Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Great Wolf Lodge

We splurged a little with our tax return and finally took a real family vacation. I have been looking forward to this for SO long! I've been wanting to go to Great Wolf Lodge for years so I was so glad to finally book it. It's about 2 hours from our house so not a far drive at all. A must when traveling with 2 kids and no DVD player in the car. If you don't know what it is, Great Wolf is a nice hotel with an indoor waterpark in it. Tons of water slides, a wave pool, kiddie area, a giant fort with a giant bucket of water that dumps every 5 minutes and lots of other things to do.

SO, after crying a little, I am posting the pictures that I DO have. I got a disposable waterproof camera to take into the waterpark so there wouldn't be any chance of ruining our real camera. I immediately dropped it off to be developed on the way home because I was SO excited to see the pictures. When I picked it up, the lady asked if we went to Great Wolf because every picture she has developed from there has been too dark to see anything. Of course ours were too so we didn't get a single picture from inside the park which just about kills me because that is where we spent most of our time. I had or thought I had some really great pictures of Addison going down the giant slides that she was originally too scared of but ended up loving them after a few times. I really thought she would be scared of most of them but she had a blast. She also really loved the wave pool and would purposely get caught in the middle of them just to get tossed around. Cooper was pretty scared of everything the whole time. He held onto Phillip the entire time except when I could pry him away so Phillip could do some slides with Addison. He actually did like the wave pool finally and LOVED watching the giant bucket pour on everyone. Hopefully if we go there again he will enjoy it more. It may look like we just went mini-golfing and to an arcade according to the pictures but we spent about 6 hours every day in the waterpark and hopefully I'll be able to get over losing those pictures. We were busy pretty much every minute and had a great time. Back to reality now!!

I specifically got an upgraded room that had bunk beds because Addison is obsessed with them. She said her favorite part of the whole vacation was sleeping on the top of the bunk bed and getting her own TV to watch in her room.

Every night they have story time in the main lobby where everyone wears their pajamas. I thought Cooper would be bored out of his mind but he loved it. It probably had something to do with the giant wolf that was standing there next to the book.


My little wizard

Late night ice cream treats. Addison insisted on getting mint ice cream with gummy bears on top. So much like her daddy!


They had this merry-go-round in the arcade and we used about half of our tokens on this thing. Cooper screamed every time it ended and seeing as how he didn't get a lot of choices on this vacation, we let him go on it as much as he wanted.


Loving the fake roller coaster ride


She was pretty intense during this air hockey game. You can just see it in her face ; )




He loved just sitting on the course doing nothing. It was so cute!

She got to color this backpack in the craft center and got to pick this dog and stuff it in the "build a bear" type store. There was so much to do there!



Saturday, March 19, 2011

Addison's 1st Canes Game!

Phillip has a friend in the Chamber of Commerce that has given us tickets to quite a few Hurricanes games this season which has been wonderful. We LOVE going and it's a great date night. He gave Phillip tickets to last night's game but we didn't have a babysitter so Phillilp said he would take Addison instead. She was SO excited. She talked about it all day, told everyone she saw that she was going, dress up in her favorite outfit, etc... It was so cute. I actually wasn't sure if she'd even like it or be interested in it at all which is why we haven't taken her before and I had no plans to. I'm glad she went though. Phillip said she constantly asked questions like "where is the puck", "which guy got it in the goal", etc... Apparently she was really scared though when everyone stood up to cheer. I guess she was afraid they were going to fall. HAHAHA! I laughed out loud when she told me that. The seats are pretty high up and I can see where she would be afraid I guess but it's still funny. She had a great time and she said that her favorite part was when they played "human bowling" across the ice. She said she would never want to do that herself though. I'm glad she had a great time and although I wish I had gotten to experience that with her for the 1st time, I definitely look forward to when we can all go together.

Since it was family night, they had all sorts of bounce houses and slides set up. She LOVED that!

The same guy that gave Phillip the tickets also had given my dad some also so that was fun that they could all go together.



Just being silly...as usual!


Sharing ice cream...gross ; )


She couldn't make a nice smiley face if her life depended on it apparently!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Invitations


When Cooper's 1st birthday rolled around, I really wanted to make his invitation myself so I did and I LOVED doing it. It was so much fun and finally put my photoshop skills to good use. I've had a few friends ask me to do their kids' invites and I've really enjoyed doing them. Just thought I'd share the few that I've done. Addison's is my favorite!









Farm Days

NC State does "Farm Days" every year where they set up animals, tractors, etc... so Addison's pre-school took a field trip there today. The kids had a blast. Cooper especially loved the animals.

They were both so excited to "drive" the tractor

I love the way Cooper is laughing at Addison

Trying so hard to honk the horn

His expression when he saw the cows across the field. So cute!

He kept falling down on purpose just so Addison would help him back up

He kept trying to get through the fence and got so frustrated when he couldn't

Making silly faces at Addison

Addison and her besties from school