Great Wolf Birthday

Nathan opted out of a typical birthday party this year in favor of an overnight trip to the Great Wolf Lodge, which he has been asking to do for years, and daaaaang can I just say this is a great idea? Family time? Fun. Water slides? Fun. Great room with built in cabin? FUN. And no managing rsvp's and filling favor bags and planning party games and worrying your child's friends have summer plans and are hard to catch up with and then cleaning up after them? RECOMMEND.

We woke up early to hit the road, so we had Nathan's birthday cake first thing. For breakfast dessert! (Oh, the small things that delight children.)

(I made Smitten Kitchen's Pink Lady Cake but with raspberries instead of strawberries, and you should definitely do that if you like fruity cake. I only made a third of the recipe since hers is hyuuuge.)

We went to the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg (there are two about the same distance from us, and that one had better ratings), and we only went for one night. We weren't sure of the timing but it turns out that was a great length for us. We got there at 1, which is the earliest you can get a water park bracelet on your check-in day. Our room wasn't ready til 4, but we knew that going in, and we (I) had packed our swimsuits and stuff smartly, so we had "day at the pool" bags separate from our suitcase.

So we had several hours at the waterpark, and this was peak crowds, it turns out (which makes sense, since that day's checkout people can stay til close and people like us were there ready to play before our own checkins), but even at peak crowds it was still fine. Only the biggest baddest slide had a long line, and that was.... fifteen minutes? So, fiiiiine.

And y'all, the slides are GOOD! They say "waterpark" indoors, but people throw that term around loosely, and sometimes a "waterpark" at a hotel is like, a cool pool with several slides. So, you never know. But this was legit! They were big and fast and really fun, even for adults.

You have to be 48 inches to do most of the big ones, so Nathan and Anneliese could go on whatever they wanted. There were a handful of slides for smaller kids too, but Charlotte had zero interest. She mostly just wanted to skip through the splash pools, chicken out at the tops of even the baby splash slides, and find her zen in the wave pool.

Anneliese, meanwhile, is our adventure-seeker and waited in  line for the biggest coolest (scariest) slide a gazillion times.

We went out for a family birthday dinner, and they had a steak on the kids menu, and Nathan desperately wanted it, which is of course fine. Steak dinner!

(He needed help learning to cut it. It was adorable.)

We opened presents in our room, which was sweet.

Our room was great! It had a fireplace and a fridge and a table and couch and sitting area. Plus a balcony. And a cabin! With bunk beds!

They have several kinds of suites (tents, caves, cabins) but Nathan liked this one because it had room for a third kid in the fun part, instead of just getting stuck on a sleeper sofa. So if you have three kids, get the cabin. When you're a child (or a grownup, ha), there's nothing much cooler than a novel place to sleep in a hotel room.

The hotel has all manner of things for kids to do if you get tired of the waterpark (we didn't, really, but some people might). Like a round-the-clock schedule of included activities in the lobby, like kiddie yoga, and crafts, and button making, and character appearances, and milk/cookies at bedtime, and a PJ bubble party. (We did stop by that.) (Mark taught Charlotte the electric slide. Haaaaaaa.)

I had heard that lots of stuff at GWL would cost extra, and we would rack up room charges on all manner of things (everything goes through your room key, which is also your waterpark wristband, which is very easy and also therefore potentially dangerous), but we didn't find that to be the case at all. Everything we wanted to do was included, we went out for one dinner, we brought our own yogurt and cereal and pop tarts for breakfast (there's a fridge in every room, we'd have been dumb not to), and we used a resort credit booking promo to buy lunch and snacks and frozen drinks at the pool.

Apparently there is a magic game involving wands and extra charges that lots of kids love, but our kids were happy to chase Pokemon and no one tried to push any of those extras on us or anything. I don't think our kids even noticed they existed, which is nice. Some places market that stuff directly to kids which is so maddening, but GWL didn't, so A+ to them.

Anyway it was totally a good experience, especially for a birthday (every kid gets wolf ears at check-in, but Nathan's had a special hat on them so all the staff could see he was a special occasion kid, and treated him as such, which was very sweet -- and he also got a token for a free treat at the ice cream parlor, which is a nice touch). It felt special enough and out of the ordinary that for the kids it was a Very Big Deal, and for us it was really easy to have a night in a place that clearly knows how to cater to families.

(Well, I say easy except my broke-ass foot was really tired from walking barefoot all around the waterpark. I have been weaning off my boot cast and into sturdy hiking shoes, but all those barefoot hours were a more strenuous wean than I should have done. I'm still hoping it doesn't come back to bite me later. I feel dumb, yo.)

17 Days, 11 States, 1 Giant Road Trip

Well! Two Four months later and I have finally finished adding pics to the (now backdated) road trip posts from our lovely trip this summer. It was WONDERFUL.

Links here!

Days 1-2: North Carolina: my Grandpa's house, Tweetsie Railroad

Days 3-4: St. Louis: Cardinals game, religious art, a riverboat ride, and did you know the arch is made of metal??? My mind was blown.

Days 4-5: Rural Illinois, including a prairie park (yes that's a thing), and then Iowa, all the corn, Field of Dreams, oh and also we slept in a caboose. And broke into a zoo.

Days 5-6: Wisconsin Dells, yes it's a real place, yes for real, I know it sounds fake but it's real. Very waterpark. Many kitch. Much delightful.

Days 6-11: MinneEFFINGsota, Take Four: the one where I post pics of tractors and grain bins on my blog. And also Northfield, Another Nathan, popcorn and beer, St. Olaf, waterfalls, adults on swings, and Charlotte Booler's fourth birthday! Oh and saying goodbye to Marky. Sad face.

Days 12-17: Southbound! Including me drinking a beer on Hillary's Cincinnati porch swing, and the kids riding boats at Lake Wateree, with surprise appearances by my dad and also Emily! AND THEN WE MADE IT HOME.

Days 5-6: Wisconsin Dells

(backdated, again, etc)

5th Night: Wisconsin Dells!

Last summer when Another Nathan and I were driving for his move, we stopped for dinner in the Dells, and I was so delighted I could barely stand it, and all I could think was that I wanted to come back there with my family. So much kitsch! So many water parks! Like Myrtle but in Wisconsin!

So when we decided to take this road trip this summer, this was the first stop I planned, and I sort of worked backwards from there. Y'all, it was just as fun with the kids as I wanted it to be.

I labored over hotel decisions forever and ever, because there are a million choices, and they run the gamut from roadside motel pay by the half-day (me: wide eyes) to, like... fancy resort with all-inclusive meals and booze and unlimited water slides.

Knowing that we had three young kids who would be too short for many slides, one of whom can't swim unassisted, all of whom get randomly nervous right when we aren't expecting it, we opted for a less expensive hotel with a great series of pools for designed for young kids, and it came with free included park passes for a huge waterpark in town. (We figured if the kids didn't know the "fancy" waterpark existed, they would be thrilled with the slides and play areas at our pool -- and we were correct -- but then we would have the option to go to the big park too, if the crowds didn't sound annoying or if there weren't other things in town we wanted to do, etc. OPTIONS.) So anyway that ended up being a great decision.

We checked into the hotel, and it was a suite, so the kids all had beds, and Mark and I also had our own separate bedroom with a door that closed (this was a godsend by this point on our trip IF YOU KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING). and immediately put on swimsuits and played outside in the outdoor pools.

Y'all. Wisconsin in August is still chilly. It was like, 75 out or something. For us, that's not exactly swimming weather. I do not know how this whole town stays in business when you can only swim maybe two months a year, but hey! Whatever! Some of the pools were heated (IN AUGUST OMG HAHAHAHAHA *wipes tear*) and the kids were happy even on the cold slides and waterfalls, and it was super fun.

We went to a famous* pizza and brewery place for dinner, where I had the weirdest beer of my life (wheat beer filtered with banana? Wisconsin WHAT EVEN) and we wore moose antlers because hey America family road trip (!?) and then we drove through the (kitschy, delightful) downtown area of Wisconsin Dells.

And then, because the main thing to do in the dells is swim, we went back to the hotel and got in the indoor pool. At nine o'clock at night. Because the kids seemed fine, and vacation had apparently made us punchy. (*Famous for small town Wisconsin standards. Mostly I just wanted to yell MYRTLE Y'ALL but I refrained.)

The indoor pool was adorable, with a polar theme and lots of penguins and polar bears (who live at opposite poles, which is now a Thing I Know because I brought my pedantic 8-year-old to a pool with a polar theme, and he had Concerns about how realistic it was/n't) and the children were very taken with it. (Me too.)

Day 6: Wisconsin Dells, Ginormous Water Park

We did indeed decide to go to "the big water park" the next day, and it ended up being gobs of fun. Here's the thing about Marky and me: we really love waterparks. We were basically giddy. I don't think the kids knew what to make of us.

So we did a few slides all together in the big tubes as a family (Charlotte basically sobbed down one of them, she was terrified and then super angry at us and we felt like crap parents, but also, you know, she was fine so whatever.) And then Nathan and Anneliese got rullll brave and did a few by themselves. Mark waited for them while I took Charlotte a huge splash pad where she found the quietest corner of the quietest slide and then sat in an inch of water and watched other kids come down while gently splashing water over her thighs. So, to each her own I guess.

There was no slide Nathan and Anneliese didn't want to try. I went with them on a bunch (there were a few things they wouldn't let me do because of my cast and broken arm (OH WAIT DID Y'ALL FORGET I WAS TRAIPSING AROUND THE COUNTRY LIKE A NEON STORM STROOPER?) and anyway we had Mark's work phone with its waterproof case so I got some fun pictures.

Anneliese was the only one in our family brave enough to try the zip line, where you hold onto a handlebar thing and jump off a giant tower over a pool, and she was crazy nervous and did it anyway, and sometimes I am so proud of her little quiet adventurous spirit that I might burst.

The only thing better than being super proud of your kid is seeing them feel super proud of themselves.

We finished the day with a long swim in the wave pool all together, and then good showers with actual hair washing and such, before we needed to get in the road for a long drive. (Again, I give myself an A+ for packing.)

Really excellent day. I would go back here every year, I really would. Delightful and cheesy and I won't lie, a waterpark day without the blistering heat is pretty awesome.

Pool Party!

We had a sweet little pool party for Nathan on Sunday afternoon for his birthday. He had no specific theme requests this year, so the theme was, come over and swim at our house and have cake. EASY AND FUN.

I made favor bags with treats like candy and sunglasses and goggles and some mincraft toys and origami-type folding crafts. These bags were nothing fun or fancy like the lego or dinosaur or rainbow ones but I lined them up on the mantle like always, because THAT IS A THING I DO OKAY.

I got some color-your-own beach balls for the kids* to color as everyone was getting here. (*For me. Okay? Fine. I wanted to color a beach ball. The kids liked it too so hush.)

I ordered a variety of inflatable things to "decorate"(/play with) in the pool, including a bunch of adorable beach balls and a dolphin ring toss. And a cruise ship because obviously.

Charlotte hoarded them mostly to herself. (Which makes sense because in my Big Book of Facts About Boolers, on page 16 it says that boolers love balls. So.)

But the kids all played together in the pool for a while, I checked out the sexy lifeguard with a few up-downs, and all was well.

And then Nathan opened presents and we had an ice cream cake, which is what he requested, which I had never made before in my life, which I wasn't ready to outsource to baskin robbins, so we watched some videos and we tried it. (Post about that later.)  It came out great! 

(Yes, that is corn growing back there behind his head, by the pool deck. Also a post for later. To be filed under: OH MARKY.)

Speaking of Oh Marky, a day after the party there are still balloons stuck in our tree out front, and Mark keeps doing THIS to get them down, and we keep joking that this is the only use a southerner has for hockey sticks. It makes me laugh. 


(If you cant see the embedded video, click here to watch on YouTube.)

No, I don't know why we own a hockey stick in the first place. Someone asked me and... I honestly don't know. I have no good answer. I don't even have a bad answer. KEINE AHNUNG.

Twelve Quick Takes for Summer Break

1.) Reading outside. I make such a habit of sitting or walking outside for a while every day (sunshine is good for my soul, also it's my hippie Sleep Plan attempt at making the days bright and the nights dim, in my never-ending quest to sleep better), and often it's to read, that it seems the kids have picked up on the habit. On library day a few weeks ago when I chased them outside, they did... this.

I tried not to look at their pillows on the ground and just decided to feel happy they were all reading and quiet.

2.) Better swimming. I can't believe that this time last year, none of the kids would even put their face in the water happily, much less let go and swim on their own. Now Nathan and Anneliese are both little fishies, with endless energy and bravery, and Charlotte (with her puddle jumper on) will go anywhere in the pool too, for hours. Until she's exhausted, clearly.

when you're swimming with your thumb in your mouth, it's time to be done

Nathan has gotten to be a really decent diver, too! I'm legit impressed with this. Mad props to his teacher whoever that was. *brushes shoulders*


(If you can't see the video embedded above, click here to watch on YouTube.)

There was a time when I was worried about owning a pool, and now I never want to live without one again.

3.) Duck Donuts. We found a new (to us) donut place where every donut is made to order. Which means you pick your frosting or glaze, and whatever sprinkes/nuts/sugar topping you want, and they serve it to you warm and ooey gooey with a fork.

I'm not a huge donut person, but this is really excellent. RECOMMEND.

4.) Noemi. The fabulous Noemi came over (and we went once to her house) and, well, fabulous Noemi is fabulous. She is fun and funny and her kids behave and are polite and adorable and she's just generally excellent to have around, and she better watch her ass or I will smother in my attempts to conquer her friendship heart and she will have to awkwardly pretend she doesn't know me. Not that it will come to that.

5.) Yay marriage! Mark and I finally had that anniversary date we missed on father's day. And it ended up being on the same day that marriage equality passed nationwide. What a great day to celebrate marriage, amiright? Cheers, everyone! Everyone!

And happy dozen years to the best person I could hope to share this life with.

6.) Booler bruise. Charlotte fell off her bed, and apparently she landed on her... chin? I don't even know with this girl. She is my delicate flower who bruises and breaks and seems to fragile, or maybe just klutzy, or yeah I don't know. Another booler injury for the record books. It turned all sorts of colorful shades for several weeks before it finally went away.

7.) Paper chain. Anneliese made a paper chain to count down the days to Montreat. There are links on that chain with labels like "grandpa" and "Another Nathan" and "skate camp" to mark the time and plans for the month. I guess this is as good a calendar as any, when you're five?

When she and Nathan were at Grandpa's house, Charlotte took over tearing a link each day. She took her responsibility very seriously. (And yes I am aware of the irony of letting any of my kids, especially my breakable delicate flower stand on the very ledge from where Anneliese fell and smashed her face all those years ago.)

8.) Ice skating camp. Yes, Anneliese did a day camp for ice skating. We had her signed up for something different, and then it got changed, and then she reminded me she had liked skating when we tried it back in February, so she suggested ice skating camp instead. Um, okay.

It's the most random thing. We are not a people of ice. Or skates. But I do love about her that she is willing to try new things she knows nothing about, and assumes it will be fine. I like that she wants to do her own thing. And she did great, made new friends, and by the end of the week she was super proud of herself for being able to skate without holding on to anything.

On the last day, they had the option to skate a little "program" where they choose a song and skate around by themselves for the parents. She thought she was doing it, but apparently she didn't sign up in time, so she didn't, and was sad, but then when I saw how she "skates" I realized she could never have done a whole song:


(If you can't see the video embedded above, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

But! So proud! She is so proud, y'all.

9.) Two-piece swimsuit. Her best friend has a two-piece tankini, and she asked for one on repeat forever, so we found one that isn't triangle cut on top, doesn't have a skimpy back, doesn't show her belly, and comes in rainbow colors. It was a quest. She is now happy.

10.) Bee stings. One more about Anneliese, apparently. Mark and I went to dinner tonight and the kids were playing at Nick and Barbara's house, and apparently there were suddenly bees, and one of them got in Anneliese's shirt, and she came away with like ten stings or something. She was fairly traumatized. Apparently some of the the bees even followed them into the house! (They ended up eating pizza for dinner on the floor of Ali's nursery to hide from them.) Props to Uncle Nick who took a few stings himself trying to get Anneliese away. Oh man.

11.) Sardi's Den. A restaurant that Mark and I loved when we lived in Clemson just opened up a branch in Raleigh, and we took Charlotte there for dinner. Ribs and backyard punch! Was really fun and tasted like memories of our early months of marriage.

12.) VCS. We survived another year of vacation church school! This year instead of teaching my own class, I did a variety of a/v tasks to run the assembly each day, and compiled a slideshow video for the last session as always, and did a rotating science teacher thing where we taught about movement and reactions by building lava lamps and playing a catapult game. Was fun and also unbloggably annoying in some moments, but mostly it's a really great week every year.

I took our annual pic in the matching shirts, but before I could get everyone to smile, I got them to frown for a few tries.

Let's just take another look at Charlotte's face here.

Excellent, yes? Yes.

Seven, No Ten Quick Takes

1.) Anneliese picked out a new winter hat with some Amazon birthday money. Raise your hand if you never could have guessed she'd pick one like this:

2.) I took Nathan on a date to the symphony last weekend. It was a super crappy day and a really lovely break from the super crappy day. He was cellodorable, admiring all the instruments.

3.) I read the Astronaut Wives Club this weekend and it's far from brilliant writing -- mostly a series of vignettes about the first astronaut families in the sixties -- but I didn't need it to be a great novel, I was totally captivated anyway. I am now craving anything about the space race, I kinda want to watch Apollo 13 tonight, and I can't stop wikipedia-ing all the folks for a dose of Where Are They Now. Also I want to go back to the space center at Cape Canaveral (Mark and I visited in 2010 and it was great, but I think it would be even more great for me this week). 

So yeah, I'm hoping they make this into a tv show as has been promised (then delayed, but we'll see). The stories might actually tell better as a series instead of a book.

4.) Anneliese and Ali and I went for a fall walk a few days ago, just as the leaves were starting to change. You would not believe all the things a five-year-old has to tell her infant cousin about leaves changing, but it's a lot.

5.) We closed the pool last week and I miss it already.

6.) Nathan just read the "junior novel" version of the Lego movie and he seems to have internalized its message differently in print than on the screen. He now considers himself a Master Builder and keeps building things and telling us how he VISUALIZED them and that's how he designed them and oh man it cracks us up. (In a good way! He is sweet and smart. I'd hire him for all my aeronautical engineering needs, and no I'm not kidding.)

PS I got a haircut and highlights, as per my pre-birthday usual.

7.) After the slowest loudest construction project in the history of history, and many early-morning and late-night trips in my PJs to fuss at workers causing a ruckus outside of approved times ("I know you're just doing your job, but WE LIVE HERE" = me, sick of hearing myself talk), the house across the street is finally done! It was featured in a Parade of Homes thing, so we went to check it out, and it was nice in the way that fancy houses are always nice, but not our taste at all: some odd mashup of clean/modern and also totally dowdy. It's hard to explain. But anyway, if you want to live directly across the street, the house has a million dollar view!

Yes really.

8.) A few weekends ago when I was in Charlotte, I stopped at Ikea for some new cubes/shelving, which are lovely. (I got a teal cube system! TEAL! For my bathroom! Which I am now 99% sure won't fit but whatever, it's TEAL.) While I was there I also got Anneliese a new duvet, which I have been wanting for her since we rearranged all the bedroom furniture in our house A YEAR AGO, but the one I coveted for years before that has been discontinued, and anyway I never could find one that I liked AND she liked, and then this happened at Ikea, and now she has a very Anneliese bed.

Here is a thing I absolutely did not need but absolutely wanted, and I didn't buy it, but I'm pretty sure I might. It's a neon yellow stool! I mean, I need that, right? Someone talk me into it. Where should I put it?

9.) I have a new-ish phone case, and I love it. This is called a Loopy Case. It is just a case, with a loop in the back, which you can adjust to fit whatever finger you want. It is so simple and SO GENIUS.

It helps me hold my phone much steadier (I was a two-hand typer on my bigger android, and the smaller iphone is still an adjustment - slightly too small for two hands, but slightly too big for one -- and this makes it totally doable). It also means I never drop my phone on my face in bed anymore YES THAT IS A REAL THING. It also means I can knuckle it on the back of my hand and also carry a kid/purse/car seat, which keeps me from sticking my phone in my pocket instead, and that's always a good thing.

PS with the loop on the back you can stand it up for such purposes as alarm clocking. Or facetime dates. Or everyone trying to watch a video at the same time.

Anyway I love it, and I get asked about it all the time, so I am blogging about it. (My first one cracked, and I emailed them and they sent a new one -- with the loop holes now slightly offset, in their updated version, which I think will prevent that stress fracture from happening again -- and anyway with the recplacement they sent me an EXTRA. It's black, and I have a pink and a purple and a gray loop for it, so if you have a 5c and you want it, tell me and it's yours.)

10.) This post barely mentions Charlotte, but she's still the best Booler ever, so here, enjoy a delightful picture Mark took of her swinging out back.

Yes, she is wearing a sundress and some shorts and a tutu. Why, what do YOU wear to go swinging?