotel for a special quest in the Magiquest game. They had one that went through the hotel.


And then we settled in for storytime. Can you spot me and the girls? ;-) We don't have any other photos but we went to the waterpark again the next morning before heading back to MN in time for Lily to go to a friend's birthday party. We had such a fun time and it was great for us to get away with just the four (well, 4.5) of us. We don't often get away from the house or Eden Prairie with just us to do something fun like that. It was such a nice change of pace!