Last year we went to the Gaylord Hotel in Grapevine and began an annual tradition of a "staycation" right before school starts. This year we chose the Great Wolf Lodge, directly across the street from the Gaylord and had so much fun!! Kendall got a pair of ears as we checked in:
And had a "wolf den" in our room with bunk beds as her room!
Complete with her own TV and remote. Sadly, it was not a sound proof room and when that TV was turned on at 6AM the next morning, it seemed like less of a good idea.
As she did last year, she immediately unpacked for her dolls and organized her "room." This is very obviously my genes at work.
View from our window of the outside part of the water park.
Daddy joined us for a couple of hours on Sunday.
Here is the indoor water park. Kendall could go on all of the slides except one, which I was actually thankful to not have to go on with her!
Short rest after water park and before dinner and MagiQuest.
I really think they need to use this picture on their website!
I think this is "the Great Wolf" but I'm not sure. There is a cast of characters with names. I do now know them.
Now THIS, was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! It's called "MagiQuest." Long story short, a not so cheap wand is purchased and a game is purchased. The kid chooses a Wizard Name for the computer boards and it's linked to the wand. Then they are given a book called "The Ancient Book of Wisdom" with clues to find a certain number of "runes" to complete a quest. There were about 10 quests and 5-8 runes per quest. When the wand was pointed at trees, pictures, objects, etc, they came to life and talked/howled/sparkled/gave imaginary gold/etc. We completed 5 quests and collectively it took about 5 hours of wandering around the resort. Two of the quests had to be repeated because I didn't read the instructions carefully enough to know that we had to find a "magic tree" and click on "done" at the end of the quest for it to be properly logged in and before a new quest could be started. So we blazed through 3 quests and lost 2. This was when we gave up at went to bed at 11PM.
The number of children running around the resort with wands was outnumbered slightly by the number of parents trudging around staring at the booklet with moderate to extreme looks of frustration on their faces.
We attended story time very briefly that evening. She just wasn't all that interested in story time or the characters. Traipsing all over the resort and up and down stairs a gazillion times was much more entertaining.
Bed time with the entourage ... well, 1/2 of the entourage. The dolls were tucked in in the bottom bunk.
More MagiQuest in the morning!
Then back to the slides!
I ultimately gave in to the relentless requests for a build a wolf stuffed animal. This was in exchange for the cessation of the requests to spend time in the arcade.
We completed 2 more quests and called it day at 2 that afternoon. They were getting more and more difficult and we were getting more and more frustrated and cranky.
Oh, this is the temperature in my car when it was returned by the valet.
And this is the sign of a successful short staycation! She woke up briefly to give me her McDonalds order and that was it. We had a lot of fun and I think we can officially call summer "complete."
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